Federal Manager's Daily Report

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The usaspending.gov site “provides a trove of information” but it is underused because it is not well enough known, including inside the government, the GAO has said.

A blog posting notes that the site is the official source of data on some $9 trillion in federal spending annually, including the increased spending related to the pandemic in the last several years. However, traffic to the site is by only about 3 percent per year, it said.

And in a recent poll GAO conducted of some 4,000 federal managers, 92 percent “said they hadn’t heard of the site before.”

“Treasury is trying to raise awareness of the website through public outreach. In 2021, it launched a Twitter campaign featuring data stories linked to federal agencies with large followings. This created an opportunity to reach a larger audience than the website’s existing users,” it said.

It added that in discussions with researchers, journalists, contractors and other organizations it found that they used the site for purposes relevant to their work. “However, some of our interviewees also expressed concerns that, in some cases, led them to seek out other data sources that they knew and trusted instead of USAspending.gov. For example, some researchers found data errors—and a lack of transparency about data issues,” it said.

GAO noted that in prior reports it has made recommendations to improve both data accuracy and transparency, saying that only some progress has been made in carrying them out.

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