fedspendingtransparency
Proposed Element: Award RFP Document
This effort at transparency in spending will ultimately tell us where our federal tax dollars are spent, when they were spent, to whom they were paid and very generally for what (NAICS). Transparency gets cloudy when you try to delver deeper into "for what" because that data isn't readily available. Perhaps there is one line in FPDS-NG. Perhaps the source documents are on FBO. A great number of times this information is not readily available to the public. FOIA requests would have to be issued to obtain this information. An example is agency's fondness for creating BPAs that most companies do not have access to compete on. Often times the high level BPA or IDIQ contract is available - but not the tasks that people are actually bidding to perform.
Technology exists (natural language processing/big data/etc.) to easily delve deeper in what tax money was spent to procure with the data (documents) we have available today. This information exists in statements of work or whatever documents were used to solicit bids. This could be made more precise through structure, but using the documents as a start is also good. This is how structure may be divined. Methods for storing and retrieving this data are trivial today. The source documents (like Section C, SOW as an example standard) for an award should be uploaded and made publicly available for any award at the contract or task order level.
Similarly, contracts that result from a grant should also be uploaded. The example of the grant to Florida that went to buy busses made in Michigan is an example that could be derived.
Linking the source documents to the awards is a simple step that would enable an array of analytics.
I feel like this is more related to making the source documents available in an automated way (perhaps by award ID) and less about post-award spending reporting. @nvembar are you aware of any plans to make this available via FBO?
You have to keep in mind that most of the source documents are NOT available via FBO. I would guess that most acquisition information is not readily available to the public because they are on hidden mechanisms/vehicles constrained to a certain group. For example, Task Orders on GSA IT70, GSA PSS, Alliant, CIO-SP3, etc. That's where a lot of work happens - on vehicles and then even further on BPAs within vehicles. You don't see these unless you are on the vehicles. I think in some cases certain companies are directly invited to participate.
The core of this data request is the statement of work / performance work statement; however having the full documentation set to include Q&A and solicitation instructions may also provide insight.
In my view, I see a document as an element. Maybe unstructured, but still an element of data. I think one of the most important data points because that's the only way we really know what the government is purchasing, especially related to services. We know a lot of 541512 is bought - but what is that? Could be a $1 micropurchase or a $33B Big Data Cloud offering.
I totally agree on this @HerschelC. I think there are some more systemic changes that need to happen with the procurement vehicles to collect and publish this data in a way that's easily consumable. CC'ing @vzvenyach in case he has more info in this area.