Data Foundation Applauds HHS and OMB for Expanding Federal Grant Data Standards Under the GREAT Act

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 22, 2026 — The Data Foundation today commended the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for releasing version 3.0 of the governmentwide grants data standards on June 17, 2026, a release that adds standardized data elements for the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) stage of the grants lifecycle.

The standards are required by the bipartisan Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act of 2019 (Pub. L. 116-103), which Congress passed unanimously and directed HHS, as the designated standard-setting agency, to develop jointly with OMB. The GREAT Act calls for governmentwide, standardized definitions for the data that recipients of federal awards report, built to be searchable, machine-readable, nonproprietary, and consistent with the standards already used for federal spending transparency.

"Standardized, machine-readable grant data is exactly the kind of durable, nonpartisan infrastructure the GREAT Act envisioned, including definitions that make federal grant reporting cheaper for recipients, better for program managers, and faster for oversight," said Nick Hart, President and CEO of the Data Foundation. "HHS and OMB deserve real credit for doing the careful, technical work of getting the standards right."

The v3.0 release in June 2026 continues a tranche-by-tranche approach: earlier releases established the initial core data elements drawn from the USAspending.gov data dictionary and Treasury's Governmentwide Spending Data Model (GSDM), followed by standards for the federal Assistance Listings published on SAM.gov. The new release extends the standards to funding opportunities and brings the published set to several hundred standardized data elements, with companion machine-readable JSON schemas published alongside the documentation.

The Data Foundation highlighted several features of the standards as models of sound data-standards practice:

• Built on recognized engineering standards. The data element labels follow the ISO/IEC 11179-5 international standard, and use National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) representation terms, directly answering the GREAT Act's call to incorporate voluntary consensus standards.
• Continuity with existing transparency systems. The elements map to Treasury's GSDM and the USAspending.gov lineage built under the DATA Act, preserving existing data flows rather than disrupting them.
• Designed to minimize burden. The standards specify what information must be collected and exchanged, not how agencies design their systems or screens, which is a deliberate choice that lets agencies modernize without forcing recipients into new interfaces.
• Transparent and iterative. Each release is documented with a public change log, so recipients, agencies, and technology providers can track exactly what changed and when.

"When grant data is standardized and machine-readable, it has a significant impact of moving away from generating compliance-focused documents to building evaluative and comparable insights across hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants," said Taka Ariga, Senior Director of the Center for Data Policy. "It also cuts down time spent on administrative functions by reporting the same information once and reused many times, benefiting recipients, agencies, and the public."

The Data Foundation noted that the standards are being implemented in stages, and that the most significant benefits will arrive as agencies adopt the standards across their information collections in the period ahead. The Data Foundation will continue to support recipients, agencies, and technology providers in understanding and applying the standards in the months and years ahead.

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About the Data Foundation

The Data Foundation is a Washington, DC-based, non-profit, non-partisan organization. It is a trusted authority on the use of open, accessible data to fuel a more efficient, effective, and accountable government; spark innovation; and provide insights to the country's most pressing challenges. It conducts research, facilitates collaborative thought leadership, and promotes advocacy programs that advance practical policies for the creation and use of accessible, trustworthy data and evidence. The Data Foundation is recognized by Candid Guidestar with the Platinum Seal of Transparency and by Charity Navigator as a 4-Star non-profit. To learn more, visit www.datafoundation.org. (LEI: 254900I43CTC59RFW495)

Media Contact

J.B. Wogan, Director of Communications
Phone: (202) 964-1130
Email: media@datafoundation.org

Additional Resources:

• Data Foundation Fact Sheet
• Standards from HHS
• OMB M-24-11