The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) and implementation guidance provided in the Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-15-12 mandates that Federal agencies must report their financial, budgetary and programmatic information to the USASpending.gov web site by the statutory May 2017 deadline.

In our second of two Data Act Readiness Reviews, OIG reviewed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) compliance with implementation efforts as of December 16, 2016.  To accomplish the objectives, we assessed whether HUD completed steps 5-8, and reassess outstanding issues related to steps 3 and 4 of the U.S. Department of the Treasury DATA Act Playbook that provides guidance for reporting agencies. We concluded that HUD initiated steps to implement the DATA Act; however, it remained not on track to provide complete, departmentwide, comprehensive reporting by the statutory May 2017 deadline.  HUD continued to be unable to demonstrate completion of most requisite Playbook steps for its contract, grant and subsidy programs. Additionally, HUD would not be able to report most of its required data files for its Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) components before the reporting deadline.

The four recommendations included have the objective of ensuring HUD becomes compliant with the DATA Act by (1) allocating resources for system updates, (2) resolving errors and data quality issues that the agency identified during implementation, (3) designating official points of contact for FHA and Ginnie Mae and completing implementation plans and (4) completing data mapping.  Further, HUD management provided official comments in response to our report and recommendations, which are included within appendix C. OIG evaluated HUD management’s official comments within appendix D.
Related report: 2016-FO-0802