SAM.gov, the federal government’s System for Award Management, tracks billions of dollars in contracts and subcontracts, the companies and organizations that receive them, and entities barred or suspended from doing business with the government.
But the system, which incorporates several retired databases on government procurement, can be daunting to use — even for journalists who have some famili...
The strongest version of this narrative is that SAM.gov and USAspending are powerful but imperfect tools for tracking federal spending, requiring users to navigate complexities like coding systems and data errors. The expertise of figures like Zvenyach adds credibility, framing these databases as essential for transparency despite their flaws. However, the emphasis on errors and manual entry risks undermining confidence in the data without sufficient context—are these errors systemic or isolated...