This bill directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to create a dedicated subpage on the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) site to publish information about federal disaster assistance. It requires covered agencies to post regular public reports about amounts awarded, amounts obligated or expended, and a project-level ledger that ties dollars to named projects or activities.
The measure matters because it centralizes disparate disaster reporting into a single public portal and mandates machine-readable data. That makes it easier for state and local officials, auditors, researchers, and the public to trace recovery dollars — but it also creates new, recurring compliance work for agencies and for non‑individual recipients who must furnish granular project information.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires the OMB Director, working with Treasury and covered agencies, to establish a subpage under the FFATA website and to post quarterly reports no later than 30 days after each calendar quarter. Covered agencies must publish the quarter’s total disaster assistance, amounts obligated or expended, and a detailed project-level list, and ensure any agency data asset is machine‑readable.
Who It Affects
Covered federal agencies (those providing Stafford Act assistance plus the Small Business Administration and HUD) must produce the reports; non‑individual recipients (including states, local governments, nonprofits, grantees, contractors, and recipients of SBA disaster loans) will need to supply the detailed project information the agencies publish.
Why It Matters
Centralizing disclosure under the FFATA portal creates a single locus for oversight and research, improves public traceability of disaster funds, and pressures agencies to standardize reporting. It also forces agencies and recipients to reconcile existing program reporting with a new, uniform public dataset.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill builds a single, public home for federal post‑disaster spending data by directing OMB to add a subpage to the federal transparency site created under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. OMB must work with Treasury and the heads of the agencies that deliver disaster assistance to populate and maintain that page.
The law ties reporting to calendar quarters and directs agencies to publish within a fixed window after each quarter ends.
For each quarter, covered agencies must make three categories of data public: a total dollar amount of disaster assistance they provided during the quarter, the portion of that money that was obligated or expended on projects or activities, and a project-level list showing where money went. The project list must include the project name and description, an assessment of completion status, any award identification number the agency assigned, the Catalog for Disaster Assistance number from FEMA, and project location information (including ZIP codes).
The bill explicitly treats disaster insurance, SBA disaster loans, HUD disaster‑related CDBG activities, and Stafford Act assistance as reportable disaster assistance.The statute narrows the reporting population to non‑individual recipients: entities that receive federal disaster funds directly (grants, loans, contracts), including states, but excluding individual households. Agencies must ensure any relevant data asset is machine‑readable, and the bill directs agency heads, in coordination with OMB and Treasury, to issue implementing guidance.
If OMB determines it needs outside help, it may contract with a private entity — including a nonprofit — to develop the subpage.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires agencies to publish the quarter’s data on a public FFATA subpage no later than 30 days after the end of each calendar quarter.
Covered agencies explicitly include any agency providing Stafford Act assistance, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Project-level disclosures must include the Catalog for Disaster Assistance number assigned by FEMA and the project location including ZIP codes.
The law limits ‘eligible recipients’ to non‑individual entities that receive federal disaster funds directly (states, local governments, nonprofits, contractors), and excludes individuals.
OMB may enter into an agreement with a private entity, including a nonprofit, to build the required subpage; implementing guidance is required from agency heads in coordination with OMB and Treasury.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Creates a FFATA subpage for disaster assistance transparency
This subsection tasks the OMB Director, in consultation with Treasury and heads of covered agencies, with establishing a dedicated subpage on the FFATA site to host the required disclosures. Practically, that means using the federal transparency infrastructure as the canonical public repository rather than creating a separate portal — which should aid discoverability but will require OMB to add data models and UI elements specific to disaster project reporting.
Quarterly publication deadline and machine‑readability mandate
Heads of covered agencies must publish the required information no later than 30 days after each calendar quarter ends and must make any agency data asset machine‑readable. That creates a recurring compliance cycle and a technical requirement: agencies need automated feeds or exportable datasets in standard formats (CSV/JSON or similar), not just PDF reports, which may require IT changes and coordination with program offices.
Project-level fields that agencies must disclose
The statute enumerates the project-level elements agencies must publish: project name and description, completion status evaluation, award identification number, FEMA’s Catalog for Disaster Assistance number, project location (including ZIP codes), and any reporting‑requirement metadata collected by the agency. These are specific, structured fields that will require agencies to map internal award identifiers and geolocation data into the public schema and to reconcile discrepancies across programs.
Guidance and outsourcing authority
Agency heads must issue guidance — coordinated with OMB and Treasury — to implement the law’s requirements. Separately, OMB is authorized to contract with a private entity (including nonprofits) to develop the subpage. Together, these clauses delegate operational detail to agencies and OMB, leaving important decisions (data schemas, validation rules, publication cadence beyond the statutory quarter, and procurement approach) to implementing guidance.
Scope: covered agencies, disaster assistance, and recipients
The bill defines covered agencies to include any agency making Stafford Act assistance available, SBA, and HUD. It defines disaster assistance broadly — explicitly listing SBA disaster loans, HUD disaster‑related CDBG activities, National Flood Insurance Program coverage, and Stafford Act assistance — and defines eligible recipients as non‑individual entities that receive federal disaster funds directly, including states. These definitions fix the law’s scope and determine which programs and which awardees must appear on the public subpage.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State and local governments: gain a single public source to track federal recovery dollars and to reconcile federal awards with state/local accounting and planning.
- Auditors and oversight bodies (GAO, OIGs, state auditors): get standardized, machine‑readable datasets that simplify monitoring, audits, and detection of duplication or waste.
- Researchers, journalists, and public interest groups: benefit from easier access to project‑level information (including Catalog numbers and ZIP codes) for analysis of equity, effectiveness, and geographic distribution of aid.
- Taxpayers and communities affected by disasters: obtain greater transparency into how and where federal disaster dollars were spent, enabling more informed public scrutiny.
Who Bears the Cost
- Covered federal agencies (FEMA program offices, SBA disaster office, HUD disaster recovery teams): face increased reporting and IT work to map program data to the public schema and to meet quarterly publication deadlines.
- Non‑individual recipients (states, local governments, nonprofits, contractors): may need to produce more granular location data, award IDs, and completion status updates for agency reporting, increasing administrative burden.
- OMB and Treasury: responsible for coordination, guidance, and potentially funding or managing procurement to develop the subpage — adding program management and technical workload.
- Small recipients and subgrantees: if agencies require downstream entities to provide detailed ZIP‑level or completion data, small organizations could absorb compliance costs without dedicated capacity.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between the public value of granular, timely transparency and the practical costs and risks of producing that transparency: standardizing and publishing project‑level data improves oversight and public trust but imposes technical, administrative, and privacy burdens on agencies and recipients — a trade‑off with no frictionless solution.
The bill presses an appealing transparency objective but leaves crucial implementation choices unspecified. It demands machine‑readable, quarterly publication of project‑level fields, yet it does not supply standards for identifiers, geocoding, completion‑status taxonomy, or data validation.
Agencies will need to decide whether to adopt a common federal schema or to publish program‑specific variations; without a shared standard, the public dataset could be fragmented and hard to use.
Privacy, security, and operational trade‑offs will arise. Requiring ZIP codes and award identifiers improves traceability but risks exposing sensitive location information (for example, the precise location of critical infrastructure repairs or projects on private property), and it could complicate compliance with privacy rules or grant terms.
The statute also creates an unfunded recurring compliance burden: frequent publication cycles and machine‑readability requirements imply IT and staffing costs that agencies and recipients must absorb unless additional resources are provided.
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