About Fiscal Data

Fiscal Data is your one-stop shop for federal financial data. The Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service created Fiscal Data to consolidate federal financial data into one easy-to-use website. Fiscal Data adheres to modern data practices and offers data in machine-readable formats via file downloads and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Mission

Our mission is to inspire trust in the government by providing access to federal financial data in one easy-to-use platform.

Who We Are

This site was created by the Office of the Chief Data Officer at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service), which is part of the Department of the Treasury. Fiscal Service is responsible for managing public debt, central payment systems, and government accounting. Our team is comprised of data analysts, developers, and UX designers who are passionate about putting trusted data in the hands of the people.

What Makes Fiscal Data Different

• Human-Centered Design
  Usability is a core value we have embraced from the start of the development of this website. Throughout development, we have integrated best practices and user feedback to deliver a modern, easy-to-navigate site.
• Machine-Readable Data Downloads
  All of our datasets are available for download in multiple machine-readable formats and feature customizable data previews. Additionally, each dataset is complete with comprehensive metadata to explain when the data is updated, what each row of the data represents, and descriptions for each dataset and data table.
• Easily Accessible APIs
  With complete documentation and APIs for each dataset, accessing data has never been easier. New to APIs? Visit our getting started section to learn more!

Background

Fiscal Service is a leader in the open data community within the federal government. In 2018, we re-launched USAspending.gov to enhance the public’s ability to examine and track federal spending data and we launched a new website, Data Lab. Based on the principles outlined in the 2019 Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act and the 2020 Federal Data Strategy Action Plan, Fiscal Data builds on our data transparency work by modernizing how we provide data to the public.

Data Sources

The mission of Fiscal Service is to promote the financial integrity and operational efficiency of the federal government through exceptional accounting, financing, collections, payments, and shared services. We pay, collect, finance, and account for trillions of dollars each year. Our datasets come from the systems that perform these critical functions such as debt management systems and summary debt accounting systems. Each dataset notes the publisher, which indicates the area within Fiscal Service from which the data originated.

Understanding the Data

As a first step in improving the usability of our data, we have focused on increasing the metadata available to users, including complete data dictionaries for each dataset, explicit notes and limitations to help users understand the data, and detailed metadata to explain when the data is updated, what each row of the data represents, and descriptions for each dataset and data table.

Development and Releases

Fiscal Data is being developed using the Agile Scrum method. We release updates to the site about every two weeks. If you would like to receive our release notes, please sign up for our emails.

Licensing

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service is committed to providing open data. The data on this site is available to copy, adapt, redistribute, or otherwise use for non-commercial and commercial purposes.

More Information

For more information, see the FAQs or Contact Us.