The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is signed and the federal government is about to spend $787 billion to stimulate a struggling U.S. economy.

If you’d like to track where that money is going, here are some Websites to watch:

• Recovery.gov: Obama’s official American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Website lets taxpayers see how and where money is being distributed - to which states, congressional districts, even to which federal contractors. Future plans include the ability to display that information visually.

• ShovelWatch: This is a joint project of the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica, morning news program The Takeaway and WNYC, New York’s flagship public radio station. ShovelWatch currently features investigative news articles, radio segments, interviews and links to other news reports on stimulus spending. Over time, the site plans to engage citizens to help track how funds are being spent in their local communities and to what effect.

• Stimulus Watch: In response to federal legislation, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has released a list of “shovel-ready” projects in cities around the country it would like to see funded. Stimulus Watch allows residents with local knowledge about these projects to discuss and rate them.

• ‘‘American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009’’ – download PDF of the bill.

Here at the Knight Center of Digital Excellence, we’ll keep close watch on how the roughly $7 billion earmarked for deployment of broadband networks is spent.

If you find other sites that track stimulus spending in your community or region, please let us know.