A GAO report from last year found that some two dozen agencies included in overall government financial statements did not report data to the site in 2022. Image: J.J. Gouin/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffDespite improvements in USASpending.gov of recent years, the site is still falling short of its goal of serving as an authoritative source of information on the amounts and uses of federal awards for contracts, grants, and other financial assistance, says a Congressional Research Service report.
It noted for example that the 2014 DATA Act (Digital Accountability and Transparency Act) required Treasury and OMB to develop government-wide data standardization for reporting on the site and that features were added later for tracking spending under pandemic relief laws and under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
However, “finding accurate and complete data . . . continues to be challenging due to ongoing data quality issues,” it said, citing a GAO report from last year finding that some two dozen agencies included in overall government financial statements did not report data to the site in 2022.
“In addition, among the agencies that did report to USAspending.gov, GAO found that some reported COVID-19 obligation amounts did not agree with the information in their budget and annual financial reports. Subsequent GAO analysis of grant sub-award data in USAspending.gov identified data quality issues, including grant sub-awards with missing information, impossibly large sub-award amounts, and likely duplicative records,” it said.
“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,” it said.
It further cautioned about the need to distinguish between where recipients of grant, contract or other awards are based versus where the money is spent, which “is not fully identified in grant or procurement records.” Recipients might provide services directly to beneficiaries, it noted, but they might also pass the money through to sub-grants or subcontracts that might be located elsewhere in a state or in a different state, it said.
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