_posts/2016-03-15-treasury-and-the-data-act-full-of-sunshine.md
---
title: "Treasury and the DATA Act: Full of sunshine"
date: 2016-03-15
authors:
- becky
tags:
- treasury
- agency work
- agile
- data act
excerpt: "To celebrate Sunshine Week, we’re highlighting some groundbreaking open government work by the Department of the Treasury, one of 18F’s partner agencies."
description: "To celebrate Sunshine Week, we’re highlighting some groundbreaking open government work by the Department of the Treasury, one of 18F’s partner agencies."
image: /assets/blog/data-act-implementation/data-act-meeting.jpg
---
To celebrate [Sunshine Week](http://www.sunshineweek.org/), we’re
highlighting some groundbreaking open government work by the Department
of the Treasury, one of 18F’s partner agencies.
Last year we wrote about [the DATA Act and 18F’s role in its
implementation](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/06/09/data-act-data-act-explainer/).
The tremendous undertaking of Treasury, along with the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), will standardize how federal agencies
report their spending data. Right now, there is no unified, detailed
view of how the government spends our tax dollars. The ability to track
money from Congressional appropriations to the awards made to local
communities is something that state and local governments, academics,
Congress, transparency watchdogs, and agencies themselves have wanted
for a long time.
Creating and opening that data will be a huge win for open government.
But another compelling part of Treasury’s DATA Act implementation is
their commitment to working openly, collaboratively, and iteratively
with agencies, industry, and the public. Rather than wait until the
law’s “due date,” Treasury is releasing work in small increments,
getting feedback, and incorporating it into subsequent versions. DATA
Act is the [first government-wide agile
project](http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/act-ivity/2016/02/29/first-government-wide-agile-project/).
*Representatives from the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior, the Department of the Treasury, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation gather for a sandbox testing session.*
## The DATA Act schema
The first example of this iterative work is the DATA Act schema, a
standard format for agencies to use when reporting their financial data.
The schema tells agencies across the federal government what to report
and provides a universal set of definitions to make sure the incoming
information means the same thing, so users can make comparisons across
government.
As they created the schema, Treasury’s DATA Act Project Management
Office:
- Published [four early drafts for public review](http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/data-exchange-standard/).
- Held 15 workshops to solicit agency-specific concerns and questions.
- Developed an [early data broker prototype](https://github.com/18F/data-act-pilot) with the Small Business Administration and 18F to test the schema using real data.
- Held weekly sandbox sessions for other agencies to test their data using the broker prototype.
Version 1.0 of the DATA Act schema will reflect the lessons learned from
this early work.
## The new USAspending.gov
Federal spending information collected as part of the DATA Act will be
available to the public online. The next version of what is now called
[USAspending.gov](https://www.usaspending.gov) will include more
options to get data. Here, too, Treasury’s DATA Act
Project Management Office is doing some small experiments.
- Completed a user discovery sprint with 18F to identify distinct audiences and their needs within the large federal spending data community.
- Launched [OpenBeta USAspending.gov](https://openbeta.usaspending.gov/), a website that showcases potential new features for the next USAspending.gov.
- Continue planning and releasing OpenBeta updates, incorporating feedback along the way, until its official launch in 2017.
Treasury’s DATA Act Project Management Office has collected nearly 300
public comments through this work. That’s in addition to outreach via
internal agency workshops, weekly agency office hours, and regular email
updates. 18F is proud to serve an agency committed to a transparent,
user-driven implementation of a milestone open data law. This is how
your government should work.