Government procurement data sources and methodology

How current the data is

Each source is checked once a day; the bar shows the age of its newest record against how often that source normally updates.

Unit prices — pub.price_points

Every dot on a price chart and every row in a purchase table is one government purchase at one unit price, sourced from either a DIBBS award record or a USAspending award record. Each price point stores the underlying source URL, and the build refuses to publish a price point without one — that check runs in the data-load step of the site build, not just as a database constraint.

Contract action totals — pub.contract_actions

USAspending publishes agency-wide contract actions with obligation totals — the amount obligated on a contract action, not a per-unit price. We show these on NSN pages, clearly labeled as "contract action totals, not unit prices," and they never appear on a price chart, which is unit-price data only.

AMSC / AMC — pub.amsc_observations

The Acquisition Method Code (AMC) records whether a part is coded as suitable for competitive acquisition (AMC 1 or 2) or to be bought from the actual manufacturer or a sole-source contractor (AMC 3, 4 or 5). The suffix code (AMSC) records the reason, such as a complete government data package with rights (G) or a need for engineering source approval (C). The definitions are those in DFARS PGI 217.7506. We show the most recent value on record with its date and source; the main source is DLA's public PUB LOG file. The codes describe the item, not any one solicitation. See the guide to AMC and AMSC codes.

DIBBS data explained

DIBBS is the DLA Internet Bid Board System, where the Defense Logistics Agency posts requests for quote and records awards. NSN Explorer reads each open solicitation's NSN, item name, quantity, return-by date and set-aside or competition code, and each award's unit price, quantity and winning supplier. Solicitations are kept after they close so the demand record grows over time. Every DIBBS row on the site links to its record at dibbs.bsm.dla.mil.

Price spikes and "overcharges"

A purchase is flagged as a spike when its unit price is at least 3× the NSN's trailing median price at that point in time. On category pages, a row is highlighted when the most recent purchase is at least 3× the NSN's historical median. This is a mechanical threshold, not an accusation — it's a starting point for a supplier sanity-checking a quote, or for a buyer's, researcher's, or reporter's own follow-up questions, and every flagged purchase links to its source record.

Coverage

We currently fully index 539 Federal Supply Classes ("deep" categories) covering 150,271 NSNs, 45,828 priced purchases, and 423,874 contract actions totaling $29,336,978,453 in indexed spend. Government-wide long-tail coverage (millions of NSNs) is on the roadmap; see /browse/ for the current list.

Downloads

These CSV files are free to download. They hold the site's own totals and USAspending records, and they are rebuilt with the site every day.

• classes.csv: one row per federal supply class in the catalog, with its group, NSNs tracked, open solicitations, solicitations closing within 7 days, and the count and dollar total of priced purchases.
• groups.csv: one row per federal supply group, with its number of classes, NSNs tracked and open solicitations.
• agencies.csv: one row per agency, with its indexed purchase count and dollar total.
• contract-actions-<fsc>.csv, such as contract-actions-5330.csv: the USAspending contract actions recorded against one class, with date, award number, PSC, NAICS, description, obligation, agency, recipient and a link to the USAspending record. Each class page links to its file when one exists.

The as_of column in the first three files is the date of the site build that wrote the file. It is the same on every row and changes when the site is rebuilt. Contract-action files carry each record's own action date instead. Text that begins with =, +, - or @ is written with a leading apostrophe so spreadsheets read it as text. Row-level solicitation and award files are not offered yet.