About Data Act Reporting

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.