The Federal Funding Accountability Act and USAspending.gov

The Federal Funding Accountability And Transparency Act of 2006

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (S.2590) passed unanimously in September of 2006 after a secret hold placed on the legislation in the Senate was removed. The secret hold had triggered an unprecedented campaign by the blogosphere, calling every Senate ultimately forcing Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia to reveal themselves as responsible for holding up the bill.

The act mandated the following:

The creation of a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award;
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

Timeline:

July 1, 2007: OMB required to commence a pilot program to test the collection and accession of data about subgrants and subcontracts, and determine how to implement a subaward reporting program across the Federal government.
January 1, 2008: OMB will ensure the existence of a single searchable website accessible to thepublic that will provide the previously mentioned data about each federal award.
Oct 1, 2008: Requires information about credit card transactions, although only for amounts larger than $25,000.
January 1, 2009: The Act requires the website to include data from subcontractors or subgrantees.

Cost Estimate:

CBO estimated that implementing S. 2590 would cost $4 million in 2007 and about $15 million over the 2007-2011 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. However, the website was built at a fraction of the cost (see below).

USAspending.gov

Implementation

On December 13, 2007, several weeks before the required launch date of January 1st, 2008, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched the website www.usaspending.gov.
The website was created at a fraction of the cost estimate for the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which ran at roughly $20 million. Once OMB made the decision to purchase the underlying technology for USAspending.gov from a third-party organzation, OMB Watch, which hosts a similar website at www.FedSpending.org, OMB was able to build the website for less than $1million.
The data available on USAspending.gov is provided by the Federal Assistance Awards Data System (FAADS) and the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).

Additional Features:

The website has several additional features not required by law, which were made possible by the underlying technology purchased from OMB Watch.

For example, users can find out whether a contract was awarded competitively.
Furthermore, a wiki forum was added to the site for feedback purposes.

Americans for Tax Reform welcomed the creation of USAspending.gov but suggested that additional changes be made to the law, such as the inclusion of the actual expenditure document be included in the website. In June, 2008, lawmakers heeded this call and introduced legislation to strenghten the 2006 legislation.

The Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Government Spending Act (S. 3077)

On June 3rd, 2008, the original co-sponsors of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act co-sponsored follow up legislation, the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Government Spending Act (S.3077), which incorporates several of the changes ATR had called for.

However, the Center for Fiscal Accountability recommends further changes.

The act requires the following:

it requires the website to allow the public to search programmatically and access all data in a serialized machine readable format (such as XML) via a web-services application programming interface.
Specifies additional information on federal awards the website must include by certain deadlines. Requires the website to present information about federal awards and their recipients in ways that meet the needs of users with different levels of understanding about government spending and abilities using searching websites.
Sets forth requirement that certain expenditure documents be posted on the website.
Requires the Director to ensure that the unique identifier used to link information on the website is also used to link information about performance of individual contractors and recipients of financial assistance starting with awards given in FY2008.