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The Public Tab – See every federal dollar flowing through your district

The Public Tab – See every federal dollar flowing through your district

by jaaacckz·Apr 16, 2026·1 point·8 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidDark HorseSolve My Problem

District-level framing makes USAspending.gov data actually relatable for citizens.

Strengths
  • •Nightly pipeline from USAspending.gov, LDA.gov, SAM.gov, and Congress.gov
  • •Lobbying-to-contract matching via Unique Entity Identifier reveals influence chains
  • •Anomaly scoring model flags suspicious awards across 435 districts
Weaknesses
  • •USAspending.gov and OpenTheBooks already provide raw federal spending data
  • •Beta stage with limited historical data and no mobile app yet
Category
Data
Target Audience

Journalists, researchers, and civically engaged citizens

Similar To

USAspending.gov · OpenTheBooks · ProPublica Dollars for Docs

Post Description

Early in my career I worked on DataLab, the sister site to USASpending.gov before it got merged into it. I then worked on USASpending a bit. Datalab had more of a "for the people" storytelling vibe to it which I liked a lot more and I feel that spirit got lost when we "merged" into USASpending. I built The Public Tab in response to this feeling.

My core idea: The district you are in is a more relatable measure of analysis for federal spending for the average person. You want to know what is going on around you. You can more easily "follow the money" this way.

I have a pipeline that runs nightly/weekly with data digest from USASpending, SAM.gov, and some other big players in the space. You can subscribe to changes and get updates daily/weekly on spending in your district. You can map that to lobbying, new contracts that pop up, as well as what your rep is voting on.

The client libraries are written in ruby and are open source here: https://github.com/govapi-rb

You can also check out the API Docs here: https://thepublictab.com/docs/api

It is deemed "beta" for now.. I'd love any feedback and to hear what is cool and what is not.

Thanks!

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