The President has signed into law the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 – or Data Act – to standardize federal spending data and make it available in useful detail on a single public website.
The bipartisan-sponsored measure expands on the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 by disclosing direct federal agency expenditures and linking federal contract, loan, and grant spending information to federal programs allowing for greater visibility into how and where money is being spent.
The bill intends to establish government-wide data standards for financial data and provide consistent, reliable, and searchable government-wide spending data that is displayed accurately for taxpayers and policy makers on USASpending.gov.
OMB will be in charge of developing those standards in consultation with public and private stakeholders so they are widely accepted, nonproprietary, searchable, platform independent, and computer-readable.
The bill also aims to simplify reporting for entities receiving federal funds, hold federal agencies accountable for the completeness and accuracy of the data submitted, and apply approaches developed by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to spending across the federal government.
