Federal Data Interoperability Is Now a Payment Integrity Problem
The Government Accountability Office’s June 2026 report, Federal Data: Congressional Action Needed to Improve Interoperability of Award and Payment Eligibility Data, deserves close attention from anyone involved in federal procurement, grants management, payment integrity, or public-sector data governance. The report was issued under the leadership of Paula M. Rascona, Director of GAO’s Financial Management and Assurance team, with key contributions from María C. Belaval, Mariana Calderón, Sarah Hay, Erika Szatmari, Giovanna K. Cruz, Joanne Howard, Jason Kirwan, Cory A. Mazer, Brenda Mittelbuscher, Gabriel M. Nelson, Christian P. Sullano, and Lisa Zhao.
GAO’s central finding is straightforward but consequential: the federal government has access to a large universe of data sources that could help determine whether entities are eligible to receive federal awards and payments, yet those data sources are not sufficiently interoperable. Agencies may use more than 100 federal data sources throughout the award life cycle, including pre-award screening, post-award monitoring, and payment validation. Twenty-eight of these sources are included in, or designated for inclusion in, the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay working system. However, GAO found that these sources were often created for specific programmatic or statutory purposes, not for cross-government eligibility determinations.
This distinction is important. Federal payment integrity depends not merely on the existence of data, but on the ability to compare, validate, and use data across systems. GAO defines data interoperability as the ability to share and disseminate standardized data efficiently, consistently, and accessibly across different systems and users. When eligibility data lack common definitions, formats, validation rules, reporting cadences, historical records, and unique identifiers, agencies face greater difficulty identifying ineligible recipients before funds are awarded or paid.
The report’s analysis of nine selected data sources illustrates the operational problem. GAO found incomplete or inconsistent data documentation, varied formats across sources, insufficiently documented validation rules, and data quality problems such as missing, invalid, and duplicate values. Seven of the selected sources also had inconsistencies between them. These weaknesses are not merely technical defects. They increase the risk that agencies will make eligibility decisions using incomplete or incomparable information.
GAO’s review of SAM and USAspending.gov data further demonstrates the practical consequence. GAO was able to link most USAspending.gov award recipient unique entity identifiers to SAM entity information. However, most SAM Exclusions records lacked a unique entity identifier, limiting GAO’s ability to conduct a full matching analysis. GAO identified 2,074 awards to recipients that appeared in SAM Exclusions at the time of transaction, but properly cautioned that these matches alone do not prove fraud, waste, abuse, or improper payment. They are risk indicators requiring case-specific review.
The broader policy lesson is that transparency systems, exclusion systems, payment systems, and award systems cannot function as a coherent integrity architecture without enforceable data standards. GAO therefore recommends that Congress consider assigning a single agency, such as Treasury, explicit authority to lead the development and implementation of government-wide data standards and interoperability requirements for recipient eligibility data, in coordination with the Chief Data Officer Council and OMB.
For federal contractors, grant recipients, and compliance professionals, the report signals a likely direction of travel. Eligibility, responsibility, exclusion, ownership, sanctions, tax status, and payment data will increasingly be viewed as part of one integrated risk environment. The government’s next challenge is not collecting more data. It is making existing data reliable, comparable, and usable before taxpayer funds leave the Treasury.
Disclaimer:
This post is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, accounting, audit, grants management, procurement, or compliance advice. It is based on GAO’s June 2026 report and provides independent commentary. Readers should consult the original GAO report and qualified advisors before relying on these issues for specific decisions.