Anonymous access to Other Transaction Agreement summaries was just re-enabled
The General Services Administration has still not responded to a request for comment on why they continue to exclude Other Transaction Agreements from USASpending.gov.
Last updated on January 28, 2025 at 4:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Reporting on access to a website being opaquely shut down is a tenuous process, as the reporting itself causes waves that can result in a reversal of the very activity being exposed.
As a result, I have been constantly monitoring whether the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) would silently re-enable anonymous access to Other Transaction Agreement summaries following my reporting yesterday on a silent degradation in the site’s transparency.
As of roughly 9:46 a.m. Eastern Standard Time this morning, anonymous access to Other Transaction Agreements is again functioning on FPDS. The General Services Administration has still not responded to a request for comment, despite providing an acknowledgement and asking for timing constraints. Acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian also issued a memo pausing obligations on Thursday, as reported by Washington Technology, directing employees “to suspend the execution of any new GSA-funded obligations, including new awards, task and delivery orders, modifications, and options,” with the exception of those falling within several listed categories.
Beyond a timely journalistic uproar seemingly providing reason to reverse a further degradation of the transparency of a critical category of contracts encompassing tens of billions of dollars in military artificial intelligence procurement, the larger issue remains why USASpending.gov continues to exclude Other Transaction Agreements from its far more user-friendly website.
As noted in a November 2023 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office: “Until Congress includes OTAs in the list of federal awards that agencies must report to USAspending.gov, policymakers and the public will continue to lack complete spending information and transparency of OTAs.”
The U.S. Government and military tout their march towards a futuristic world of autonomous aircraft and tanks while allowing the basic infrastructure for transparency and accountability for those contracts to crumble.
January 28, 4:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time: A reference to Thursday’s memo from acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian was added.