How USAspending is compiled, and its known gaps

Who reports

Contract records come from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), where contracting officers enter each action. Financial assistance records are submitted by agencies through the Financial Assistance Broker Submission. Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service combines them with agency financial data under the DATA Act of 2014 and publishes USAspending.gov, refreshed nightly.

Validation, in USAspending's words

"Every agency has a Senior Accountable Official who must officially certify that the quarterly financial data submitted by their agency is accurate and complete." "Every grant, loan, direct payment, and other financial assistance record submitted to the Financial Assistance Broker Submission system must pass a series of validations before the data is published on USAspending.gov." "If there are any discrepancies in procurement data, FPDS is the authoritative source."

Known gaps

• Defence delay. FPDS "delays publishing procurement (i.e., contract and IDV) data for the Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)" by 90 days. Recent months therefore understate defence contracting.
• Medicare. CMS "reports financial assistance awards from Medicare programs (CFDA 93.773, 93.774, and 93.770) as lump sum payments, with each record corresponding to the amount of money sent to a specific Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) in a given month." The location fields "correspond to the county where the MAC is located", not where beneficiaries live. A handful of counties show extraordinary per-resident rates for this reason.
• Aggregated and withheld records. Payments to individuals appear as "multiple recipients" or "redacted due to PII" rows. This site pools them as recipients not shown.
• Place of performance. Many grants, especially to state governments, carry a state-level location only and are attributed to no county or district. Contracts usually carry a county and district, but they describe where the work is performed, not where a company is headquartered.
• Revisions. Agencies correct and de-obligate awards for months after the fact; closed-year figures move a little, and the current year moves a lot.
• Sub-awards. Only prime awards are counted here. Money that a state passes on to a city or a non-profit appears under the state.

What this means for the figures here

Treat fiscal-year totals as reliable to within a few percent for closed years, current-year figures as provisional, and county or district rates as descriptions of where agencies record the work, not of who benefits. Every award links to its USAspending record for the full transaction history.