Fox Guarding the Clearinghouse on Contracts Data

On October 1, a downsized government office turned over key data on roughly $290 billion worth of government contracts to a private company to provide online access. Critics on the left and right predict this move could raise barriers to public disclosure and undermine the public's ability to hold federal contractors and government officials accountable for the way taxpayer dollars are spent. The Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) holds data on all federal contracts worth more than $25,000. Over seventy federal agencies report contracts to the General Services Administration, which until last week operated the database. For a quarter century the federal government has collected and managed the data, although the public has found the data less than easy to work with. The solution was to downsize the federal workforce for FPDS and outsource the work to Global Computer Enterprises. The critics, including the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), are most concerned that the public will face more fees to access the data in the system. Global has committed to provide free public access to analytic reports. The pre-canned reports break down federal expenditures on outsourced activities by agency, identify the top federal contractors and give other summary analyses. Under the new system, users interested in drilling down further than the reports must buy additional custom analyses. To run queries on the database itself, users are asked to pay a $2,500 fee for lifetime access to the data. As POGO notes in an op-ed, Halliburton and other federal contractors avoid public scrutiny when the public is left in the dark about key figures in their contracting deals. Halliburton recently noted it could not account for $1.8 billion on a military support contract. GSA still supports free public access to data on federal contracts for fiscal year 2003 and all prior years at www.fpdc.gov/fpdc/fpdc_home.htm. Data for fiscal year 2004 will be available through the new system at https://www.fpds.gov.
back to Blog