What is FPDS?
FPDS, or the Federal Procurement Data System, is the central real-time database for government contracting transactions. The system is meant to ensure trust and transparency in federal spending. FPDS is the most comprehensive and definitive source for government contracting transparency data, although it does not contain all awards (we’ll touch on that below). The award information in FPDS is used by the President, Congress, GAO and other agencies to form policy decisions and to report on trends.
Although the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) website has limited reporting capability, it is free to use by the public. It’s worth noting that the FPDS database is a very large data set, both in terms of depth (upwards of 50M records) and breadth (more than 200 data elements). There’s also a fair amount of complexity in how transactions are linked to one another in the case of task order awards and blanket purchase agreements.
How is data in FPDS structured?
It’s best to think of FPDS as a giant checkbook for the federal government. Each transaction is simply a payment or modification from an account to a payee. In addition to basic transaction information like amount, account and awardee, there are many meta data elements such as socioeconomic indicators, set-aside preferences, awardee registration details and much more.
The comprehensive transaction information is structured in xml format, defined on the FPDS website.
Can I download FPDS data myself?
Yes, FPDS archives can be found at fpds.gov in zip format. Due to the size of the archives, it can be cumbersome to process/import archives into a local database. For active research, we recommend using a platform like Federal Compass. We import transactions from FPDS daily, so you’re always up to date with the latest award and spending trends.
What’s reported in FPDS?
- Contracts with an estimated value of more than $10k, including every modification
What’s not reported in FPDS?
- Financial assistance actions: grants, cooperative agreements, subsidies, etc.
- Interagency agreements
- Actions using predominantly non-appropriated funds
- Actions involving transfer of supplies within or among agencies
- Subcontracting data (collected in eSRS.gov)
- Entitlement spending such as health, drug, Medicare
Can I trust FPDS data?
Yes, at the direction of the OFPP (Office of Federal Procurement Policy), GSA requires each department and agency be certified annually in the completeness and accuracy of its data.
FPDS vs USASpending.gov
USASpending is a secondary source, and uses data reported by FPDS to populate its database and reports. Although USASpending has some convenient reporting features, its data is not real-time and we have seen many instances of missing data in USASpending. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act requires USASpending to update its data every 30 days.
