DATA Act Broker

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), which was designed to make federal spending data available in great detail, poses an unusual challenge. The DATA Act requires the U.S. Department of the Treasury to publish financial data from all federal agencies in a unified way using the DATA Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS). But the data must be provided by the agencies themselves, and agencies vary greatly in the accuracy and completeness of their data and their ability to use the DAIMS in their data reporting. To help maintain quality control of their data encoded in the DAIMS, the Department of the Treasury developed a DATA Act Broker.

According to a recent study: “The DATA Act Broker can flag discrepancies, helping agencies identify and fix potential data-quality issues. This should eventually help agencies gain more control over their data and gain the confidence to use the DAIMS for internal purposes.” One notable example featured in the study includes Small Business Administration (SBA), which “worked with Treasury and the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 18F team to test the DATA Act Broker. This gave the SBA an early look at the power of a single, unified set of financial and award data. This increased visibility has already helped the SBA identify and address several data quality issues.”