Budget and Spending

Recent Reports

Grants Management: Observations on Challenges with Access, Use, and Oversight

GAO-23-106797

Published: May 02, 2023.

Publicly Released: May 02, 2023.

Federal Spending: Information on U.S. Funding to Entities Located in China

GAO-23-105538

Published: Apr 12, 2023.

Publicly Released: Apr 12, 2023.

Oversight of Agency Spending: Implementing GAO Recommendations Could Help Address Previously Identified Challenges at Commerce, DOE, and EPA

GAO-23-106726

Published: Mar 29, 2023.

Publicly Released: Mar 28, 2023.

Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request: U.S. Government Accountability Office

GAO-23-900493

Published: Mar 23, 2023.

Publicly Released: Mar 23, 2023.

Management Report: Continued Improvements Needed in the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Information System Controls Related to the Schedule of Federal Debt

GAO-23-106392

Published: Mar 16, 2023.

Publicly Released: Mar 16, 2023.

Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request: U.S. Government Accountability Office

GAO-23-900494

Published: Mar 15, 2023.

Publicly Released: Mar 15, 2023.

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Open Recommendations

Tactical Aircraft Investments: DOD Needs Additional Portfolio Analysis to Inform Future Budget Decisions

GAO-23-106375

Dec 20, 2022

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2 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of Defense	The Secretary of Defense should conduct an integrated acquisition portfolio review of all piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft platforms. This review should analyze key elements including, but not limited to, portfolio goals; potential overlap; potential tradeoffs; capability gaps; risk; and cost, schedule, and performance information on each platform within the portfolio. (Recommendation 1)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Defense	The Secretary of Defense should establish a requirement that ensures the congressional defense committees receive information underpinning DOD's integrated acquisition portfolio review of all piloted fixed-wing tactical aircraft platforms. (Recommendation 2)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Credit Reform: Transparency Needed for Evaluation of Potential Federal Involvement in Projects Seeking Loans

GAO-22-105280

Jul 28, 2022

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1 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Office of Management and Budget	The Director of OMB should publish government-wide criteria outlining factors that agencies should consider when evaluating federal involvement in a potential project to help determine whether the project is eligible for the special budgetary treatment under FCRA. (Recommendation 1)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist for Treasury to Further Improve USAspending.gov's Use and Usefulness

GAO-22-104127

Dec 16, 2021

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1 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury should develop and implement website promotion efforts that are clearly targeted toward the USAspending.gov user personas that it has previously identified. (Recommendation 1)	Open – Partially Addressed Treasury officials stated that they have tied their USAspending.gov promotion efforts to specific features and initiatives that they have launched for the website. Treasury has taken some steps such as conducting outreach with collaborative partners to help inform its "Data Dives" feature and producing YouTube tutorials on topics of specific interest. However, as of April 2023, we have not received documentation supporting specific promotion and outreach efforts that clearly target the various USAspending.gov user personas previously identified by Treasury.
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury should add a broad website search function to USAspending.gov to help users find content on the website. (Recommendation 3)	Open Treasury officials told us that they are in the process of laying the foundation for a broad ("global") search function across all USAspending.gov content. However, they expect the design work for a global search function will not begin until FY2024 at the earliest. As of April 2023, this status is unchanged.

Federal Spending Transparency: Opportunities Exist to Further Improve the Information Available on USAspending.gov

GAO-22-104702

Nov 08, 2021

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6 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury should design and implement a process to periodically inform agencies about unlinked data to help agencies reconcile and resolve data linkage differences between transaction and submission data on USAspending.gov. (Recommendation 2)	Open As of July 2022, Treasury is working on a process to address this recommendation, including sending a quarterly report to agencies on the status of their unlinked awards and updating the functionality of the USASpending.gov Agency Submission Statistics Page (ASSP) so that it will allow agencies to quickly download a list of all unlinked awards. Fully implementing these new procedures will be responsive to our recommendation. We will continue to monitor Treasury's progress toward implementing this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury should ensure that identifiers and database keys (e.g., unique award key) used for financial assistance awards result in display outputs on USAspending.gov that are accurate and complete. (Recommendation 3)	Open Treasury agreed with this recommendation. In June 2022, Treasury notified agencies that, given the design of the unique award key, changing the Awarding Sub Tier Agency Code during the life of a financial assistance award would result in transactions for the same award displayed as separate awards on USAspending.gov. Treasury specified that, in order for these financial assistance award transactions to be displayed together, agencies would need to ensure that all transactions under the award have the same Awarding Sub Tier Agency Code. However, to implement this recommendation, Treasury needs to ensure that when agencies accurately report information -- such as transactions for one award with different Awarding Sub Tier Agencies -- the unique award key design properly displays information on USAspending.gov. We will continue to monitor Treasury's efforts to implement this recommendation
Office of Management and Budget	The Director of OMB, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, should ensure that their policies, guidance, and procedures related to DATA Act and USAspending.gov (e.g., maximum number of characters for award descriptions) are consistent with each other. (Recommendation 5)	Open OMB concurs with this recommendation. In July 2022 OMB told us that work with Treasury is ongoing to ensure the display and technical standards for reporting information on USAspending.gov is consistent with FFATA and DATA Act statutory, regulatory, and policy guidance. We will continue to monitor OMB's progress toward implementing this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of OMB, should disclose on USAspending.gov that it does not validate the data it collects from external government-wide reporting systems (e.g., FPDS) and displays on USAspending.gov and, therefore, the imported data may not always align with the data standards, definitions, and requirements established in the OMB and Treasury guidance. (Recommendation 6)	Open In July 2022, Treasury officials told us that they plan to implement this recommendation in the coming months, as part of a new data limitation disclosure module. We will continue to monitor Treasury efforts to implement this recommendation.
Office of Management and Budget	The Director of OMB, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, should develop and implement a process to help ensure that disallowed program activities are not included in its list of program activity and accounts combinations used for validating DATA Act submissions to USAspending.gov. (Recommendation 7)	Open OMB concurred with this recommendation. In July 2022, OMB told us that they will continue to review the quality of program activity submissions as part of their larger effort to develop a federal program inventory. We will continue to monitor OMB's progress towards implementing this recommendation.
Department of the Treasury	The Secretary of the Treasury should disclose on USAspending.gov that changes in the data submission and reporting guidance and requirements over time may affect the completeness, consistency, and quality of specific data elements. (Recommendation 8)	Open As of July 2022, Treasury officials told us that they plan to implement this recommendation in the coming months, as part of a new data limitation disclosure module. We will continue to monitor Treasury's efforts to implement this recommendation.