Governmentwide Spending Data Model (GSDM)

Formerly, DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS) 

Overview

Version 1.0

U.S. Department of the Treasury

Bureau of the Fiscal Service

11/16/2023
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................1

2. Scope ......................................................................................................................................2

3. Value of the GSDM.................................................................................................................3

4. Consensus-based Approach .....................................................................................................4

5. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................4
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1. Introduction 

As the world creates vast amounts of data and relies upon it to perform vital business and societal 

functions, standardizing data structures has become more important than ever. Data standards 

promote the consistent recording of information and are fundamental to the efficient exchange of 

information. They establish the meaning of data, and provide the rules for structuring information, 

so that the data can be reliably read, sorted, indexed, retrieved, communicated between systems, 

and shared. 1 Research has shown a strong correlation between the use of international data

standards and economically strong industries2

. Because of the value data standards have provided 

the private sector in delivering digital services, the federal government has shifted towards 

becoming a data-centric organization, embracing the strategic and tactical value of the primacy of 

data, and emphasizing the importance of using international industry standards where appropriate3. 

The federal government is an integral consumer and provider of data and treats data and 

information as a strategic asset. This was exemplified with the passage of a seminal piece of 

legislation called the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act)4. The 

DATA Act formalized the establishment of government-wide data standards for spending data and 

their subsequent publication for transparency. The DATA Act aligns the federal government with 

the recognized and valued results of leading organizations and industries who are data centric. The 

DATA Act and mature organizational data management processes enable the strategic use of 

federal data assets to drive decision-making. 

A core requirement of the DATA Act was the development of government-wide data standards for 

the reporting of reliable and consistent federal spending data for public use. The Office of 

Management and Budget (OMB) and Department of the Treasury (Treasury) collected public input 

and feedback from federal agencies and implemented an agile development methodology to create 

the DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS). The finalized DAIMS first published in 

April 2016. Since then, Treasury has periodically published updates to reflect the inclusion of 

legislation and policies that go beyond the DATA Act. In November 2023, DAIMS was rebranded 

as the Governmentwide Spending Data Model (GSDM) to reflect the inclusion of new legislation 

and policies. GSDM is the authoritative source for the terms, definitions, formats, and structures 

for hundreds of distinct data elements, which tell the story of how federal dollars are spent. It 

includes artifacts that provide technical guidance for federal agencies about what data to report to 

Treasury including the authoritative sources of the data elements and the submission format. The 

GSDM documents also provide data consumers with information and context to better understand 

the inherent complexity of the data.

1 Data Standards FAQs, http://vraweb.org/resources/cataloging-metadata-and-data-management/data-standards-faqs 2 “Today’s State of the Art Global Solutions for CEO’s”, ISO International Standards Report, http://www.iso.org/iso/ceo_brochure.pdf 3 “Open Data Policy – Managing Information as an Asset”, https://project-open-data.cio.gov/policy-memo/ 4 DATA Act, Public Law 113-101, https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ101/PLAW-113publ101.pdf 
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As previously noted, the goal of GSDM is to support the transparency of how federal dollars are 

spent. While GSDM is federally oriented, further refinement and evolution of the standard will 

promote broader use within individual federal agencies for internal reporting, and within the state 

and local governments where terminology and data element structures may differ. GSDM will 

continue evolution to support additional use cases to round-out financial reporting, such as grants 

management and performance reporting.

2. Scope 

The GSDM standard is the authoritative data standard for reporting across multiple mission 

support domains (Figure 1). GSDM is data centric and defines data elements and their relationships 

independent of the data source or system. This standard should be reused for other government 

wide reporting initiatives involving financial, procurement, grant, or other financial assistance 

data. GSDM can be extended and reused as the core standard for other communities of interest 

such as state and local government spending reporting, and the World Bank macro, financial and 

sector reporting.

Figure 1. GSDM Conceptual Model
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This standard:

• Covers five components: Account Balance, Award Financial, Award Details - Procurement, 

Award Details - Grant & Other Financial Assistance, Awardee/Recipient. The future 

components include Receipts & Financing, and Performance.

• Includes data elements that are core to the domains and necessary for sufficient standardization 

of federal spending data.

• Does not include data elements that are adjacent to the GSDM domains. For example, the 

region and population information from the Census Bureau are adjacent to federal spending 

and are not included in GSDM.

3. Value of the GSDM

The development and implementation of data standards offer solutions to some of the pervasive 

issues within information management. These include but are not limited to:

• A lack of strategic direction for the overall technology environment

• The establishment of siloed data systems with minimal or no integration

• Data quality issues, including a lack of consistency, duplication, and out-of-date information.

• The lack of enterprise-wide definitions for information types and values (no common 

taxonomy)

The GSDM ecosystem establishes a common framework for curating, hosting, and publishing 

financial data as well as enhancing transparency. Furthermore, this framework can be extended to 

include future data sources for integration with financial data.

This framework includes a standard vocabulary to build additional value-added services, tools, or 

programs. Common vocabulary supports information sharing and provides documentation to 

support development, discovery, dissemination, and reuse of financial data. This vocabulary can 

be extended and reused as the core standard for other functional domain such as state and local 

spending data transparency and World Bank macro, financial and sector reporting.

GSDM provides decision makers with context on data sources and relationships. To enhance the 

quality of governmental decision-making by enabling accurate, timely, complete, and relevant 

information to decision makers across the broad spectrum of financial data.

GSDM reduces risk in development efforts for users by having common data standards, processes, 

and methodologies published in common framework. The data standard improves organizational 

performance by breaking down stovepipes enabling enterprise‐wide information sharing based on 

a consistent financial model.
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The data standard integrates various government data repositories and sources into a single data 

store for advanced data analytics and data mining. It enables effective sharing of spending 

information – improving communication improves decision-making. It reduces the amount of 

manual intervention in information processing and facilitating straight-through processing, which 

increases productivity and can reduce costs. When the GSDM benefits are integrated with a 

forward-thinking information management strategy, the net effect yields unparalleled advantages.

Furthermore, GSDM provides the metadata for:

• Resource discovery – Allowing resources to be found by relevant criteria by bringing similar 

resources together, distinguishing dissimilar resources, and providing location information.

• Interoperability - Being understood by machines and humans to enable the exchange of data 

with minimal loss of content and functionality; cross-repository searching.

• Digital identification – Providing persistent identifiers.

• Archiving and preservation - Tracking the lineage of a data object from its origin, through how 

it has been modified; detailing physical characteristics; documenting its behavior for future 

emulation.

4. Consensus-based Approach 

Standardization begins with defining the structure and semantics of the model. Model views are 

defined for data that agencies must report, data pulled from interfaced systems, and data accessed

by query and download to the users. The GSDM also includes technical standards such as the data 

submission specification.

The GSDM data standard is developed through working groups with the different business lines.

The Treasury GSDM schema team manages change requests from different sources, including the

Data Transparency Program Management Office (PMO), the USAspending.gov website team, 

agencies, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the public. The consensus building 

process includes working group meetings, feedback periods, and regular meetings with agency 

representatives. All changes to normative documents are reviewed to ensure changes meet the data 

standardization and compliance requirements. 

5. Conclusion

The GSDM is an important data standard that ensures the reporting of reliable, consistent federal 

spending data for public use. GSDM will be further refined to promote broader use within 

individual federal agencies for internal reporting, and within the state and local governments where 

terminology and data element structures may differ. GSDM will also evolve to support additional 

use cases to round-out financial reporting, such as grants management and performance reporting.

To realize its value, GSDM should be leveraged by future data standardization efforts in the 

covered domain and referenced by other data standards as applicable.