Proposed database would track federal spending

A Senate measure debated in committee on Tuesday would boost the transparency and accessibility of federal contract and grant spending, but political and logistical challenges could hinder its approval.

Supporters of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) testified that the bill presents a bilateral approach to trimming federal spending by enhancing public scrutiny of expenditures. The measure would require the Office of Management and Budget to oversee creation of a free, searchable, Web-accessible database with detailed information on grants and contracts awarded by the federal government.

The database would have to include entries for funding amount, location of performance, originating program and agency, and an entity's 10-year history of federal funding, and would have to be user-friendly to both experienced and casual visitors. Data would be added within 30 days of award, and exclusions would ensure the privacy of payments made to individuals, as well as those with national security sensitivities.

Co-sponsoring Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., testified on behalf of the bill. "It shouldn't matter if you think government ought to spend more money or less money -- we can all agree that government ought to spend money efficiently," Obama said.

He called the measure a no-brainer, adding, "If government money can't withstand public scrutiny, then it shouldn't be spent."

Currently, "you just can't get this information," said Gary Bass, director of the Washington watchdog group OMB Watch, in testimony strongly supporting the measure. Bass said his group has been working on a database that will be publicly launched in October and will cobble together information currently available from the Federal Assistance Award Data System, a downloadable data file on federal grant activity published by the Census Bureau, and the Federal Procurement Data System, the General Services Administration's repository of contract information.

In written testimony, Bass described the limitations of each system, including timeliness, level of detail, unexplained data gaps, data quality and accessibility. Describing challenges to integrating the data sets, Bass lauded the proposal's requirement that a new system do more than link to existing resources.

Aside from the technical challenges, though, there are political and logistical roadblocks to creating a single repository for spending information.

Last month, the House passed a similar measure (H.R. 5060). But the system created by the House-passed bill would include only grants, not contracts. In testimony Tuesday, Bass said, "We fear that such efforts have less concern about fiscal accountability than about renewing a 25-year history of attacks on nonprofit grantees." He said the decision not to include contracts in the system reflected the priorities of co-sponsor Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. -- whose district is among the top in federal contracts and near the bottom in grants -- more than the need for public scrutiny.

Bass also highlighted logistical challenges in how the bill would address subcontracts and subrecipients of grants.

As written, the bill would require tracking federal dollars to their final recipient. Bass indicated that subcontract dollars could be followed relatively easily, and agencies already track some subcontracts to show compliance with small business procurement requirements.

But subgrant tracking could be very complex, he said. Organizations that receive a combination of federal, state and local funds might not separate those out, making it difficult to identify the source of subsequent grants or contracts.

Additionally, states receive Community Development Block Grants that allow states and localities considerable discretion in allocating funds and are free from most federal spending rules. Increasing the federal oversight of how those grants are spent would significantly change the nature of the program, Bass said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., the bill's sponsor, discussed provisions that could ease the inclusion of subaward data in the bill. He suggested that subrecipient reporting be deferred to 2009, and a study and pilot program, which would be launched immediately, identify methods for data collection and reporting.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, expressed her commitment to moving the bill out of committee as soon as possible.