GAO Says Federal Agencies Struggle to Match Data Used to Check Award Eligibility
Federal agencies face persistent problems matching and verifying the data they use to determine whether recipients qualify for government awards and payments, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The GAO publicly released report GAO-26-107466 on June 16, finding weaknesses in the way eligibility information moves among federal systems. The problems include limited interoperability, incomplete data-quality controls and validation rules that are either insufficient or not properly documented.
The findings affect a basic part of federal oversight: checking recipients before an award is made, monitoring eligibility during the life of an award and reviewing payments after money has gone out.
A large and fragmented data landscape
Agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify eligibility during the award and payment life cycle, GAO said. The sources can contain information needed to determine whether a person, organization or other recipient meets federal requirements.
As of September 2025, 28 of those sources were in the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay working system or had been designated for inclusion, according to the report. Do Not Pay is used to help agencies screen recipients and payment information against federal data.
GAO’s review found that the systems do not reliably work together. The agency examined nine selected data sources and found data-quality issues in all nine.
Among the problems were validation rules that were not strong enough to ensure information was accurate or complete, as well as rules whose operation was not adequately documented. Those shortcomings can make it difficult for agencies to know whether a record is reliable or whether two records refer to the same recipient.
Matching records after payments
The report also examined whether agencies could match eligibility data with post-award information in USAspending.gov, the federal government’s public spending database.
GAO identified weaknesses in that matching process as well. When eligibility information cannot be linked reliably to award and payment records, agencies may have a harder time detecting potentially ineligible recipients, preventing improper payments and giving the public a dependable picture of federal spending.
The report does not establish a single nationwide dollar estimate for payments made to ineligible recipients. Its findings concern the quality and matching capability of data systems; they do not, by themselves, show that a particular recipient received an improper payment.
That distinction matters because a data-quality problem is a control weakness, not proof that every payment associated with the system was improper. The practical concern is that weak controls can make errors or ineligible payments harder to identify.
GAO calls for congressional action
GAO said Congress should act to improve interoperability and establish stronger government-wide data standards for award and payment eligibility information.
The recommendation comes amid broader GAO concerns about federal spending transparency and program integrity. In a related report, the agency said federal information used for transparency and oversight remains incomplete and requires additional action by agencies and Congress.
GAO has also reported that seven agencies had programs with estimated improper-payment rates of at least 10% for two, three or four consecutive fiscal years between 2021 and 2024. That finding provides context for why reliable eligibility and payment records matter, although it does not connect those rates to the nine data sources reviewed in the new report.
For agencies, the next challenge is making data from separate systems usable together, with clearer standards for accuracy, documentation and validation. For Congress, GAO’s report puts the focus on whether government-wide requirements and oversight are strong enough to make that happen.
Until those links improve, agencies may continue to face difficulty verifying eligibility consistently across the federal award and payment system, while the public may have less confidence that spending records can be fully matched to the information used to approve payments.
Sources
- Federal Data: Congressional Action Needed to Improve Interoperability of Award and Payment Eligibility Data, U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Federal Information Transparency: Action Needed to Improve Efficiency and Effectiveness and Enhance Program Integrity, U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Improper Payments: Agency Actions Needed to Help Save Taxpayer Dollars, U.S. Government Accountability Office
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