Manage Federal DATA Act Balances
Use the Manage Federal DATA Act Balances task to add and make updates to DATA Act balance fields based on future Treasury reporting requirements, as well as to navigate to the DATA Act Balance Sequence page to modify the reporting sequence of the balance fields for each of the file types.
You can enter the Treasury-defined DATA Act field name and enter or edit the USSGL accounts that need to be summed for the field. Existing DATA Act balance fields can be summed to create the balance for a new DATA Act field using the type of Total.
The list of reported DATA Act balance fields and ordering for Files A, B, and C can be updated using the DATA Act Balance Sequence page.
The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) requires agencies to report data monthly to the US Department of the Treasury using the data elements and format instruction in Report Submission Specification (RSS). The RSS was developed for agencies to provide more detailed information and tie together financial obligations (purchase orders) and outlays (expenditures) including standard data elements. DATA Act requires agencies to standardize the data elements used to record procurement and financial assistance transactions so there is consistency across the federal government.
There are three DATA Act interfaces that report financial data based on the Treasury specification for the DATA Act. The interfaces are listed below.
- General Ledger Data:
- File A - Appropriation Account Data
- File B - Object Class and Program Activity
- Purchasing, Accounts Payable and General Ledger Data:
- File C - Award Financial (Procurement and Grants)
Files A, B, and C report USSGL account balances at different levels of detail. File A reports appropriation level balances. File B reports the same balances as File A, but at the Program Activity, Object Class, and Disaster Emergency Fund Code (DEFC) level. File C reports balances at an even lower level of detail adding in FAIN and PIID award attributes. File C is a hybrid file containing both detailed transactions and summary balance columns. Obligation and expenditure data must be extracted to produce File C. The detailed transactions that are extracted and meet the reporting criteria must be summarized at the GL account level and maintained for each quarterly reporting period. Also, a cumulative total must be calculated. The GL account balances based on the detail transactions will be used in predefined formulas to create the column totals for reporting.
The Manage DATA Act Balances pages list all DATA Act fields defined by Treasury in the Government Wide Spending Data Model (GSDM) RSS, including the Calculation Name, Calculation Type, applicable DATA Act files, and reportable USSGL accounts from the SF-133 along with Calculation Action, and whether to use Beginning/Ending Balance or another combination. During report processing, balances will be reported for accounts which are part of the balance calculation for the file type.
This table shows you the attributes that you can see on the Manage DATA Act Balances page:
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | The Treasury-defined DATA Act Balance Name entered in the New Federal Data Act Balances page. When clicked, the link opens the Edit Federal DATA Act Balances page. |
| Type | The Balance Type selected from the New Federal DATA Act Balances page. Valid values include Balance and Total. |
| File | The files (File A, B and/or C) selected in the New Federal DATA Act Balances page in which the balance is reported. |