The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in coordination with the Treasury Department, to provide guidance to agencies on how to report their spending data on USAspending.gov.
The website USAspending.gov, is the official source of Federal spending information to help both the government and the public track Federal funds. However, in a new report, GAO found that 49 agencies did not report data to USAspending.gov in fiscal year (FY) 2022 – 25 of which “accounted for more than $5 billion in net outlays.”
Additionally, GAO said while not all agencies are required to report data to the website, neither OMB nor the Treasury Department have clear responsibility for determining which agencies need to report.
“In addition, among the agencies that did report to USAspending.gov, we found that some reported COVID-19 obligation amounts did not agree with the information in their budget and annual financial reports,” the report says.
GAO is first calling on Congress to help fix this problem, issuing a recommendation that it amends the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act). Specifically, GAO wants Congress to assign OMB, in coordination with Treasury, the responsibilities to periodically assess and determine which agencies must report data to USAspending.gov, and ensure they complete all reporting requirements.
“Until Congress assigns responsibility to Treasury and OMB to periodically assess and determine which agencies must report data to USAspending.gov and oversee the completeness of their reporting, the USAspending.gov data may lack some required spending information,” GAO said.
The government watchdog also said Congress should review the reporting of other transaction agreements (OTAs), which are “legally binding agreements other than standard contracts and grants that allow for flexible arrangements.”
GAO found that agencies use different approaches to report OTA spending, and called on Congress to amend the DATA Act to include OTAs in the list of Federal awards that agencies must report to USAspending.gov.
Finally, GAO made one recommendation of executive action, calling on OMB, in collaboration with Treasury, to provide guidance for agencies to ensure that the data they report to USAspending.gov is “consistent and comparable across other public sources, such as agency budget and annual financial reports.”
“Without OMB and Treasury guidance to help agencies ensure that information reported to USAspending.gov is consistent and comparable with other public sources, the transparency and use of USAspending.gov information may be questioned,” GAO says. “Information that differs from one source to another may also cause confusion and lead users to inadvertently draw incorrect conclusions.”
GAO said it provided a draft of its report to OMB and Treasury, with OMB responding via email to agree with the recommendation. Treasury had no comments on the report.
