Clearspending 2011: Still Over $1.3 Trillion in Broken Spending Reporting

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Clearspending logoToday we re-launched our Clearspending project with new data. Clearspending is a scorecard-like analysis of the quality of the grants data found in USASpending.gov. We evaluated the grant data on consistency, completeness and timeliness. The results are pretty much unchanged — we found over $1.3 trillion in broken spending.

Head on over to the summary page for the quick highlights. While consistency and completeness haven’t changed much, timeliness is much improved. Essentially, many programs are reporting bad data, faster. There are some exceptions however.

Several agencies report very well across all metrics and programs. These include:

  • The National Endowment for the Arts
  • The National Science Foundation
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Defense

Even more agencies report well, though not uniformly across all programs. Most of their reporting is quite good, with a few exceptions that put them closer to the ‘broken spending’ threshold. These include:

  • Department of Transportation
  • Department of Justice
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • Department of Education

However, as evidenced by the $1.3 trillion in broken reporting, the poorly reporting programs dwarf the programs that do report well, in terms of total obligations. And it doesn’t help that Congress is set to slash E-Gov funding (which includes USASpending.gov).

To find out more about a particular agency or program, visit the Clearspending scorecard. Or for a visual, watch our new video.