Data & Mapping FAQs

Reporting periods and process:

• The first reporting period covered March 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020.
• The second reporting period covered from July 1, 2020 to September 30, 2020
• Prime recipients will continue to report on a quarterly basis.  The last reporting period covers July 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021.

Once the prime recipients’ authorizing official certifies their reports, they are submitted to the Department of the Treasury Office of Inspector General (OIG) through a reporting portal. The Treasury OIG then reviews the reports for basic data entry protocols and either approves or rejects them. Rejected reports are returned to the prime recipients for corrections. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee pulls the approved reports from the reporting portal by the to display on pandemicoversight.gov.  NOTE: We display the data as we receive it, and do not change, alter, or add to it. 

The prime recipient reporters:

• 785 prime recipients received Coronavirus Relief funds; however, 25 primes received less than $150,000 and under the CARES Act are not required to report on their spending.
• 585 prime recipients reported on their sub-recipient data in the March 1, 2020 to September 30, 2020 reporting cycles. Some prime recipients reported in one reporting cycle; some reported in both cycles. 
• 35 prime recipients - including 32 states – are expected to report additional spending information via a bulk upload feature in December 2020.  Four of the 35 did report some data in the reporting periods but will also be using the upload feature. The additional data will be displayed January 2021. For now, the 31 prime recipients are tagged with “Data available in January 21”; the CRF money these prime recipients received from Treasury is displayed, but the number of sub-recipients is listed as 0 and the sub-award amount is displayed as $0. 
• 144 prime recipients either did not submit information or the Treasury OIG returned the submission to the prime recipient for corrections.  
• The following 35 prime recipients plan to submit reports using the bulk upload:

Data Visualizations

• Our data visualizations display prime recipient data for Tribal governments, however, funding distributed to any tribal sub-recipient is not yet publicly available.
• The prime recipient data on the map is based on the prime recipient’s location. For example, CRF funds to the state of New Mexico is mapped to the state capital.  The sub-recipient data is based on the sub-recipient’s place of performance or the address for the sub-recipient’s headquarters. The primary place of performance for contract awards is the location where products or goods are manufactured or purchased. For example, California might award a contract for personal protective equipment (PPE) to a company in Nashville, Tennessee. The primary place of performance is Nashville because that is where the PPE was purchased.  For grants, the primary place of performance is where most of the work is performed.

The data on the Funding Overview graphic includes:

• Updates to Treasury appropriation warrants and indefinite appropriations as of June 10, 2020. Indefinite appropriations are appropriations of unspecified amounts of money. An indefinite appropriation may appropriate all or part of the receipts from certain sources, the specific amount of which is determinable only at some future date, or it may appropriate “such sums as may be necessary” for a given purpose. As the appropriation warrant data changes periodically, the data in the graphic will be updated.
• Education funding for K-12 schools as part of the State, Local, and Tribal Governments category

There are many reasons why modifications to an award may display negative or zero amounts.

• Negative Amounts:
  • The agency may reduce or rescind (de-obligate) a portion of the original award amount which is indicated by a negative number. For example, the original contract award was for $2M, but six months into the contract the agency changes the scope of work to less than the original $2M and de-obligates $500,000, resulting in a modification with -$500,000.
  • A contract may be completed but not all the original funding was used, resulting in a negative number when the agency closes out the contract. For example, the original contract award was for $2M but at the end of the contract only $1.5M was used; when the agency closes the contract a -$500,000 will be displayed in the final modification.

• Zero Amounts
  • Changes made to an award for administrative reasons are reported as $0. For example, a change in the recipient’s address or the project’s description are reported as $0 in the Action Obligation field.
  • When an award has been completed and all the funds expended, the close-out modification is $0.
  • Also, $0 will be reported when awards are subject to the availability of funds, meaning funding will happen later. 
  • Certain contract types will also show $0 when funding happens later through task orders.

Generally, contract documents are not available for public display due to the possible proprietary information contained in the documents. Interested parties can seek contract documents from the awarding agency through a Freedom of Information Act request.

All the modifications/transactions for an award may not be displayed because PandemicOversight.gov only displays awards and award modifications/transactions related to coronavirus funding and  identified with a Disaster Emergency Fund Code. For example, award modification/transaction 03 would be displayed if the funds are coronavirus related, whereas modifications 01 and 02 might not have been funded by coronavirus legislation and, therefore, will only be displayed on USAspending.gov.

All the data that drives the Funding Charts and Graphs can be exported to a .csv. We will be adding other downloads across the site in the future.

A data dictionary that includes all the data elements on PandemicOversight.gov is available on USAspending.gov.

There are several limitations to the data:

• Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) – The PPP data displayed in the Funding Charts and Graphs has the following limitations: 
  • The Small Business Administration provided the jobs retained, however, 6.5% of borrowers did not provide this information.
  • 89.7% of the borrowers did not provide their race or ethnicity; and 78.6% did not provide their gender. 
• Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Direct Payment (EIDL and EIDL Advance) – EIDL loans and direct payments can be found in the Pandemic Response Funding Charts & Graphs.  When reporting these loans, the Small Business Administration had withheld certain borrower names, marking them as “Redacted due to PII.”    On December 1, 2020, the agency released EIDL loan and direct payment files that contain the borrower names.
• Economic Impact Payments -- The $1,200 direct payments to individuals from the U.S. Department of the Treasury are advance payments of a new temporary tax credit that eligible taxpayers can claim on their 2020 return. These payments are aggregated when reported to USAspending.gov and can be identified in the download on USAspending.gov by Treasury Account Symbol 020-X-0905 and the US Coronavirus Rebate Program Activity category.
• Federal Unemployment Compensation Program -- As of June 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (Labor) was unable to report any records to USAspending.gov showing the geographic distribution of payments from the Employment and Training Administration. The source file for this information has been identified; however, creating the file required additional time. The data on PandemicOversight.gov will be updated once Labor reports.
• Provider Relief Fund -- The funding for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Provider Relief Fund data is attributed to a single entity in Utah that is distributing the direct payments to recipients across the country on behalf of HHS. The full data is posted at HHS and is also linked on PandemicOversight.gov. This file is updated weekly and includes payments for Medicare General Distribution, Medicaid, CHIP, dental, and General Distribution. It also includes allocations to high impact areas, safety net hospitals, rural providers, tribal facilities, clinics and urban health centers and skilled nursing facilities. This dataset represents the list of providers who have attested to receiving one or more payments from the Provider Relief Fund and agreed to the Terms and Conditions. Because not all providers (who in many cases received a payment unsolicited) have yet attested to accepting that payment, the totals listed in the data are less than the totals on PandemicOversight.gov.
• CARES Act Division A, Title IV – The Department of the Treasury is authorized to make loans, loan guarantees, and other investments as follows: 
  • $454 billion to provide equity investments into emergency lending programs or facilities authorized by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (the Board) of the Federal Reserve System. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) and Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) reporting requirements do not apply to the Federal Reserve Board. However, the Board is reporting information required under that section concerning these emergency lending programs and facilities on its public website. This information is also linked on PandemicOversight.gov.
  • $46 billion to provide loans to passenger and cargo air carriers and businesses critical to national security. Treasury reports the individual loans on Treasury.gov but does not report such loans at the transaction level pursuant to FFATA to USASpending.gov because they are not financial assistance, therefore, the transactions do not appear on PandemicOversight.gov.  However, Treasury does report obligations to USASpending.gov at the aggregate level as required by the DATA Act and it reports individual loans at Treasury.gov. 
• Non-reporting agencies -- There are 14 independent, legislative branch, and judicial branch agencies who received coronavirus funding but who do not report under the DATA Act to USAspending.gov. Therefore, PandemicOversight.gov will not display this funding. The total amount these agencies received was $272,600,000.

The Disaster Emergency Fund Codes (DEFC) are the unique identifiers specific to the coronavirus response that designate the legislation that provided the funding for a particular award.

• DEFC "L"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-123, Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act
• DEFC "M"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-127, Families First Coronavirus Response Act
• DEFC "N"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-136, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
• DEFC "O"
  • Not designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-136, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
  • Public Law 116-139, Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act
• DEFC "P"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-139, Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act

The PandemicOversight.gov posting schedule for data on contract, grant, and loan awards is:

If federal agencies submit data corrections to USAspending during the month, the data on PandemicOversight.gov will be updated accordingly. 

NOTE: The Department of Defense reports data on a 90 day delay in order to protect operations.

The authoritative source for the data on PandemicOversight.gov is USAspending.gov. The federal agencies that received funding from the CARES Act and three related pieces of legislation report financial data to USAspending.gov and PandemicOversight.gov imports that data through APIs.