Three Years In, What Does the DATA Act Tell Us About Agency Spending?

Trying to figure out exactly how much money the federal government spends long has been an exercise in futility for those few brave souls who endeavor to try it. Though the U.S. Treasury has published financial data since the beginning of the republic, the government has an uneven history, to say the least, when it comes to reporting agency expenditures.

Agencies traditionally have employed a hodgepodge of data and spending models that fail to adhere to a common metric. This makes it difficult for lawmakers and policy experts to wrap their arms fully around federal agency spending. Since at least the 1970s, efforts have been afoot to standardize government data, culminating in 2014’s Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, also known as the DATA Act.

The bill’s purpose was to make expenditures both more transparent and more accessible. It requires Treasury to establish common reporting standards across all federal agencies, with the data posted online in a publicly accessible format….

Read more at http://www.rstreet.org/2017/05/08/three-years-in-what-does-the-data-act-tell-us-about-agency-spending/

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Topics: Congress & Technology
Tags: C. Jarrett Dieterle