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fedspendingtransparency / fedspendingtransparency.github.io

Federal Spending Transparency
http://fedspendingtransparency.github.io
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Proposed Element: Place of Contract Execution #40

Open HerschelC opened 9 years ago

HerschelC commented 9 years ago

When thinking about the traditional "Place of Performance" I see challenges in getting to one of the ideas behind this attribute - where was economic activity generated from these government dollars spent?

I'll use one example I recently heard, grant money was provided for a school system in a certain Congressional District in Florida. That money was tied to a place of performance in Florida. The school system used that money to order a fleet of new school buses - from a company based in Michigan. The economic activity, jobs created, from that money should have been attributed to the place in Michigan, not the place in Florida that just signed the contract and generated no local economic activity.

Another idea would be to require the reporting of detailed subcontract data all the way to the point where the money goes to a salary or delivers a product. I realize that requiring this level of detail may not be very practical; but the intent of this issue is to say that we need an element to track the place of economic activity versus the place of contract execution. Place of Performance should be where the economic activity was generated.

bsweger commented 9 years ago

@HerschelC Thanks for your suggestion. I'll make sure that it's included when the next round of feedback is submitted to the DATA Act Inter-agency Advisory Committee.