The earliest published signal there is
An award record tells you what was bought last year. A budget line tells you what a service is asking to buy in two years, and the request document is published long before any notice exists. This is the whole procurement, research and operations request, line by line, and how each line has moved between requests.
Three exhibits, every line, every year
The Comptroller publishes the request as three display files. P-1 is procurement: aircraft, vehicles, ammunition, equipment. R-1 is research and development, which is where a programme lives for years before it turns into procurement. O-1 is operation and maintenance, which is sustainment, depot work and services, and is where most of the work a small supplier can actually reach sits.
Every line carries its service, appropriation, budget activity, line item number and the money for each year the request states. Because a request restates several years at once, a line can be read across requests, and a line that was forty million last year and ninety this year is a programme about to start buying.
- Search the line titles, filter by service, exhibit, year and size
- Every line opens onto its own history across published requests
- And onto the contracts whose descriptions mention it
A request is not an appropriation, and the join is by words
Two honest limits, both printed on the pages themselves rather than in a footnote.
These are the figures the Department asked for. Congress appropriates, and the two differ, sometimes a great deal. The value is the direction and the timing rather than the exact number.
And a budget line has no identifier in common with a contract: they are recorded by two different systems that share nothing but English. So contracts are offered as "contracts that mention this line", never as "the contracts under this line". An honest weak join is worth having. A confident wrong one is not.
a score with no reasons is a horoscope
Why this is usually the dearest thing on a price list
A budget module is what the enterprise platforms charge most for, and it is a good pitch: knowing what will be funded beats knowing what was bought. The data behind it is three spreadsheets the Department publishes at a fixed address, in a shape built for an appropriations staffer rather than for a supplier.
Turning a thousand programme lines into an answer to "is anyone going to buy what I make, and when" is the work, and it is most of the argument for this product.
Where it is in the app
Budget, under Intelligence in the menu. Intelligence is the part of LastAwarded that finds the market, one of the eight parts.
Related
- ForecastWhat an office is likely to buy next, from what it actually bought.
- The way inHow you get to the money once you have found it.
- Award historyWhat was actually bought, against what was asked for.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.