USAspending.gov

USAspending.gov is the official public database of spending by the United States federal government, launched on December 13, 2007 and operated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury^[1][2]. It provides searchable, downloadable records of federal awards—contracts, grants, and other assistance—together with account-level federal financial data.

The platform exists because the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) delegated responsibility for creating a public spending website to the Office of Management and Budget, and the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) later standardized and expanded the data agencies must report^[2]. A companion REST API gives programmatic access to the same comprehensive spending data.

What It Does

USAspending.gov lets users track who received federal contracts or grants, with geographic breakdowns, agency breakdowns, and much more, alongside account-level information such as federal employee compensation^[1]. The site serves as the central transparency window into federal award and account spending for Congress, watchdog groups, journalists, researchers, and the public^[2].

Data And Methodology

The DATA Act of 2014 established common standards for the financial data provided by all government agencies and expanded the amount of data each agency must submit to USAspending.gov^[2]. The U.S. Department of the Treasury builds a suite of open-source tools to help federal agencies comply with the DATA Act and to deliver the resulting standardized federal spending information back to agencies and to the public^[1].

Products And Delivery

Access channels include an interactive website for searching awards and profiles, downloadable datasets, and the USASpending API (currently version 2), which exposes endpoints for awards and account data plus introductory tutorials and documentation; both the site codebase and API are developed in the open on GitHub^[1].

History

Around the time FFATA passed in 2006, the watchdog group OMB Watch was developing a site that did essentially everything the legislation required; after negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget, the government site was based on OMB Watch's technology—for which the group was paid 600,000 dollars—and launched on December 13, 2007, initially offering the same data and API as OMB Watch's fedspending.org^[2]. Funding came from the Electronic Government Fund, which was reduced in the 2011 federal budget before a modest 2012 increase^[2]. On May 9, 2017, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced a substantially upgraded site with a much broader view of government spending, built with contributions from the federal digital services team 18F^[2].

Buyers And Use Cases

Because award records include recipient names and locations, hedge funds and corporate-intelligence teams use USAspending as free ground truth on which companies win federal contracts—often cross-referenced against SEC EDGAR filings—and the Congressional Research Service publishes guidance on tracking federal awards through the site^[2]. Government contractors also mine historical award patterns to position bids.