The Homeland Security Department has made strides to better comply with the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency, or DATA, Act, but a legacy system is holding back the department’s progress, according to an audit.
The DATA Act requires agencies to take data on procurement and financial assistance awards and turn them into an open data resource for the public on USASpending.gov. A DHS inspector general audit found the department’s procurement data is high quality, but when it comes to financial assistance, a legacy IT system is disrupting its ability to provide timely and accurate information.
The audit covered a sample of entries on USASpending.gov from the first quarter of 2019, which the IG previously examined in 2017. Since the previous audit, DHS reduced misaligned data in both procurement and financial assistance award categories from 38%, or close to $1.9 billion, to 4%, or about $264 million.
While the combination of procurement and financial assistance data yielded an overall “moderate” score, the error rates for the 184 procurement data records survey were low enough for a “high” quality score. Of the three measured categories, the highest error rate for procurement data records was 6.58%
But for the 191 financial assistance records, error rates were significantly higher. The error rate by each category was 10.06% for completeness, 26.02% for accuracy and 67.19% for timeliness.
All of the financial assistance data the inspector general surveyed came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency’s system for reporting and managing rewards under the National Flood Insurance Program is still in the process of modernizing. According to the audit, processing records took too long and resulted in errors because the old system isn’t automated.
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