Introduction USAspending.gov, available to the public at http://www.usaspending.gov, is a government source for data on federal grants, co...
Introduction USAspending.gov, available to the public at http://www.usaspending.gov, is a government source for data on federal grants, contracts, loans, and other financial assistance. The website enables searching of federal awards from FY2008 to the present by state, congressional district (CD), county, city, and zip code. Grant awards include money the federal government commits for projects in states, local jurisdictions, regions, territories, and tribal reservations, as well as payments for eligible needs to help individuals and families. Contract awards refer to bids and agreements the federal government makes for specific goods and services.
USAspending.gov also provides tools for examining the broader picture of federal spending obligations within the categories of budget function, agency, and object class. Budget function refers to the major purpose that the spending serves, such as Social Security, Medicare, and national defense. Object class refers to the type of item or service purchased by the federal government, such as grants, contracts, and personnel compensation and benefits. For Congress, the ability to more accurately track these federal awards is necessary to better inform oversight of federal spending. In recent years, Congress has passed laws to create and improve systems used by government departments and agencies to report and input data on federal awards for contracts, grants, and other financial assistance: P.L. 109-282, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA),
called for the creation of a database that became USAspending.gov. The publicly available database replaced data collection and annual reports issued for more than 30 years in the Census Bureau’s Federal Aid to States (FAS) report and Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR).1 P.L. 111-5, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), required federal agencies awarding stimulus funding and state and local recipients of such funding to report spending back to the ARRA Recovery Board; this reporting also became a part of USAspending.gov. P.L. 113-101, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act), transferred responsibility for USAspending.gov from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the Department of the Treasury and required that expenditures data be added to the federal agency obligations data already included in the USAspending.gov database. The DATA Act also required Treasury and OMB to develop government-wide data standardization to facilitate consolidating, automating, and simplifying reports on grant awards and contracts and to improve USAspending.gov underreporting and inconsistencies. Congress has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with multiple pieces of legislation providing relief to individuals and families, state and local governments, businesses, and health care providers. 2 USAspending.gov provides several features through which users can explore COVID19 award data, including a COVID-19 profile page and specific search filters. The Pandemic 1 Congress subsequently defunded the Census office that issued these reports in FY2012, with FY2010 Federal Aid to States (FAS) report and Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) being the last reports issued. 2 Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-123); Families First Coronavirus Response Act (P.L. 116-127); Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act; P.L. 116-136); Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (P.L. 116-139); Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Divisions M and N; P.L. 116-260); and American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-7). Tracking Federal Awards: USAspending.gov and Other Data Sources Congressional Research Service 2 Response Accountability Committee (PRAC; https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/track-themoney), a new federal entity created by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act; P.L. 116-136), also presents COVID-19 funding data through a variety of visual displays. 3 For more information on accessing COVID-19 funding data through USAspending.gov, PRAC, and other sources, see CRS Report R46491, Resources for Tracking Federal COVID-19 Spending. Additional search filters to enable tracking awards made through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) have also been added to USAspending.gov. Finding accurate and complete data on federal funds received by states and congressional districts continues to be challenging due to ongoing data quality issues originally identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in June 2014.
4 A GAO report released in July 2022 presents a review of reports by 57 Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) on the quality of their agencies’ spending data. According to GAO’s findings, while most OIGs (45 of 57) reported that their agencies’ data were of excellent or higher quality, some found that there was room for improvement in terms of completeness, timeliness, and accuracy. Most (44 of 57) made recommendations to help improve the quality of their agencies’ data.5 Users of USAspending.gov should be aware that although search results may be useful for informing consideration of certain questions, these results may also be incomplete or contain inaccuracies. USAspending.gov Background Origins FFATA required OMB to create a public database of all federal funds awarded to the final recipient level. The DATA Act followed eight years later and required the Department of the Treasury and OMB to develop government-wide data standardization to consolidate, automate,
and simplify reports on grant awards and contracts to improve underreporting and inconsistencies as identified by GAO. These requirements in the DATA Act were intended to expand on the transparency efforts originally mandated by FFATA, specifically by disclosing direct agency expenditures and linking federal contract, loan, and grant spending information to federal agency programs; establishing government-wide data standards for financial data and providing consistent, reliable, and searchable data that are displayed accurately; simplifying reporting, streamlining reporting requirements, and reducing compliance costs, while improving transparency; and 3 For more information on PRAC, see CRS Insight IN11343, The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee: Organization and Duties, by Ben Wilhelm. 4 The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) “estimates with 95 percent confidence that between 2 percent and 7 percent of the awards contained information that was fully consistent with agencies’ records for all 21 data elements examined.” See GAO Highlights, Data Transparency: Oversight Needed to Address Underreporting and Inconsistencies on Federal Award Website, GAO-14-476, June 2014, at http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-476. 5 GAO, Federal Spending Transparency:
OIGs Identified a Variety of Issues with the Quality of Agencies’ Data Submissions GAO-22-105427, July 2022 at https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-105427.pdf. See also the July 2022 blog entry on GAO’s site, “Federal Spending Data Quality—Is This As Good As It Gets? Auditors Say It Can Be Better” at https://www.gao.gov/blog/federal-spending-data-quality-good-it-gets-auditors-say-it-can-be-better. Tracking Federal Awards: USAspending.gov and Other Data Sources Congressional Research Service 3 improving the quality of data submitted to USAspending.gov by holding agencies accountable.6 In addition, no later than four years after enactment (by spring 2018), Treasury and OMB were to ensure that all information published on USAspending.gov conforms to government-wide data standards. OMB is also required to issue guidance so that all agencies can follow governmentwide data standards when reporting on grantee and contractor awards. Types and Timing of Data The data in USAspending.gov are submitted by federal agencies and represent award obligations, including for grants, contracts, loans, and other financial assistance (e.g., Social Security benefits, food stamps, housing assistance). Obligations are commitments made by the federal government to spend funds and do not represent actual outlays.
USAspending.gov also does not include data on spending by award recipients. Federal agencies are required to submit reports on awards transactions within 30 days after transactions are implemented. There may be a longer lag-time with data from the Department of Defense, generally 90 days. Site Features USAspending.gov enables congressional staff and the public to search back to FY2008 for prime and subaward data by state, congressional district, and other jurisdictions. The site includes the following features: Advanced Award Search of prime and subaward data back to FY2008 allows filtering by award type, awarding agency, recipient, country, state, zip, county, city, CD, and other criteria. To identify where money is being spent, search on Place of Performance versus Recipient Location. Search results include awards that are active during the selected fiscal year, regardless of when the award initially started. Details on an individual award, including transaction history and subawards, may be viewed by clicking on the Award ID.
The Time, Map, and Categories tabs above the search results allow users to view aggregated award transactions data from different perspectives. The results list displayed can be downloaded at either the award or transaction level, along with additional details about each award, into a spreadsheet. The advanced search is continually being developed and improved, so new features may have become available since the publication of this report. Spending Explorer enables “big picture” browsing of federal spending obligations and offers interactive data visualization by budget function, agency, and object class. With this tool, users can see the budget function breakdown by categories, such as Social Security, Medicare, and national defense; obligated amounts by agency; and obligations by object class categories, such as grants, contracts, and personnel compensation and benefits. Profiles Tab includes the following subtabs: Agencies features data on each agency’s total budgetary resources, the total amount that has been obligated (or committed to be spent) against those budgetary resources, and the amount the agency has obligated for awards.
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