Page 1 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

441 G St. N.W. 

Washington, DC 20548 

August 3, 2016 

DATA Act: Initial Observations on Technical Implementation

Congressional Addressees: 

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) holds considerable 

promise to improve the transparency and accuracy of data on the approximately $3.7 trillion 

spent annually by the federal government.1

 The Data Act identifies the Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB) and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) as the two agencies 

responsible for leading government-wide implementation. A key component of ensuring the 

accuracy, completeness, and consistency of federal spending data is Treasury’s development of 

technical guidance and OMB’s release of related policy guidance for submission and publication 

of the data.2

 Treasury has issued technical implementation guidance which establishes the 

technical format and supporting systems to facilitate agency reporting. With less than a year 

before agencies will be required to report data in accordance with the act, there is limited time to 

complete technical changes and adjustments to facilitate effective implementation. 

This report is the latest work in response to a mandate for GAO to assess DATA Act 

implementation efforts.3

 It provides an update and initial observations on the status of efforts by 

Treasury and OMB regarding technical implementation of the act. Specifically, this report 

describes (1) the development of a DATA Act Broker (a system to standardize data formatting 

and assist reporting agencies in validating their data submissions) and (2) the components of 

the technical guidance for agencies’ data submissions, known as the DATA Act Information 

Model Schema (DAIMS) version 1.0.4

 We will provide additional information on the technical 

implementation of the act including the extent to which the broker addresses data quality issues 

 

1

Pub. L. No. 113-101, 128 Stat. 1146 (May 9, 2014). The DATA Act amended the Federal Funding Accountability and 

Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA). Pub. L. No. 109-282, 120 Stat. 1186 (Sept. 26, 2006), codified at 31 U.S.C. § 

6101 note. 

2

A key objective of the technical guidance or schema is to specify the format, structure, tagging, and transmission of 

each data element in order to enable consistency and comparability.

3

For more information on our prior products related to OMB’s and Treasury’s effort to establish data standards, see 

GAO, DATA Act: Progress Made in Initial Implementation but Challenges Must be Addressed as Efforts Proceed, 

GAO-15-752T (Washington, D.C.: July 29, 2015); GAO, Federal Data Transparency: Effective Implementation of the 

DATA Act Would Help Address Government-wide Management Challenges and Improve Oversight, GAO-15-241T 

(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 3, 2014); and GAO, DATA Act: Data Standards Established, but More Complete and Timely 

Guidance is Needed to Ensure Effective Implementation, GAO-16-261 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 29, 2016). For more 

information on DATA Act implementation by federal agencies see GAO, DATA Act: Improvements Needed in 

Reviewing Agency Implementation Plans and Monitoring Progress, GAO-16-698 (Washington, D.C.: July 29, 2016). 

4

The DATA Act Broker is a system that collects agency data and validates that data against the DATA Act Schema. 
Page 2 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

and the role the DAIMS version 1.0 is expected to play in agencies’ implementation efforts in a 

forthcoming report planned for later this year.5

To understand Treasury’s processes for developing the technical guidance, we reviewed 

applicable technical guidance and documentation related to the schema version 1.0 and the 

broker. In addition, we observed two demonstrations of how agencies submit their data to a 

prototype of the broker and the feedback produced by the system regarding data verification. 

We also interviewed knowledgeable officials from OMB, Treasury, and selected federal 

agencies and inspectors general, as well as enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors 

assisting federal agencies with technical implementation.6

 To obtain information on agencies’ 

use of the technical guidance, we selected three agencies based on whether they were in 

compliance with existing federal requirements for federal financial management systems, the 

type of federal funding provided (such as grants, loans, or procurements), and their status as a 

federal shared service provider for financial management. We selected the Department of 

Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Corporation 

for National and Community Service (CNCS).7

 Although the information obtained from these 

three agencies is not generalizable to all agencies, they illustrate a range of conditions under 

which agencies are implementing the act. These are the same three agencies we selected for 

our January 2016 report.8

 This allowed us to assess progress in DATA Act implementation at 

these agencies since our last review. At each agency, we reviewed DATA Act implementation 

plans and interviewed officials responsible for the implementation including the designated 

senior accountable official (SAO) and DATA Act implementation team members. 

We conducted this performance audit from June 2016 to August 2016 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and 

perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions on our audit objectives. 

Results in Brief 

OMB and Treasury have taken steps to assure the quality of the federal spending data that will 

be made available to the public. These steps include creating a broker system to (1) check that 

submitted data follow a standardized format that will allow for aggregation and comparison 

across government and (2) validate selected data elements to ensure that the data are 

accurate. Treasury plans to release a full production broker in the fall of 2016. According to 

Treasury documents, once fully implemented, the broker will apply a series of format and 

formula checks to the budget and financial data elements submitted by the agencies to ensure 

 

5

Hereafter in this report, the DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS), version 1.0 is referred to as the “schema 

version 1.0.” Prior to the release of the schema version 1.0 in April 2016, Treasury released several earlier versions 

to the public including version 0.2 in May 2015, version 0.5 in July 2015, version 0.6 in October 2015, and version 0.7 

in December 2015. 

6

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors provide an integrated suite of business applications to some federal 

agencies for financial management purposes. 

7

For more information about how we selected these agencies for review, see appendix I of GAO-16-261. 

8

GAO-16-261. 
Page 3 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

that the data are in the required standard format and correctly calculated. The broker will also 

validate these budget and financial data, which include data elements such as appropriation 

account, object class, outlay, and program activity, by comparing the data to multiple sources.

Treasury has issued data validation rules (procedures for calculating amounts for data 

elements) intended to ensure that the amounts for budget and financial data elements submitted 

by agencies are derived in a standard way. The broker is designed to extract and standardize 

the format of award data pulled from existing award reporting systems. These data cover federal 

assistance including grants and loans as well as procurements and include data elements such 

as award type, award amount, and period of performance. However, the broker will not validate 

these data to ensure that they are accurate. Our prior work has identified previous challenges 

with the accuracy and completeness of the data posted to USASpending.gov.9

 OMB has 

directed agencies to use existing quality assurance processes and controls to assure the quality 

of data reported under the DATA Act.10

On April 29, 2016, Treasury released schema version 1.0—4 months later than originally 

planned. Federal ERP vendors such as Oracle told us they waited to start developing key 

software patches until a stable version of the schema was released.11 According to Treasury 

officials, the patches are needed by some agencies to facilitate agency data submissions from 

their existing financial management systems and are planned to be released no later than 

February 2017. These officials also noted that, beginning in the fall of 2015, they regularly 

engaged with federal ERP vendors to help align their products with the DATA Act Schema. It is 

unclear the extent to which agencies will need to test and complete customize these patches 

before they submit data to Treasury as required by the DATA Act by May 2017. We will continue 

to monitor this issue as part of our on-going work. 

DATA Act Broker Will Extract Award Level Data from Award Reporting 

Systems with Known Data Quality Challenges 

Treasury Tested the Broker with Agencies and Plans to Release a Full Production 

Broker in the Fall

Treasury has made progress developing the DATA Act Broker—a system to standardize data 

formatting and assist reporting agencies in validating their data prior to submission to the 

Treasury data store.12 As part of this effort, Treasury hosted monthly sessions with agencies to 

 

9

GAO, Data Transparency: Oversight Needed to Address Underreporting and Inconsistencies on Federal Award 

Website, GAO-14-476 (Washington, D.C.: June 30, 2014). 

10Office of Management and Budget, Additional Guidance for DATA Act Implementation: Implementing a DataCentric Approach for Reporting Federal Spending Information, Management Procedures Memorandum No. 2016-03 

(Washington, D.C.: May 3, 2016), and Increasing Transparency of Federal Spending by Making Federal Spending 

Data Accessible, Searchable, and Reliable, OMB Memorandum M-15-12 (May 8, 2015). See also Office of 

Management and Budget, Improving Data Quality for USAspending.gov, Memorandum for Agency Chief Financial 

Officers (June 12, 2013) for additional OMB guidance on improving data quality. 

11A patch is a piece of software code that is inserted into a program to temporarily fix a defect. Patches are often 

developed and released by software vendors when vulnerabilities are discovered. 

12A data store or data warehouse is a storage architecture designed to hold data extracted from transactional 

systems, operational data stores, and external sources. 
Page 4 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

test the submission of their data files using an early version of the broker and to obtain feedback 

on ways to improve its functionality. Based on feedback from these tests, Treasury released an 

alpha version of the broker with limited functionality in April 2016.13 Treasury released a beta 

version of the broker in June 2016 and told us that it will be followed in fall 2016 by a full 

production version that will include additional functionality for extracting data from existing 

award systems. 

Version 1.0 of the schema provides information on the sources for financial and award data and 

describes how the data will be submitted to the broker. Figure 1 depicts how the data 

submission process is intended to work. According to Treasury guidance documents, agencies 

are expected to submit three files (files A, B, and C) sourced from their existing financial 

management systems. Once it is fully functional, the broker is also expected to extract award 

and sub-award information from existing award reporting systems that currently supply award 

data (covering federal assistance including grants and loans, as well as procurements) to 

USASpending.gov (files D1, D2, E, and F shown in Figure 1). These existing systems—

including the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG), System for 

Award Management (SAM), the Award Submission Portal (ASP), and the Federal Funding 

Accountability and Transparency Act Sub-award Reporting System (FSRS)—compile 

information submitted by agencies and award recipients to report, among other things, 

procurement and financial assistance award information required under the Federal Funding 

Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).14 See the enclosure for a description of the data 

to be contained in files A, B, C, D1, D2, E, and F. 

 

13According to Treasury officials, the alpha release is a version of the broker that allows Treasury to provide their 

product to a group of actual users to, in part, (1) test the overall design approach, (2) test specific implementation 

technologies, and (3) allow users to gain a general understanding of the service.

14The information displayed on USASpending.gov is derived from several sources. Procurement data are imported 

from the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG), which collects information on contract 

actions. The System for Award Management (SAM) is the primary database for information on potential government 

business partners in which those wishing to do business with the federal government must register. The Award 

Submission Portal (ASP) is the platform used by federal agencies to report financial assistance data. The FFATA 

Sub-award Reporting System (FSRS) provides data on first-tier sub-awards reported by prime recipients. 
Page 5 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

Figure 1: Operation of the DATA Act Broker 

 a

According to OMB staff and Treasury officials, although the data in these files are not validated by the broker they 

are subject to checks by their source systems.

OMB and Treasury Have Taken Some Steps to Address Data Quality Issues 

One of the stated purposes of the DATA Act is to establish government-wide data standards 

that provide consistent, reliable, and searchable spending data that are displayed accurately for 

taxpayers and policy makers on USASpending.gov or a successor system. OMB issued 

additional policy guidance in May 2016, which among other things established the sources of 

the data for DATA Act reporting.15 While the new financial and budget information required 

under the act will be submitted by agencies, award information will be extracted from existing 

award reporting systems currently used by agencies to report award-level information consistent 

with their requirements under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 

 

15OMB Management Procedures Memorandum No. 2016-03. 
Page 6 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

2006, among other requirements. Our prior work has found persistent challenges with the 

quality and completeness of the data posted on USASpending.gov.16 The continued reliance on 

existing source systems with known data quality challenges for DATA Act reporting raises 

concerns about the quality of the data submitted to USASpending.gov. We are continuing to 

monitor efforts to assure data quality and will be assessing these efforts in forthcoming reports. 

The DATA Act holds agencies accountable for the quality of their data submissions and requires 

agency inspectors general (IGs) to report on the completeness, timeliness, quality, and use of 

the data standards established under the act by their respective agencies. Agencies are 

primarily responsible for the quality of the data they submit to USASpending.gov. Under the 

DATA Act, OMB and Treasury are required to ensure that the information is posted on the 

website.17 OMB and Treasury have taken a number of steps to support agencies’ data quality 

efforts.

Using the broker to improve data quality. The DATA Act Broker includes a set of validation 

rules to help ensure that data submitted to the Treasury data store are in the standard format 

established by OMB and Treasury for each data element, including field length and data type 

(alphabetic, numeric, or integer). These validation checks are intended to ensure that reported 

data are consistent and comparable as required under the act. In addition, the broker should 

help improve the accuracy of agency data submissions for the new budget and financial data 

elements specifically required under the DATA Act by validating them against sources such as 

SF-133s and the Central Accounting Reporting System and by ensuring the data are accurately 

calculated.18 The broker will also pull the data from existing award reporting systems and help 

ensure they are in the standard format in order that these data are consistent and comparable. 

However, in contrast to the validation checks that may help ensure the accuracy of budget and 

financial data submitted by agencies, Treasury officials told us the broker will not validate the 

accuracy of data extracted from existing award reporting systems. As we have previously 

reported, some of these systems have known data quality challenges. Treasury officials told us 

that with the exception of updates they made to the validation checks in the ASP which will 

ensure that the data are in the standard format, they have no plans to add additional validation 

tools to ensure the data from these award systems are accurate and will rely on their existing 

 

16See GAO-14-476. Our prior work found that unclear guidance and weaknesses in executive branch oversight 

contributed to persistent challenges with the accuracy and completeness of the data submitted by federal agencies 

and posted on USASpending.gov. To address these problems, we recommended OMB and Treasury (1) clarify 

guidance on reporting award information and maintaining supporting records and (2) develop and implement 

oversight processes to ensure that award data are consistent with agency records. These recommendations remain 

open because OMB and Treasury have not fully addressed the underlying causes. OMB staff and Treasury officials 

have told us that they believe that, over time, their efforts to implement the DATA Act will address our 

recommendations. 

17FFATA, §§ 2(b)(1), 3(a). 

18The SF-133 Report on Budget Execution and Budgetary Resources allows the monitoring of the status of funds 

consistently across programs within each agency, and across agencies on at least a quarterly basis. The Central 

Accounting and Reporting System (CARS) handles accounting and reporting for all federal agencies including: 

financial management and accounting information across federal program agencies; Bureau of the Fiscal Service 

processes related to ledger accounting for each appropriation, fund, and receipt account's fund balance with 

Treasury; general ledger accounting for government cash and monetary assets; and monthly Treasury statements 

and the U.S. Government Combined Statement and Appendix. 
Page 7 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

validation tools.19 Specifically, they explained that in contrast to ASP, they do not have the 

authority to make changes to these other systems. 

Using internal controls to improve data quality. In addition to the validation rules built into 

the broker, OMB’s Management Procedures Memorandum No. 2016-03 directs agencies to 

leverage existing procedures for providing assurances of the quality of their DATA Act data 

submissions. This policy guidance also directs agency SAOs to provide reasonable assurance 

that their internal controls support the reliability and validity of the agency account-level and 

award-level data they submit to Treasury for publication on USASpending.gov. SAOs are 

required to provide this assurance for data they submit to Treasury on a quarterly basis 

beginning with fiscal year 2017 second quarter data to be displayed by May 2017 and every 

quarter thereafter. 

OMB’s memorandum notes that assurance means that, at a minimum, the data reported are 

based on appropriate internal control and risk management strategies identified in OMB Circular 

A-123.20 OMB expects SAO assurance of the data through this process would mean that data 

submitted to Treasury by May 2017 complies with existing controls for ensuring the data quality. 

However, our prior work has shown that reliance on these quality assurance processes have not 

previously been sufficient to address the accuracy and completeness challenges we identified.21

OMB staff acknowledged the data quality issues with existing award systems and the known 

challenges with internal control processes will likely be present in agencies’ initial submissions 

to USASpending.gov in May 2017. For example, OMB staff noted that there will be timing 

issues—specifically, there is a lag time between when award data for federal procurements and 

federal assistance (such as grants and loans) are finalized and when they are posted on the 

award systems. There are also known differences between certain award financial data reported 

in agency financial management systems and data reported in award feeder systems because 

agencies will not include classified data, awards under the micro purchase threshold, and 

anything that contains personally identifiable information that cannot be aggregated. OMB 

expects to propose changes to existing regulations that should address these reporting 

inconsistencies. OMB staff said that they plan to have these changes in place before agencies 

need to begin submitting data by May 2017. 

Offices of inspectors general, which are required to assess the completeness, timeliness, 

quality, and accuracy of data submitted under the act, have expressed concern about agencies’ 

ability to provide assurances of the quality of their data. For example, several members of a 

DATA Act working group made up of staff from inspectors general offices across the federal 

 

19In addition, OMB staff told us that there are existing validations required over the data in award systems. For 

instance, in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and OMB guidance, agency chief acquisition officers 

validate procurement data annually and the results are available publicly at USASpending.gov. For financial 

assistance data, Treasury is updating the Award Submission Portal to include rules which will ensure that financial 

assistance data is submitted in a standard format established by the schema. 

20OMB Circular No. A-123 defines management's responsibility for internal control in federal agencies. This circular 

provides guidance to federal managers on improving the accountability and effectiveness of federal programs and 

operations by establishing, assessing, correcting, and reporting on internal control. 

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars_a123_rev/] 

21GAO-14-476. 
Page 8 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

government told us that they do not have confidence that existing internal control structures will 

allow for the types of assurances required under the act. These officials were concerned about 

their agencies’ ability to provide data quality assurances for data that are not directly provided 

by the agency, such as data submitted by non-federal entities who receive federal awards and 

report sub-award information directly into reporting systems. OMB staff told us that they are 

developing clarification for agencies that have requested additional guidance on how to provide 

assurances of the quality of the data submissions and expect to release additional guidance 

sometime over the course of the summer.

Delay in Issuance of Final Technical Guidance 

Treasury released the schema version 1.0, on April 29, 2016—4 months later than planned and 

approximately a year before reporting is required to begin under the act. Treasury officials 

explained that this delay was a result of ongoing deliberations with OMB and others regarding 

reporting architecture—specifically whether to leverage award data from existing award 

reporting systems or to obtain these data directly from agencies. Treasury expects this guidance 

will provide a stable base for agencies to develop the necessary data submission procedures. 

Among other things, the schema version 1.0 provides an overview of the reporting time frames 

and sources of the data, instructions for federal agencies to submit content in the appropriate 

format, and a listing of the elements that describes what data will be pulled from governmentwide procurement systems and from agency financial assistance systems. This schema 

addresses several of our concerns about earlier versions, including inconsistencies between 

machine-readable and human-readable documentation that could have led to inconsistent 

reporting of data. 

Treasury had planned to issue this version of the schema by December 31, 2015, but instead 

released an interim version—version 0.7—at that time. We previously reported that a significant 

delay in releasing version 1.0 of the schema would likely have consequences for timely 

implementation of the act.22 This assessment is consistent with the findings of a June 2016 

Treasury Office of Inspector General audit.23 The Treasury OIG found that while Treasury has 

made progress in implementing the DATA Act, the delayed release of finalized technical 

guidance and the broker put the timely and effective implementation of the act at risk. 

Agencies are required by the DATA Act to report data in compliance with established data 

standards by May 2017. Toward that end, OMB and Treasury directed agencies to begin 

reporting data at the beginning of the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 (beginning January 

2017), to be submitted by May 2017. Agencies are using the schema version 1.0 to plan what 

changes are needed to systems and business processes to be able to capture the required 

data. 

 

22To address this concern, in our January 2016 report, we recommended that OMB and Treasury take steps to align 

the release of finalized technical guidance, including the DATA Act Schema and Broker, to the implementation time 

frames specified in the DATA Act Implementation Playbook. Treasury officials generally concurred with our 

recommendation and noted that they recognize the importance of providing agencies with timely technical guidance 

and reporting submission specifications. 

23See Treasury Office of Inspector General, Treasury’s Government-wide DATA Act Implementation Continues, But 

Project Management Concerns Remain, OIG-16-047, (Washington, D.C.: June 22, 2016). 
Page 9 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

All three agencies we reviewed are relying on a series of software patches from their ERP 

vendors to facilitate their data submissions. ERP vendors are developing patches that will allow 

their clients to report in compliance with DATA Act requirements. According to vendors, these 

patches will help link an agency’s financial and award systems, create additional fields in 

existing systems to report new data elements, and extract data files formatted for submission to 

Treasury. Patches which will facilitate the generation of agency file submissions are planned to 

be completed between August 2016 and the end of February 2017. Vendors and agency 

officials also told us that some agencies may need to configure these patches to conform to 

their own business processes. The extent of the additional work that agencies will need to do to 

test and customize patches for their systems is unknown. Treasury officials said that not all 

agencies are relying on patches to facilitate their data submissions, but they could not confirm 

the number of agencies that will need them. They also noted that, beginning in the fall of 2015, 

they regularly engaged with federal ERP vendors to help align their products with the Treasury 

schema. 

 HHS officials and technical staff at Oracle, the vendor providing ERP support for the 

agency, told us that they could not begin developing the patches until the version 1.0 of 

the schema was issued.24 Once they received the schema version 1.0, Oracle 

determined that they needed to develop two patches, which are scheduled to be 

provided to agencies in five releases. The first patch should enable HHS’s financial 

systems to capture award identifiers and attributes from the agency’s procurement and 

financial assistance systems. The final release of this patch should be completed by 

September 2016. The second patch is intended to configure the agency’s financial 

systems to capture program activity and import agency budget and financial data into the 

three files that agencies are required to submit to the DATA Act Broker (as shown in 

figure 1). The final release of this patch is expected to be available in January 2017. 

Oracle technical staff we spoke with told us they expect that their clients will use both 

patches to report their data to Treasury in compliance with the DATA Act. Given these 

challenges, HHS officials expressed concerns about not being able to fully meet their 

reporting requirements by May 2017. 

 CNCS officials told us that they were unable to identify the steps needed to begin 

reporting their data until the schema version 1.0 was released. Once released, CGI 

began developing a software patch that could be used by CNCS to prepare reports that 

can be uploaded to the broker. CGI started implementation of the required patch on May 

26, 2016, and expects to complete the patch this summer. CNCS officials told us that 

they expect to be able to meet their DATA Act reporting requirements in May 2017. 

 USDA officials told us that it was difficult to identify what changes would need to be 

made to comply with the technical guidance while the guidance was still in flux. Once the 

schema version 1.0 was finalized, USDA identified that a key requirement for them was 

to create a Federal Award Identification Number (FAIN) field in order to integrate their 

financial and award management systems. Since SAP is the ERP vendor for both 

USDA’s grant award and financial systems, these officials said integration of the two 

systems should be easier. However, different bureaus within USDA have customized the 

 

24Oracle clients include the Departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland 

Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, Transportation, the Office of Personnel 

Management, the Small Business Administration, and the Social Security Administration, among others. 
Page 10 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

SAP software in different ways. USDA officials said that this can make it difficult to know 

exactly where certain data fields reside within a bureau’s customized system, which 

complicates the process of inserting the new FAIN field in a standardized way. Despite 

these challenges, USDA officials still expect to be able to meet their DATA Act reporting 

requirements in May 2017. 

We are continuing to monitor what effect, if any, the delays in the issuance of finalized technical 

guidance will have on the timely and effective implementation of the DATA Act. 

Agency Comments 

We provided a draft of this report to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget; the 

Secretaries of the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury; 

and the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service. OMB, 

Treasury, HHS, and CNCS provided technical comments which we incorporated as appropriate. 

USDA reviewed the report and did not have any comments. 

- - - - - 

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees; the Director 

of the Office of Management and Budget; the Secretaries of Agriculture, Health and Human 

Services, and the Treasury; the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and 

Community Service; and other interested parties. In addition, the report will be available at no 

charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov. 

If you or your staff have questions concerning this report, please contact me at (202) 512-6806 

or sagerm@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 

Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to 

this report include J. Christopher Mihm (Managing Director), Peter Del Toro (Assistant Director), 

Kathleen Drennan, Shirley Hwang, Aaron Colsher, Katherine Morris, and Sophia Tan. Other key 

contributors include Paula Rascona, Michael LaForge, Mark Canter, James Sweetman, Jr., 

Andrew J. Stephens, Carl Ramirez, Jenny Chanley, and Donna Miller. Additional members of 

GAO’s DATA Act Internal Working Group also contributed to the development of this report. 

Michelle A. Sager 

Director, Strategic Issues 

Enclosure 

 
Page 11 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

List of Addressees 

The Honorable Ron Johnson 

Chairman 

The Honorable Thomas R. Carper 

Ranking Member 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

United States Senate 

The Honorable Jason Chaffetz 

Chairman 

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings 

Ranking Member 

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Mark Meadows 

Chairman 

The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly 

Ranking Member 

Subcommittee on Government Operations 

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Will Hurd 

Chairman 

The Honorable Robin Kelly 

Ranking Member 

Subcommittee on Information 

Technology Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Mark R. Warner 

United States Senate 

 
Page 12 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

Enclosure: Description of Files to Be Included in the DATA Act Broker 

File Name Data Source Level/Type of Information Examples of DATA Act 

Elements Reported 

A: Appropriation Account 

Information 

Agencies submit files from 

their financial management 

systems to the broker 

Appropriation summary level 

data that are aligned to the 

SF133 reportinga

Budget authority appropriated, 

unobligated balances, other 

budgetary resources 

B: Object Class and Program 

Activity 

Agencies submit files from 

their financial management 

systems to the broker 

Obligation and outlay 

information at the program 

activity and object class level 

Obligated amount by object 

class and program activity, 

outlays 

C: Award Financial Agencies submit files from 

their financial management 

systems to the broker 

Obligations at the award and 

object class level 

Award linkages, transaction 

obligated amount, treasury 

account symbol, object class 

D1: Awards and Awardee 

Attributes (procurement) 

Broker extracts data from the 

Federal Procurement Data 

System-Next Generation 

(FPDS-NG) 

Procurement award and 

awardee details that are linked 

to File C 

Awardee unique identifier, 

award characteristics, awardee 

legal identify name and 

address for procurement 

awards 

D2: Awards and Awardee 

Attributes (financial assistance 

awards such as grants and 

loans) 

Broker extracts data from the 

Award System Portal (ASP) 

Financial assistance award and 

awardee details that are linked 

to File C 

Awardee unique identifier, 

award characteristics, awardee 

legal identify name and 

address for financial assistance 

awards 

E: Additional Awardee 

Attributes 

Broker extracts data from the 

System for Award 

Management (SAM) 

Additional prime awardee 

attribute 

Awardee top 5 highly 

compensated officers 

F: Sub-award Attributes Broker extracts data from the 

FFATA Subrecipient Reporting 

System (FSRS) 

Sub-award information Sub-award level number and 

amount 

Source: GAO analysis of Department of Treasury documents. | GAO-16-824R 

a

The SF-133 Report on Budget Execution and Budgetary Resources allows the monitoring of the status of funds 

consistently across programs within each agency, and across agencies on at least a quarterly basis. 

(100966) 

 
Page 13 GAO-16-824R DATA Act Technical Implementation Update 

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