On June 14, after negotiating with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Commerce Department, OMB Watch received a new set of unique identifiers for all transactions that may have contained personally identifiable information within USDA data. On June 15, the corrected data provided by the government was placed on FedSpending.org replacing the previously redacted field.
While the new data fixes over 30,000 records, there are 32 records for which the government has not provided new identifier numbers and cannot verify that the old identifier is free of personally identifiable information. We have continued to redact the Federal Award ID field for these 32 records.
According to the USDA, these 32 records, although coded with an agency code from USDA, have program numbers that indicate non-USDA programs. Therefore, USDA has stated they are actually not USDA records, and come from some other agency. USDA has reported not understanding how this happened, or if the 32 records contain personally identifiable information or not.
Because of the possible sensitive nature of the information within these 32 records, those records' Federal Award ID field have remained redacted until we are able to work with the government to solve this problem.
For more background on this issue, a full timeline and description of the discovery of personally identifiable information in government data on FedSpending.org, the steps OMB Watch took during and after this discovery, and other related documents are available below.
OMB Watch is shocked to learn that USDA has been disclosing Social Security numbers in a field that serves as a unique identifier. We are pleased that the government has stopped the practice. Now it must quickly provide corrected identifiers without personally identifiable information so that the public can once again fully use the financial spending information. And it must notify those individuals affected that their Social Security numbers may have been disclosed.
In response to learning of a possible New York Times story disclosing that some federal agencies within the USDA have personally identifiable information embedded in the Federal Award ID data field in the FAADS database of federal assistance, OMB Watch chose to redact the field temporarily from USDA records. The Federal Award ID field, which is a unique identifier for financial transactions, was blocked on FedSpending.org at 2:30 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2007.
On April 20, OMB Watch agreed to expand the temporary redaction of the Federal Award ID data field to the entire FAADS database, though no confirmed case of personally identifiable information has yet been discovered outside of USDA data. This measure was taken only because we received a formal commitment from the Department of Commerce that the government would provide a plan for updating the unique identifier without personally identifiable information within 30 days. The Department of Commerce oversees the Bureau of Census, which manages the FAADS database.
The Federal Award ID is an important unique identifier to track individual financial transaction. It is often used in requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act. Redacting the Federal Award ID makes it much more difficult to track the spending activities of government.
OMB Watch has released a statement on the longstanding problem of government disclosing personally identifiable information on FAADS as well as a chronology of events related to this issue. You can also read our April 16 letter to the Department of Commerce requesting a commitment to release a plan to fix the problem, and the reply received from the Department of Commerce on April 20 below.
Updated OMB Watch statement on privacy violation in government data (06/15/2007)