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Home > Window on Washington > Archives > 2006 > October > 10 > Entry
A Grant, Six Months and A Ton of Work
OMB Watch, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group, spent six months and just under $200,000 to create a massive database of most types of federal spending.
The group publicly launched its federal spending database Tuesday (www.FedSpending.org) more than a year before the federal government plans to launch its own database of federal spending, which is estimated to cost millions of dollars.
The time and cost difference between the two databases prompts the question of why the government’s version will cost so much more.
Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, said that the government database will be more extensive in that it will include all types of government spending.
The FedSpending.org database includes data from the Federal Assistance Awards Data System, which covers financial assistance but only for domestic spending and not all agencies report to the system. And the data comes from the Federal Procurement Data System, which covers contracts but only for those agencies required to report contracts under the federal acquisition regulations. This excludes Congress and some agencies.
Bass said he hopes that the new database will serve as a prototype for the government run database.
The funding for the database came from the Sunlight Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to teaching the public about Congress through new technologies.
The FedSpending.org database includes data from the Federal Assistance Awards Data System, which covers financial assistance but only for domestic spending and not all agencies report to the system. And the data comes from the Federal Procurement Data System, which covers contracts but only for those agencies required to report contracts under the federal acquisition regulations. This excludes Congress and some agencies.
Bass said he hopes that the new database will serve as a prototype for the government run database.
The funding for the database came from the Sunlight Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to teaching the public about Congress through new technologies.
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