Government Spending / 2013 90% open

What data is expected?

Records of actual (past) national government spending at a detailed transactional level; A database of contracts awarded or similar will not considered sufficient. This data category refers to detailed ongoing data on actual expenditure. Data submitted in this category should meet the following minimum criteria:

• Individual record of transactions.
• Date of the transactions
• Government office which had the transaction
• Name of vendor
• amount of the transaction
• Update on a monthly basis

What data is available

•   Openly licensed? Yes (No URL given)
•   Is the data available for free? Yes
•   Is the data machine readable? Yes (CSV, XML)
•   Available in bulk? Yes
•   Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis? No
•   Publicly available? Yes
•   Is data in digital form? Yes
•   Is the data available online? Yes (Here)
•   Does the data exist? Yes

Details

The data at USASpending.gov accounts for only a fraction of all government spending, and it is organized in a way that makes it hard to understand and use. So while it's open data, it's only a small part of federal spending data. It does not include expenses on government salaries and operating expenditures or information on Medicare, the nation's government sponsored medical insurance for the elderly (~20% of total spending). There are no government-wide spending records that would actually be more helpful --- that is, the government doesn't collect the type of data about its own spending that would be useful to the open government world.