The U.S. purchased $26 million dollars worth of live animals for non-food purposes in 2007.  That same year, nearly $96 million in federal tax dollars was spent on toiletries.  Those are just a few of the fun facts now publicly available to anyone willing to invest some time playing around with the government's new website, USAspending.gov.

Although the site launched in December 2007,  we felt it deserved some additional attention to make sure people are actually aware it exists. 

In 2006, the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit group government watchdog group, funded the creation of fedspending.org - an innovative website that tracks the flow of federal contract dollars.  However, it was another watchdog group called OMB Watch that actually devised and built the site.

That same year, Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), sponsored legislation requiring the federal government to set up a searchable online database tracing federal budget spending.  The bill was called the Transparency Act and it required the database to be implemented by Jan. 1, 2008.   

In a an effort by the government to reduce duplication, fedspending.org was purchased in late 2007 for $600,000 by the federal government to meet the looming Jan 1, 2008 deadline.   It's amusing to note that the government bought a website that was already being provided for free by a non-profit.  But that's all water under the bridge to nowhere.

Today, USAspending.gov offers a window into the previously nebulous world of federal procurement.  Site visitors can now monitor how much money is being spent on various grants, loans, and services, which contractors are taking in the most dough, and the percentage of contracts won by competitive bidding.  Contract awards can be broken down by contractor name, year, agency, state, and congressional district for those data hounds just aching to pour through the system. 

Our only real concern with the database is that the contract descriptions are vague at best.  While looking up contracts for live animals to determine what type of animals were purchased, we discovered only minimal details, if any.  Few contracts actually stated what type of animals were procured.  However, we applaud the bill that mandated the database and most especially the folks at Sunlight and OMB Watch for pioneering the effort to make government information more readily available.