Federal Manager's Daily Report

Information on the site has become of special interest in the last several years for federal agencies. Image: ArtHead/Shutterstock.com

The USAspending.gov site suffers from “continuing data quality issues,” says a report for Congress, adding that users of the site “need to be aware that while search results may be useful for informing consideration of certain questions, these results may be incomplete or contain inaccuracies.”

The site was designed as a one-stop resource for data on spending on contracts, grants, loans, and other forms of financial assistance, under a series of laws including the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act. It includes tools for examining the broader picture of federal spending obligations within the categories of budget function, agency, and object class.

Information on the site has become of special interest in the last several years for federal agencies, Congress, the media and others seeking to track how and where money was spent under a number of pandemic relief laws that provided funds to individuals and families, state and local governments, businesses, health care providers and others, the Congressional Research Service said.

However, the report said that data quality issues first raised in a 2014 GAO report have persisted; a follow-up report issued earlier this year citing continuing issues of “completeness, timeliness, and accuracy” of data reporting by some agencies.

The CRS also cautioned that users of the data should be aware that there may be a difference between where grants or contracts were awarded and where the money was spent; that there is a difference between an obligation and an actual outlay; that an award may pass through several sets of hands through subcontracts or subgrants; and that there is a time lag in reporting the data which varies by reporting agency.

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