Executive
Waste of the Day: 49 Agencies Don’t Report to USASpending.gov
The site USASpending.gov is supposed to be the official monitor of federal spending – but 49 agencies won’t report to it.
The website USASpending.gov is the official source of federal spending information, showing details about each federal award such as contracts, grants and loans.
But a report from the Government Accountability Office that found that 49 federal agencies didn’t report their spending to the site.
The GAO noted the federal government has provided about $4.7 trillion to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that inconsistent reporting means it can’t be tracked by the public properly using the website.
There were 103 agencies that did report, and of the 49 agencies missing, GAO said it’s unclear which are required to report.
“Although many nonreporting agencies may not be required to report, neither the Department of the Treasury nor the Office of Management and Budget have clear responsibility for determining which agencies are required to report,” the GAO report stated.
The GAO recommends that Congress consider amending the DATA Act and that OMB provide guidance to help improve data reporting.
“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.”
Besides those missing, some agencies reported different spending figures than those in their budget and annual financial reports, the GAO report found.
For example, in its FY 2022 agency financial report, the Department of the Treasury reported its COVID-19 obligations as $195 billion more than that it reported to USAspending.gov. The Department of Transportation reported amounts that differed by $10 million, the GAO found.
“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.”
Without accurate reporting, users don’t have the ability to track federal spending, including for $4.7 trillion of Covid aid.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski) is the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Before dedicating his life to public service, Adam co-founded HomePages Directories, a $20 million publishing company (1997-2007). His works have been featured on the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, FOX News, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, Newsweek, and many other national media.
Today, OpenTheBooks.com is the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending. Mission: post "every dime, online, in real time." In 2022, OpenTheBooks.com captured nearly all public expenditures in the country, including nearly all disclosed federal government spending; 50 of 50 state checkbooks; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America.
The group's aggressive transparency and forensic auditing of government spending has led to the assembly of grand juries, indictments, and successful prosecutions; congressional briefings, hearings, and subpoenas; Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits; Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports; federal legislation; and much more.
Our Honorary Chairman - In Memoriam is U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD.
Andrzejewski's federal oversight work was included in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. The budget cited his organization by name, bullet-pointed their findings, and footnoted/hyperlinked to their report.
Posted on YouTube, Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida received 3.8 million views.
Andrzejewski has spoken at the Columbia School of Journalism, Harvard Law School and the law schools at Georgetown and George Washington regarding big data journalism. As a senior policy contributor at Forbes, Adam had nearly 20 million pageviews on 206 published investigations. In 2022, investigative fact-finding on Dr. Fauci's finances led to his cancellation at Forbes.
In 2022, Andrzejewski did 473 live television and radio interviews across broadcast, major cable platforms, and radio shows. Andrzejewski is the author of The Waste of the Day column at Real Clear Policy. The column is syndicated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across USA.
Andrzejewski lives in Hinsdale, Illinois with his wife Kerry and three daughters. He is a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and has finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
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