Congress approved $787 billion in February to promote job growth and the White House recently claimed that some 600,000 jobs have been created by the stimulus spending so far. But the government data, made available through , provides no details about the types of jobs and salaries and uses formulas to estimate the job impact.

Oniva Inc., which tracks government contract spending and has set up a separate site, , to look at stimulus spending specifically and has tallied the amount of technology spending. It calculates spending, and planned spending, based on actual contracts, or parts of contracts, that have allocated funding for IT and telecommunications communications and services.

The companies receiving stimulus funds report the number of direct jobs created, but don't estimate the indirect help. For instance, the U.S. Social Security Administration is upgrading some IT equipment with money from the stimulus, but according to reports on three projects underway in Maryland, which represent just a fraction of the agency's tech spending, only 17 jobs were created or saved on about $11 million in spending.

IBM a Social Security Administration contract, worth about $8.5 million, to upgrade systems around the country. IBM put the number of jobs created or saved at 16.8 is based on a combination of formulas developed by IBM and the White House, according to the company's filing. Oracle Corp. reported from the same agency a that didn't cite any jobs created. Similarly, Hewlett-Packard Co., didn't report any jobs also for a $1.25 million .

Oniva estimates that the direct stimulus spending has created just under 8,000 tech and telecom jobs, but this is a calculation based on a White House formula that says for approximately every $92,000 in recovery dollars spent, one job is created or saved, said Michael Balsam, the chief solutions officer of Onvi.