Sneak Preview: GAO Finds FPI Not Meeting Statutory Expectations
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Although the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched the Federal Program Inventory (FPI) in 2024, the information on the site still falls short of meeting statutory requirements, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a recent report, which made numerous recommendations urging the agency to ensure this information is provided.
While the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111-352) required OMB to develop and annually update an inventory of publicly available websites, the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (2021 NDAA) (Pub. L. 116-283) expanded the requirement calling for OMB to develop an inventory of all federal programs.
OMB, along with the Council on Federal Financial Assistance (COFFA), in February 2024 created the FPI (https://fpi.omb.gov/), which is a comprehensive, searchable website offering information about federal programs that provide grants, loans or direct payments to individuals, governments, firms or other organizations. Users can explore program objectives, applicant eligibility, and both estimated and actual program spending. They also can filter their searches across various categories and subcategories, agencies, types of assistance and types of eligible applicant to build a custom list of programs. The FPI leverages existing government data sources, including SAM.gov and USASpending.gov, to enable users to access detailed information about a program’s spending.
In January 2025, OMB updated the site by expanding the inventory of federal programs from 2,400 to more than 2,600 programs and included additional information, such as Department of the Treasury programs pertaining to tax expenditures and interest on the public debt. Although OMB fulfilled the statutory requirement by including an annual FPI update in 2025, GAO noted that the FPI still is not meeting many of the requirements called for in the 2021 NDAA. For example, it does not include all federal programs, such as foreign assistance or defense programs, nor does it provide all required program, spending and performance information for the 2,600 programs now listed.
In a September 2024 report, GAO recommended that OMB publicly articulate plans that describe the actions, resources and time frames needed to fully implement the inventory. Although OMB at the time agreed with the recommendation, GAO has found that OMB as of February 2026 did not have any updates on its planning efforts, nor had it publicly articulated such plans.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
Join us for our following Thompson Grants event:
Federal Grants Forum | April 28-29, 2026 | Washington, D.C.
