Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act FFATA

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) is a 2006 federal transparency law requiring that information on federal awards — contracts, grants, loans, and their first-tier subawards — be made publicly searchable. The tool prime contractors and grant recipients once used to file the required subaward reports, FSRS.gov (the FFATA Subaward Reporting System), was retired by GSA on March 8, 2025; that reporting function is now built into SAM.gov, and the resulting data continues to feed the public transparency site USAspending.gov.

What it is

FFATA (Public Law 109-282), as amended by the Government Funding Transparency Act of 2008, requires that federal award data — including grants, cooperative agreements, loans, contracts, subgrants, and subcontracts — be published on a single public website, now USAspending.gov. A key implementing mechanism is subaward reporting: prime awardees must disclose their first-tier subawards and, where applicable, executive compensation data. That reporting used to happen in a standalone system called FSRS (the FFATA Subaward Reporting System, at FSRS.gov). GSA decommissioned FSRS.gov on March 8, 2025 and moved subaward-reporting functionality directly into SAM.gov, consolidating it with the other award-system tools already hosted there. Legacy FSRS.gov users are redirected to SAM.gov and use their existing SAM.gov credentials to continue reporting.

Who operates it

SAM.gov — including the subaward-reporting function that replaced FSRS — is operated by the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of the Integrated Award Environment (IAE). USAspending.gov, the public-facing transparency site that FFATA/subaward data ultimately populates, is operated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) overseeing FFATA policy compliance.

Access

The old FSRS.gov URL no longer resolves as a standalone reporting tool; visitors are redirected to SAM.gov. Two access levels apply: (1) federal reviewers who only need to search and view existing subaward reports can sign in to SAM.gov with a government email and no special role; (2) prime awardees who must file subaward reports need a SAM.gov account with the appropriate reporting role assigned by their entity administrator, using the same UEI-linked entity registration SAM.gov already requires for contracting and grants. The underlying award and subaward data, once reported, is publicly viewable at no cost on USAspending.gov without an account. Support for the transition — training videos, knowledge articles, and open office hours — is provided through the Federal Service Desk (FSD.gov), GSA's help desk for SAM.gov and related award systems.

How logisticians use it

Acquisition, contracting, and grants personnel at prime contractor and grantee organizations use SAM.gov's subaward-reporting function to meet FFATA/FAR 52.204-10 compliance obligations for subcontracts above the reporting threshold. Government acquisition, oversight, and market-research staff use the resulting public data on USAspending.gov to trace how prime awards flow down to subrecipients — useful for tracking small-business subcontracting, oversight of executive compensation disclosures, and general federal-spending transparency research.

Related systems

FFATA subaward reporting is now part of SAM.gov, which also hosts entity registration, exclusions, and contract/assistance data. FPDS (Federal Procurement Data System) supplies the prime-contract data that SAM.gov's subaward module links against, and USAspending.gov is the public destination where the combined award and subaward data is ultimately displayed.