FEDERAL PUBLIC SPENDING DATA, XBRL AND THE DATA ACT
Governments large and small spend considerable amounts of public money to pay for health facilities, public safety, social aid and public works, and capital improvement projects. This money is usually derived from taxes that are allocated to federal programs by Congress, but they can also come directly from agency fines, fees, or settlement collections. This makes reporting Federal public spending data including agency financial information somewhat problematic and just plain difficult. CHALLENGES TO REPORTING FEDERAL PUBLIC SPENDING DATA Public spending and budgets are absolutely essential to publish as Open Data . This post will describe some of the challenges and opportunities in helping the public to understand where Federal public spending is going and to whom; especially the difference between the use of standards in regulatory versus financial data reporting. Several pieces of legislation are about to take effect at the federal level in 2017. Congress should take action immedia