The General Services Administration’s (GSA) financial and award data was of “higher” quality and in compliance with Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Treasury Department, and Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act standards as of late 2018, according to a GSA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report.
With completeness, accuracy, and timeliness error rates falling well below 20 percent, GSA qualified for the “higher” quality status in an audit the first quarter of FY2019. This is the highest tier in the OIG’s ranking of data quality.
Despite this accomplishment, the OIG also found that GSA overstated its obligations to USASpending.gov by $131 million. The OIG said that GSA caused this error by incorrectly reporting de-obligations as negative values. Because of this mistake, the report recommends that the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at GSA improve the USASpending.gov reporting method. GSA CFO Gerard Badorrek concurred and said that the agency has corrected the DATA Act reporting logic to accurately reflect obligations and de-obligations.
