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DATA Act: so far, so meh

November 30, 2017 By Andrew Smith

If laws produced virtue, we’d all have halos.  In reality laws sometimes produce next to nothing, at least initially.

Case in point: the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act. That well-intentioned piece of legislation was supposed to bring transparency by having agencies adopt uniform standards for tagging spending data. But as implemented, it’s not working out that way.

Those pesky Government Accountability Office auditors checked out the data posted at USAspending.gov. Under the law, GAO is supposed to check things periodically. When it comes to budget data, agencies get about a “C.” GAO is 95 percent confident that three-quarters of the website data matches agency records. But on contracts and grants spending, forget about it. GAO found that between 0 and 1 percent of posted data matches agency records.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2017/11/data-act-so-far-so-meh/

       

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: DATA Act, Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, GAO, OMB, transactional data, transparency, USASpending.gov

‘Big challenge’ ahead for procurement, grants reporting under DATA Act

August 30, 2017 By Andrew Smith

It took federal agencies’ four years to go from introduction to implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, so what will it take to get 2,300 grant-making programs and 3,200 procurement offices to do the same?

The Office of Management and Budget recommends three steps to help expedite the process: continue to standardize data, use auto-populating technology, and use IT open standards for developing any new tools needed along the way.

The recommendations are part of OMB’s recent report on the DATA Act’s two-part Section 5 pilot, which covers federal grants and federal contracts. The grants pilot ended, but the procurement side will continue through February.

“The procurement pilot demonstrates that burden is reduced and efficiencies are achieved when data already provided to the federal government is re-used,” OMB said. “The procurement pilot results also demonstrate that reporting can be streamlined when technology standards are open. The grants test pilots demonstrate that the following conditions can reduce recipients’ burden: (I) required reporting data elements are defined in a central open repository, (2) reported data is collected centrally, (3) data can be re-used and auto populated across government, and (4) available resources explain requirements and business processes where needed.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/open-datatransparency/2017/08/a-big-challenge-ahead-for-procurement-grants-reporting-under-data-act/

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: DATA Act, Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, HHS, OFPP, OMB, reporting, reporting requirements

GSA’s new contract with Dun & Bradstreet draws mixed reaction

October 13, 2016 By Andrew Smith

GSA logoLast week’s announcement that the General Services Administration had updated its Dun & Bradstreet contract will allow agency acquisition personnel and contractors wider latitude to use the standardized company information for purposes beyond mere identification.

But some transparency advocates consider the step insufficient.

In a Sept. 29 blog post, Kevin Youel Page, deputy commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, announced changes in the proprietary system for business identifiers in its Integrated Award Environment tracking system that are a “huge step forward in the goal to make data more accessible and readily available across government.”

This new way to record contracts and grants using the Dun & Bradstreet system is in keeping, he said, with GSA’s role in helping agencies implement the open data and standardization requirements of the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act. The D&B data are proprietary, which means they cannot be downloaded by the public unless the company grants the user a license.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/10/gsas-new-contract-dun-bradstreet-draws-mixed-reaction/132205

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: D&B, Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, Dun & Bradstreet, DUNS, FAS, GSA, integrated award environment, proprietary information

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