“Finding data on federal grants and contracts awarded to states and congressional districts, local governments, nonprofit organizations, contractors, and other eligible entities may present challenges,” a new report from the Congressional Research Service observes.
The various tools that are available to help meet those challenges are cataloged and described by CRS in Tracking Federal Funds: USAspending.gov and Other Data Sources, May 13, 2015.
Other noteworthy new and updated CRS reports include the following.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Ongoing Outbreak, CRS Insights, May 19, 2015
Selected Issues in Homeland Security Policy for the 114th Congress, May 19, 2015
Congressional Primer on Responding to Major Disasters and Emergencies, updated May 19, 2015
Deployable Federal Assets Supporting Domestic Disaster Response Operations: Summary and Considerations for Congress, updated May 13, 2015
Critical Infrastructures: Background, Policy and Implementation, updated May 12, 2015
Human-Induced Earthquakes from Deep-Well Injection: A Brief Overview, updated May 12, 2015
Candidates, Groups, and the Campaign Finance Environment, CRS Insights, May 19, 2015
Uncertainty in Financial Projections of Social Security, CRS Insights, May 14, 2015
Freedom of Navigation and Territorial Seas, CRS Legal Sidebar, May 18, 2015
Iran, Gulf Security, and U.S. Policy, updated May 19, 2015
Perspectives on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) “Torture Report” and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: In Brief, updated May 14, 2015
Government Collection of Private Information: Background and Issues Related to the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization in Brief, May 19, 2015
Sunset of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, memorandum for the House Judiciary Committee, May 19, 2015
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.