Data Broker

USASpending's Broker is a web application that allows agencies to upload, validate, review, publish, and certify their spending data to USASpending. Agency users can do this via Broker submissions. Note that the Broker is only available for agency users authenticated via CAIA (Common Approach to Identity Assurance).

DABS Submissions

DABS Submissions are the main submissions in compliance with The Data Act that include all various agency spending data for a period of time. DABS submissions are time-sensitive according to a schedule set out by the DABS FY reporting schedule and must be published before the current period ends. DABS submissions must also be certified by select members of an agency authorizing the data is complete and accurate as possible.

FABS Submissions

FABS Submissions include an agency's financial assistance data that will be used to populate the agency's DABS submission D2 files. These submissions are not time-sensitive and can be used to add/modify/remove an agency's transactions at any point in time. Upon publishing FABS submissions, the Data Broker also derives any additional fields the agency doesn't provide using the external data.

Validator

Both functions of the Broker go through similar processes of uploading, validating, publishing, and certifying their data before it reaches USASpending. With each, the Broker enforces validations laid out by GSDM to ensure the data is accurate.

Each validation rule of the GSDM is stored in the Data Broker via SQL rules that run against the incoming data. Some rules may be fatal (preventing an agency to publish its data) or warnings (flagged but still publishable). These rules are meticulously crafted in the GSDM to help agency users pinpoint any possible discrepancy in their data.

External Loaders

In part with the validation rules and data dictionaries set out by the GSDM, the Data Broker also has a crucial element to it of extracting the other various official data sources that can be used to validate or derive fields and files for agency users. These loaders include:

• GTAS, TAS
• SAM data
• FSRS data
• FPDS data
• Location data
• Agency structure and Office data

File Generation

As the Data Broker becomes more and more advanced over time, it also has been working to streamline the agency submission workflow by utilizing the external resources to automatically populate the files necessary for a DABS submission. These include:

• File A (based on TAS/GTAS data)
• File D1 (based on FPDS data)
• File D2 (based on FABS data)
• File E (based on SAM data)
• File F (based on FSRS data)