The Office of Management and Budget continues to work toward putting all federal contract and grant spending in a database and online and this week announced a 10 month timeline.

• OMB sets timeline to launch federal spending database, By Jason Miller, GCN (02/19/07)

With about 10 months until the congressionally mandated deadline to put all federal contract and grant spending in a database and online, the Office of Management and Budget is asking for public comment on how best to implement the law."

...OMB launched a Web site, www.federalspending.gov, to collect these comments and set out an implementation timeline and the first set of frequently asked questions.

The new database will eventually include data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and the Federal Assistance Awards Data System (FAADS).

Meanwhile, the nonprofit organization OMBWatch has upgraded its own database of government spending, FedSpending.org, based on these same data.

• OMB Watch Launches Upgraded FedSpending.org Website, OMBWatch Press Release (February 22, 2007)

The updated version of OMBWatch's FedSpending.org has updated data and new summary views designed to provide a better overview of contractors, recipients, congressional districts, states, and agencies, as well as other data categories. In addition, it is more searchable and more easily discoverable through Google and Yahoo and MSN. Finally, it now has an Application Programming Interface (API) allowing programmers direct access to the data in XML format. This means more mashups and remixes.

Earlier coverage of this topic on FGI here: OMBWatch releases database of govt spending 2006-10-23