Congress approves federal spending database bill

The Senate and House on Wednesday evening passed legislation to create a publicly accessible government spending database, adopting language only slightly different from that previously cleared by the Senate and advancing the measure to President Bush for his signature.

The Senate passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S.2590) by unanimous consent, incorporating minor modifications agreed upon with House leaders since the Senate first approved the measure last week.

The House passed the measure shortly after by voice vote. Because the two versions are identical, the legislation does not require conference negotiations and can be forwarded to the president immediately.

The bill would create a free, publicly accessible Web site that allows users to search all federal contracts and grants, and download the results. The search would gather information from existing databases such as the Federal Procurement Data System, Federal Assistance Award Data System and Grants.gov. It would provide access to data on all payments of more than $25,000, with exceptions for classified information and federal assistance payments made to individuals.

Agencies would be required to post information within 30 days of award. The search tool would be required to go live by 2008, and agencies would be required to include subgrants and subcontracts starting in 2009, following the conclusion of a pilot program to work out procedures for subaward reporting.

The measure was modified, at House insistence, to specify that contracts and grants could be searched separately as well as together.

The new search engine is conceived to improve the accessibility of federal spending data, but it would not affect the quality of the data itself.

The quality of that data for contracts is widely agreed to be poor. The Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, the General Services Administration-administered database that houses information on federal contract spending, has problems with the timeliness of data entry and with its accuracy.

Adam Hughes, director of federal fiscal policy for OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, has expressed hope that the increased scrutiny that would come with easier access to the data would lead to improvements as companies, individuals and agencies pressed for the correction of errors.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would cost about $4 million in fiscal 2007 and $5 million in fiscal 2008, with about $2 million needed in subsequent years for maintenance.

The House in June had passed a similar bill (H.R. 5060) that created a searchable Web site but included only grant information, not contracts.