Hundreds of comments shape final Data Act schema
![](https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2021/12/12/wall_of_data-5/860x394.jpg?1639293395)
One year before the Data Act’s big reporting deadline, the Treasury Department dropped a finalized picture of how all the government's spending data will actually come together.
![Shutterstock image: data wall.](/media/ps360/GIG/FCWNow/Topics/Big-Data/wall-of-data.jpg)
For the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act to work, agencies need to be following the same playbook.
The Treasury Department released its finalized playbook, the Data Act Information Model Schema (DAIMS) v1.0, on April 29.
Created over four draft releases that generated hundreds of stakeholder comments, DAIMS is a guide to the reporting timeframes, data sources and data standards that make up Data Act reporting. Government-wide homogeneity is paramount if the result of the Data Act is to be a usable "display gallery" instead of a data dump.
"Friday's announcement completes a journey that began in 2010," said Hudson Hollister, executive director of the Data Coalition, in a statement. "From the very beginning, we wanted to mandate a government-wide format to transform federal spending from disconnected documents and siloed systems into standardized, open data."
As the nation's top accountants have noted, the schema is one of the few remaining pieces of guidance agencies were awaiting as they gear up for the ultimate goal: providing interoperable budget, grant, contract and other data to a federal portal by the Data Act's May 9, 2017, deadline.
Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget have already released the 57 standard data elements that will underpin Data Act reporting, though the Government Accountability Office has recommended clarifications.
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