Feedback: Funding Agency Name and Code

[elainekamlley]

This is the place to leave your feedback and questions about the following data elements, feedback will close on August 11, 2015:

• Funding Agency Name
• Funding Agency Code

The proposed definition of the above elements:
http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/whitepapers/fundingagency/

Federal Spending Collaboration home page: http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/

[fransi-usda]

During Recovery Act implementation, OMB and the Recovery Board addressed the question of "Funding Agency" vs "Awarding Agency". To provide best clarity for the recipients and the public, we applied these as:
Funding Agency is the agency of the Treasury Account to which the funds are appropriated by Congress. This agency may circuit the funds to other agencies for implementation.
Awarding Agency is the agency that interacts with the recipient to make the award and manage the assistance (grants, etc.). The recipient reports to the Awarding Agency.

We found this to best illustrate the movement of taxpayers' funds from Congress to project/recipient, while being comprehensible to the recipients submitting reports and facilitating the public review and analysis of data. In most cases, the funding agency and the awarding agency are the same entity.

[MJB-NIH]

Funding Agency Code (or Name) should reflect a high degree of consistency across all report audiences -- either budget and accounting, grant oriented, or acquisition focused. We certainly can't expect the general public to get acquainted with all the wrinkles that present government-wide coding allows and the unique implementations each of our agencies contributes. So I thought I would follow up on the previous commenter's thread and check for commonalities (or not) between coding systems in budget versus contracts. There are some notable disconnects between authoritative agency codes in budget arena (reference OMB Circular No. A-11) and what I found over in the contract reporting area (FPDS-NG hosted by GSA). Agency codes in FPDS are apparently 4 digit wide and primarily numeric but can be alpha-numeric. Referring to Appendix C of A-11, we find OMB agency codes are 3 digit wide all numeric domain (related Bureau codes are 2 digit wide). Associated Treasury agency codes are 2 digits wide and the upcoming CGAS agency code expands the Treasury code to 3 digits. The OMB agency code for Department of Agriculture is '005', the Treasury code is '12', the CGAS code variant is '012' and the FPDS contracting/funding agency code is '12C2'. (One positive omen is that the first two characters of the FPDS funding agency code '12' mirror the values in the traditional Treasury agency code but the following two digits showing 'C2' disconnect from OMB Bureau code for Forest Service of '96').

As one of the first steps to synchronizing data element across agencies and their enterprise systems, it would make sense to agree on one field definition and defer to one of the government-wide "authoritative" actors. For example, I can see favoring a 3-digit CGAS version of Treasury code over OMB code insofar as "spending" relates more to budget execution than formulation and the latter is where OMB codes seem to correlate to OMB MAX Data Entry application. We need to reconcile "agency [funding] code" between Treasury, OMB and GSA if there is to any hope of standardizing Federal agency systems' data element width, type, and valid range. The column heading "agency code" should not require contextual interpretation according to who sent the data to the repository. A snippet of an exported standard report issued from the FPDS web site at: https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/index.php/en/ is provided below. Also furnished is an image snippet below from Appendix C of the OMB Circular No. A-11 as revised 2015 found at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/a11_current_year/2015_letter.pdf .

[MJB-NIH]

Observations shared regarding Funding Agency Code in my previous post also apply to Funding Agency Name. We can start with the most mundane reconciliation concerns such as requiring standard content formatting. The first-order of business will be to cross-check names listed for agencies by OMB, Department of Treasury, and GSA in their system dictionaries. As noted before -- prior to seeking consensus from the "feeder: agencies, the various "authorities" need to come together. Is "Department of Treasury", "Dept. of Treasury", and "Treasury Department" equally valid? Can they be post-processed into a fixed name by the repository import module as opposed to requiring commonality in the source data?

Should each transmitting organization have their enterprise system(s) store name as entirely capitalized or in Proper case? Then a fine-point as to field display treatment--does the future massive repository's reporting tool post-process the uploaded value and translate to all caps or in Proper case? Do we impose a fixed length string data type, e.g. CHAR (50) or allow some flexibility and use VARCHAR(254) or get loose with TEXT type for this data element? And expansion of abbreviations (or not) from the transmit file is a potential trip point. Should we require full spell out of a name or allow -- or -- enforce limited abbreviation? One system could retain values such as 'Dept.' and our hypothetical business rules would detect the item and decode the phrase to 'Department'. What about trailing blanks lurking on the upload? The repository could apply TRIM() functions on upload data before storage (or not). This all sounds very "IT" but achieving consistent names will be even more challenging than arriving at consensus for code.

[MeadowK]

I am wondering why the definition for Awarding Agency and the one for FUnding Ageny are not 'parallel'. Funding Aengy describes a characteristic (provides most funding to an award) whereas Awarding AGency describes source of name/code (from the treasury symbol) I assume that the Funding agency name/code is based on the treasury symbol too. So how is Awarding Agency defined in comparison to FUnding Agency? Does Awarding agency give funds to the award but not as much as the Funding?
Do we get answers here? or do answers go to our email address?
KM

[HelenaSims]

AGA established a work group charged with responding to inquiries by the federal government, regarding implementation of the DATA Act. The following response is being submitted on behalf of AGA's work group, which is comprised of state, local, tribal and university practitioners from across the country. In commenting on this topic, group members had the following comments:
• Multiple uses of the term “agency” are confusing. The definition of “Federal Agency” in the Act itself refers to “Executive Agency.” In addition, the elements include “Funding Agency” and “Awarding Agency.”

[bsweger]

@MeadowK I don't have an answer to your question, but wanted to let you know that all conversation will happen here on this page, rather than through e-mail (so everyone can take part).

[HerschelC]

I want to offer a big +1 to @MJB-NIH 's comments. Hopefully the government is providing an authoritative source for reporting attributes, like names, that agencies can use when they report data. This master data is important for consistency and managed by the data governance body.

The data within FPDS has multiple names for the same agency for example. This propagates to USASpending. Basic data management principles and master data should be applied before data is published to the public to minimize these data quality issues (if they aren't applied to the data as it is input to the systems). Ideally, a lead agency will assume responsibility for managing this data and provide it as a service to other agencies for use in their consistent reporting.

[Justice2015]

are we addressing Reimbursable agreements. Dept. of Justice has shared grants with other federal agencies so who is that responsible reporting entity.

[kafix]

+1 to @MJB-NIH comments regarding Funding Agency Name. Dept of Interior shares concerns regarding master data management.

[elainekamlley]

Update 8/11/2015: Thank you for your feedback on the data element Funding Agency Name and Code. We will consider your feedback as we continually assess how we can improve data definitions.

You may still contribute the discussion for other data elements. Check http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/dataelements/ to find data elements with open feedback pages.