Governmentwide Spending Data Model (GSDM)

Formerly, DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS) 

Architecture

Version 1.0.1

U.S. Department of the Treasury

Bureau of the Fiscal Service

04/11/2024
i

Table of Contents

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

2. Conceptual Information Model................................................................................................2

3. Metadata .................................................................................................................................4

4. Specifications..........................................................................................................................6

5. Conformance...........................................................................................................................7

6. Schema Versioning .................................................................................................................7

7. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................8

Appendix H: Revision History ....................................................................................................9
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1. Introduction 

The Governmentwide Spending Data Model (GSDM) standardizes federal spending data 

terminology, meaning, and format to drive transparent, consistent, reliable, and accurate data for

public consumption. The adoption of the GSDM recognizes spending data as a federal asset. It 

also requires the creation or refinement of agency data management policies and procedures for 

effective spending data governance and stewardship. The Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB) and Department of the Treasury (Treasury) provide prescriptive and descriptive guidance, 

instruction, and technical support for the DATA Act Information Model Schema (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 GSDM to reflect the inclusion of new legislation and policies. The GSDM

contains the documents, schema, and other artifacts that express the data standards so that content 

consumers and content providers know what the data elements mean, how the data elements will 

be used, and why the data elements are included in the GSDM. 

The GSDM incorporates feedback from the federal communities and external stakeholders. The 

consensus building process includes working group meetings, feedback periods, and meetings with 

agency representatives. As the data standard GSDM is in alignment with the ISO Directive 2 

definition for a data standard, “document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized 

body, that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities 

or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context.”1 As 

a U.S. federal government standard that is in alignment with industry data standardization best 

practices, the GSDM delivers:

• Standardized data elements that are complete and reflect DATA Act requirements, and 

continuing legislation and policies.

• Data elements and structures that are documented consistently, clearly, and accurately. 

• Extensibility to support future communities of interest, financially oriented domains, and 

emerging technologies. 

• Business comprehension of data element content. 

GSDM leverages and aligns with the following federal guidance and architectures: 

• U.S. Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA)2 – a U.S. Office of Management and Budget

(OMB), Office of E-Government and IT initiative that provides an approach for integrating the 

1 ISO Directives Part 2, https://www.iso.org/directives-and-policies.html 2 The Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture, 

http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/egov_docs/common_approach_to_federal_ea.pdf 
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strategic, business and technology management as part of organizational design and 

performance improvement. 

• OMB Circular No. A-119 Revised, Federal Participation in the Development and Use of 

Voluntary Consensus Standards in Conformity Assessment Activities3

 – establishes policies 

to improve the internal management of the Executive Branch with respect to the U.S. 

Government’s role in the development and use of standards and conformity assessment. 

• OMB Memorandum M-13-13, Open Data Policy Managing Information as an Asset4 – a 

framework for managing information at each stage of its lifecycle to promote interoperability 

and openness. 

The U.S. Department of the Treasury established guiding principles to produce holistic and 

integrated GSDM. The guiding principles provide the foundation for the decisions made to craft, 

assemble, and deliver GSDM artifacts. As is the case with industry standards’ specifications, the 

guiding principles don’t constrain the development of a data standard. Instead, they help to explain 

the motivation, judgement, and factors considered in delivering the data standard. The GSDM

guiding principles include: 

• Accuracy – Provide consistent naming and precise definition and format. 

• Adaptability – Enable flexibility to accommodate ad hoc federal spending requirements and

unanticipated future requirements. 

• Completeness – Be comprehensive and consistent; the standard could include all data elements 

necessary to meet federal spending reporting requirements. 

• Ease of Use - Design for usability and understandability. 

2. Conceptual Information Model 

A conceptual information model describes information representing an enterprise or a system. 

Applied to the GSDM, the conceptual information model is a high-level diagram and supporting 

descriptive information used to represent and communicate the GSDM architecture to business 

users. This section maps the multi-level view of the GSDM architecture which includes 

Domains, Components, Elements and Metadata. The relationship between the different levels 

and the model are visualized in Figure 1. 

Level 1: Domain Level

Currently, GSDM is scoped to support financial and spending transparency for the U.S. federal 

government; the content describes the 360-degree lifecycle of federal spending. GSDM’s

adaptability can, dependent upon business requirements, support the reporting of spending data for 

communities of interest such as state and local governments. GSDM has the potential to support: 

3 https://www.nist.gov/system/files/revised_circular_a-119_as_of_01-22-2016.pdf 4 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf 
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• State and Local Spending: Data elements and relationships that are unique to state and local

jurisdictions or shared with federal spending.

Figure 1. GSDM Conceptual Information Model

• International Spending: Data elements and relationships that are unique to cross-boundary

international spending, e.g., U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), The 

World Bank, and financial sector data standards.

Level 2: Component Level

Within the federal spending domain, the GSDM components contain a set of related data elements 

that represent a business function or an entity with a well-defined boundary. Components may 

share data elements and, dependent upon business requirements, may also be used across different 

state, local, or international domains. The GSDM components are:

• Account Balance: Includes federal budgetary balances (obligations, outlays, and payments) 

with accounts, object class, program activity, and U.S. Standard General Ledger (USSGL)
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• Award Financial: Includes federal award level transactions with accounts, object class, 

program activity, and award identification.

• Award Details - Grants & Other Financial Assistance: Contains the award and awardee 

attributes for financial assistance, including federal sub-award attributes and linkage to 

prime awards.

• Award Details - Procurement: Contains the federal award and awardee attributes for 

procurements, including federal sub-award attributes and linkage to prime awards.

• Awardee/Recipient: Contains awardee and recipient details.

Potential future GSDM content includes:

• Receipts & Financing: Describes federal receipt and financing balances with accounts and 

sources.

• Performance: Describes performance measures and outcomes linked to federal grants, 

awards or other financial assistance.

Level 3: Element Level

A data element is the description of an atomic unit of data that has precise meaning and semantics. 

GSDM defines data elements and their relationships, organized by domains and components.

Level 4: Metadata Level

Metadata is the data providing information about one or more aspects of the data or an individual 

data element. GSDM metadata leverages ISO/IEC 11179 standard for the GSDM metadata 

registry, data element naming and data element definitions. The metadata model defines concepts 

of the data elements and provides the domain value enumerations and validation rules. 

3. Metadata

Metadata’s simplistic definition is data about the data. When applied to GSDM, metadata 

represents a federal spending data element’s name, definition, type, size, and allowable values. 

Metadata provides the foundation for building consensus and establishing shared meaning. For 

example, it ensures that data elements representing a procurement award from one federal agency 

is easily understood, equivalent in meaning, and comparable to a procurement award from another 

federal agency.

The GSDM metadata registry is an information system for the registration of metadata that defines 

and describes federal spending data elements. The metadata registry and its registered data aligns 

to the ISO/IEC 11179 Information Technology – Metadata Registries (MDR) standard. ISO/IEC 

11179 provides guidance for standardizing data element names and descriptions to achieve 
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common understanding of the data across organizations and organizational boundaries. It also 

supports the ability to harmonize data elements with equivalent meaning and representation, and 

promotes data and data component re-use over time, space, systems, and applications. ISO/IEC 

11179 includes:

Standard Description GSDM Applicability

ISO/IEC 11179-35 Part 3: Registry metamodel and basic 

attributes - describes the attributes of data 

elements and associated metadata to be 

specified and registered as metadata items in a 

metadata registry (MDR)

GSDM Metadata 

Registry

ISO/IEC 11179-46 Part 4: Formulation of data definitions -

specifies the requirements and 

recommendations to formulate data 

definitions that registered in a metadata 

registry

GSDM Metadata 

Registry

ISO/IEC 11179-57 Part 5: Naming principles - describe and 

specify common features of naming 

conventions 

GSDM Metadata 

Registry

The additional metadata attributes captured by the registry includes:

• Domain: Identifies the domain / business line where the element applies. 

• Data Element Label: A unique label for each element. 

• Data Type: String, date, or number. 

• Max Element Length: Indicates the maximum length of the data element value. 

• Documentation: Contains the business definition of the data element. 

• Element Use: Indicates whether a data element is an extracted value, required, optional, or 

conditionally required per the validation rules. 

• Element Number: A unique identifier for each element. 

• Enumerations/Domain Value: Provides information on potential input values for each data 

element. 

• Example Value: Demonstrates an acceptable data entry value. 

• Submission Instructions: Additional information for reporting the element. 

• Validation Rule: Includes validation applied to the relevant element when data is submitted. 

5 https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c078915_ISO_IEC%2011179-3_2023(en).zip 6 http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c035346_ISO_IEC_11179-4_2004(E).zip

7 http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c060341_ISO_IEC_11179-5_2015.zip 

 

 
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4. Specifications

Normative artifacts define the prescriptive requirements that are necessary to conform to the 

GSDM. Informative artifacts assist in providing an understanding of the GSDM and how it is 

leveraged to meet the intent of the DATA Act, continuing legislation, and new policies.

Informative artifacts do not outline conformance requirements. 

The GSDM normative artifacts within are maintained by internal change control procedures and 

follow a standard change management processfor all changes. Informative GSDM documents may 

undergo change as the GSDM normative artifacts evolve, but they do not necessarily follow a 

standard change management process. Normative artifacts within the GSDM architecture include:

1. Schema Specifications

a. Reporting Submission Specifications (RSS): includes a listing of the data elements with 

specific instructions for federal agencies to submit content in the appropriate format. It is 

a human-readable version of the data standard for agency submitted content. 

b. Interface Definition Documents (IDD): contains a listing of the elements, with supporting 

metadata to understand data pulled from government-wide systems for procurement and 

from agency financial assistance systems. It’s a human-readable version of the data 

standard for content extracted from external data sources. 

2. Validation Rules: verify data elements based on their values, metadata, and related elements. 

There are severity levels associated with the validation rules, such as error and warning. An 

error invalidates the data record based on the schema. A warning indicates a potential data 

quality issue, even though the record is valid based on the schema. 

3. Practices and Procedures: Details how agencies should submit and validate submissions to the 

Broker. 

Informative artifacts within the GSDM architecture are meant for informational purposes and 

include diagrams and sample files. The GDMS informative artifacts include:

1. Online Data Dictionary8

: The USAspending.gov online data dictionary with a full list of data 

elements with a definition for each element and some associated metadata.

2. Consumption-Focused Metadata (CFM) 9 : An Excel file with a list of data elements, 

definitions, and supporting metadata showing how submission and outlay data is compiled.

3. Consumption Focused File Diagram10: A PDF file diagram showing the data model for data 

sources of the USAspending.gov website.

8 https://www.usaspending.gov/data-dictionary

9 https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/data-transparency/gsdm-cfm-v1.0.xlsx 10 https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/data-transparency/gsdm-cfm-v1.0-diagram.pdf
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4. GSDM Information Flow11 : A technical flowchart showing how data comes into, flows 

through, and is reported out, including how often that happens and where the data come from.

5. Guide to America’s Finances12: An overview of U.S. government finances where the public 

will find information on money coming in (revenue), money going out (spending), the deficit, 

and debt. The guide presents a series of pages exploring topic through educational content 

and interactive visualizations, providing a comprehensive overview of the trillions of dollars 

collected and spent by the federal government each year.

6. Federal Spending Guide 13: Questions and answers about federal spending concepts.

7. Data Sources 13: Interactive explainer for the data sources in USAspending.gov. 

8. Training Videos 13: Tutorials for how to use the data and features on USAspending.gov. 

9. About the Data 13 : Provides public with information about the data displayed on 

USAspending.gov with sitewide data disclosures and descriptions.

10. USAspending API 13: API endpoints and how they power the data on USAspending.gov

11. Dataset Metadata 14: Information about all datasets available for download, such as file format 

and publishing agency. 

12. Glossary 13: Definition of commonly used terms on USAspending.gov

5. Conformance

GSDM conformance validation is handled external to the GSDM. GSDM data validation is 

handled through an open-source application called the Data Broker available in a public repository 

(https://github.com/fedspendingtransparency/). 

6. Schema Versioning 

The GSDM data standard will continue to evolve to support spending data reporting requirements, 

USAspending.gov website needs, and additional domains and components. Schema versioning is 

important to manage change, gain consensus, and support the systems using the current standard. 

GSDM publications include annual releases and maintenance updates. 

Annual Release – An annual release takes place on a standard annual cycle and is released in 

November. An annual release is expected to have significant impact on agencies. Annual releases 

will follow a 1.x, 2.x, etc. naming convention. 

Maintenance Update – After finalization of an annual release there is an expected period of

discovery where the exercise of a standard in practice uncovers issues with the documentation. As 

such, guidance and policy direction may change after an annual release. A narrowly focused 

maintenance update may be required to address the identified issues.

Release and Implementation Schedule – Treasury plans to issue an annual release in November 

of each year. Maintenance updates are not locked to a specific release schedule. Maintenance 

updates may be need for off-cycle updates for policy changes, bug fixes, and alignment with other 

11 https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/data-transparency/gsdm-information-flow-diagram-v1.0.pdf 12 https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/ 13 https://www.usaspending.gov/ under “Find Resources” tab 14 https://www.usaspending.gov/ under “Download the Data” tab
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authoritative systems (FPDS, SAM, GTAS, etc.).

Annual releases are intended for implementation at the start of the Fiscal Year. This timing is done

so that all agency such that broker submissions for one fiscal year will be subject to the same annual 

GSDM release. The implementation date may shift to align with policy requirements and other 

dependencies, such as FPDS, SAM, GTAS, etc.

7. Conclusion

The GSDM architecture is designed to meet the needs of business users and technical systems. It 

serves as the foundation for the GSDM data standard. It is extensible through domain, component, 

element, and metadata. The architecture defines the GSDM specifications as normative documents 

and how the schema will be versioned. Additional descriptive content on the GSDM architecture 

will be released as necessary.
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Appendix H: Revision History

Version Date 

Modified Key Updates

DAIMS 1.1 6/27/2017 Initial release 

DAIMS 1.3 10/2/2018 Updated Figure 1 “DAIMS Conceptual Information Model” with 

minor format changes

DAIMS 1.4 9/27/2019 Updated based on agency feedback. Specific changes include:

Modifications: 

1) Section 6: Updated DAIMS release cadence. 

2) Section 6: Clarified maintenance release content. 

DAIMS 2.2 06/03/2022 Removed all XBRL References

GSDM 1.0 11/16/2023 Rebranded DAIMS as GSDM.

Updated GSDM versioning and publication in schema versioning 

section.

GSDM 1.0.1 04/11/2024 Updated to include or link to data related GSDM artifacts from the 

USAspending website. Updated link to ISO IEC 11179-3 standard.