Data & Mapping FAQs

The Emergency Rental Assistance program provided two rounds of funding (ERA1 and ERA2) to states, U.S. territories, and local and Tribal governments to help eligible households pay rent or utility bills. The Consolidated Appropriations Act included $25 billion for ERA1 in December 2020.  The American Rescue Plan Act provided a total of $21 billion for ERA2 in March 2021. State and local governments began receiving funds in January 2021, and had until September 30, 2022 to spend ERA1 and have until September 30, 2025 to spend ERA2.

How was the program administered? 

• State, local, Tribal, and Territorial governments were responsible for distributing the funding to eligible households. 
• These governments had to obligate at least 65% of the ERA1 funds before September 30, 2021.  If they did not, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) could take back the unspent portion and redistribute the funds to state and local governments that had spent more than 65% of their initial funds. 
• The governments could voluntarily return excess funds to Treasury that they did not need. 

How were funds returned to Treasury redistributed? 

1. If Treasury took back funding, it could then redistribute the funds to other eligible local governments within the same state or locality.  If Treasury found no eligible local governments within the state or locality, it could redistribute to governments outside the state that asked for additional funding.   For example: The state of Alabama returned $42 million to Treasury. The city of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa County in Alabama had requested additional funds, so Treasury redistributed $6.6 million to Birmingham and $6.3 million to Tuscaloosa. 
2. If a government voluntarily returned funding to Treasury, that government had the option of identifying other governments in the state to receive the funding. 
3. Funds returned to Treasury could also go into a “general” pool of funds that Treasury could then transfer to other eligible state or local governments. 

The $350 billion Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) was established in March 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) made funding available to states, local governments, U.S. Territories, and Tribal governments to pay for resources to fight the pandemic, support families and businesses, maintain public services, and invest in long-term growth. Some states and the territories received all their funding in one payment. Other states and local governments received two payments: 50% beginning in May 2021 and the balance approximately one year later.  Tribal governments also received two payments: one in May 2021 and the other in June 2021. All governments have until 2026 to spend the money. 

How recipients may use funds: 

• Replace lost revenues experienced by the recipient due to the pandemic. Recipients may use SLFRF funds to pay for salaries and fringe benefits for local government employees; park improvement projects; the purchase of equipment and supplies for local government operations; renovation of public buildings and facilities.
• Support public health efforts.
• Help households, small businesses, impacted industries, non-profits, and the public sector recover economically.
• Provide premium pay for essential workers.
• Invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure.

Who reports, when

• States, territories, cities and counties with populations over 250,000 that received funds by July 15, 2021 were required to submit a Recovery Plan to Treasury by August 31, 2021. Recipients that received funds after July 15, 2021, were required to submit Recovery Plans 60 days after receiving their awards.  In addition, recipients had to post their Recovery Plans on publicly available websites. 
• Between March 31, 2021, and December 31, 2021, states, U.S. territories, cities, and counties with populations of more than 250,000; cities and counties with populations below 250,000 that received more than $10 million in SFLRF funds; and Tribal governments receiving more than $30 million reported for the first time to Treasury. (Treasury does not publish Tribal information). These recipients will continue to report quarterly. 
• Cities and counties with populations below 250,000 that have received less than $10 million  reported for the first time in April 30, 2022. These recipients will report every April going forward.  

Definitions 
DUNS —The Data Universal Numbering System was used  by the federal government as the official unique identifier for every organization that received funding from the government.  The DUNS numbers were created and assigned by Dun & Bradstreet at no cost to the organization.  As of April, 2022, the DUNS was replaced by the Unique Entity ID (UEI) which is assigned by the federal government.  

 Spending Group – Recipients selected one of seven spending groups to describe each project.   

• Public Health
• Negative Economic Impacts Governments could use SLFRF money to help communities, households, small businesses, nonprofits, and the public sector recover from impacts to the economy due to the pandemic.
• Administrative and Other
• Premium Pay
• Revenue Replacement Governments could use SLFRF money to provide services they would have paid for with funds lost due to the pandemic.  
• Adopted Budget and Total Obligation 
• Services to Disproportionately Impacted Communities
• Infrastructure 

Spending Categories – Based on the spending group for the project, recipients then selected from 83 spending categories to provide more details about the projects. For example, spending categories for Public Health projects include COVID-19 vaccination and medical expenses; for Premium Pay, the category is public sector employees; and Infrastructure includes broadband, and clean water. 

Adopted Budget – The budget for each project based on information existing in the recipient’s financial systems and the established budget process.

Amount received -- The total amount received by the prime recipient less funding that the prime recipient has returned to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

NOTE: We display the data as we receive it. We do not change, alter, or add to it. 

Find more information on SLFRF at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The Provider Relief Fund was established by the CARES Act in March, 2020. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received $186.5 billion to support hospitals and other healthcare providers impacted by COVID-19. Additional funding was provided by the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

The payments cover healthcare-related expenses or lost revenues and ensure that Americans who don’t have health insurance can be treated for COVID-19. 

Who received payments?

In addition to hospitals and primary-care doctors, the following, among others, may have qualified for payments: 

• Nursing homes and assisted living facilities
• Dentists
• Psychiatrists
• Eye/vision services
• Home and community-based support
• Dialysis centers
• Chiropractors
• Speech and language pathologists

Recipients of the payments had to: 

• Confirm that they received a payment and the specific payment amount
• Agreed to the Terms and Conditions of the payment

Are there limitations to the data? 

• The charts and graphs display payments to multiple providers with the same name because the data does not include a specific identifier for each provider.  
• States were incorrectly reported for some cities.  For example, Beverly Hills appears as a city for a provider in American Samoa.  

NOTE: We display the data as it has been reported by the providers to HHS. We do not change, alter, or add to it. 

• The All Pandemic Awards dashboard displays one entity in Minnesota that distributes the payments to recipients around the country on behalf of HHS.

More information on the Provider Relief Fund is available at HHS. 

The Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) was established in March 2020 as part of the CARES Act and made available $150 billion to states, eligible local governments, Tribal governments, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories. 

Reporting

• Prime recipients first reported for period was March 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020, and reported every quarter thereafter until the final reporting period July 1, 2023 to September 30, 2023.
• 964 prime recipients received CRF funds, however, only 864 primes who had received more than $150,000 under the CARES Act were required to report. 
• The prime recipients submitted reports on to the Treasury Office of Inspector General (OIG) through a reporting portal. The OIG then reviewed the reports. 
• The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee received the approved reports from the reporting portal to display on pandemicoversight.gov.

What data is displayed?

• Our data visualizations display prime recipient data for Tribal governments, however, funding distributed to Tribal sub-recipients is not yet publicly available.

What is the difference between the Prime Recipient Amount and Total Funds Received? 

• The Prime Recipient Amount is the funding originally received by the prime recipient.
• If a prime recipient did not use all the original funding, the excess was returned to the Treasury. The Total Funds Received is the Prime Recipient Amount minus what was returned to the Treasury. For example, the final total for the Prime Recipient Amount for the Commonwealth of Virginia is $3,328,998,095. The final Total Funds Received is $3,328,266,156 indicating that Virginia returned $731,939 to the Treasury. 

The data on the Funding Overview graphic includes:

• Updates to Treasury appropriation warrants and indefinite appropriations as of January 2021. Indefinite appropriations are appropriations of unspecified amounts of money. An indefinite appropriation may appropriate all or part of the receipts from certain sources, the specific amount of which is determinable only at some future date, or it may appropriate “such sums as may be necessary” for a given purpose. As the appropriation warrant data changes periodically, the data in the graphic will be updated.

There are many reasons why modifications to an award may display negative or zero amounts.

• Negative Amounts:
  • The agency may reduce or rescind (de-obligate) a portion of the original award amount which is indicated by a negative number. For example, the original contract award was for $2M, but six months into the contract the agency changes the scope of work to less than the original $2M and de-obligates $500,000, resulting in a modification with -$500,000.
  • A contract may be completed but not all the original funding was used, resulting in a negative number when the agency closes out the contract. For example, the original contract award was for $2M but at the end of the contract only $1.5M was used; when the agency closes the contract a -$500,000 will be displayed in the final modification.

• Zero Amounts
  • Changes made to an award for administrative reasons are reported as $0. For example, a change in the recipient’s address or the project’s description are reported as $0 in the Action Obligation field.
  • When an award has been completed and all the funds expended, the close-out modification is $0.
  • Also, $0 will be reported when awards are subject to the availability of funds, meaning funding will happen later. 
  • Certain contract types will also show $0 when funding happens later through task orders.

Generally, contract documents are not available for public display due to the possible proprietary information contained in the documents. Interested parties can seek contract documents from the awarding agency through a Freedom of Information Act request.

All the modifications/transactions for an award may not be displayed because PandemicOversight.gov only displays awards and award modifications/transactions related to coronavirus funding and  identified with a Disaster Emergency Fund Code. For example, award modification/transaction 03 would be displayed if the funds are coronavirus related, whereas modifications 01 and 02 might not have been funded by coronavirus legislation and, therefore, will only be displayed on USAspending.gov.

All the data that drives the Funding Charts and Graphs can be exported to a .csv. We will be adding other downloads across the site in the future.

A data dictionary that includes all the data elements on PandemicOversight.gov is available on USAspending.gov.

Limitations on data displayed on Pandemicoversight.gov include:

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) – The PPP data displayed on the Paycheck Protection Program Dashboard has the following limitations: 

• The Small Business Administration provided data on the jobs retained, however, 6.5% of borrowers did not provide jobs information.
• 76% of the borrowers did not provide their race or ethnicity; and 61% did not provide their gender. 
• In rare instances, the state indicator in the Borrower details popup on the Interactive Map is different from the location of the dot on the map. This discrepancy is due to a difference between the Borrower’s address as reported by the lender and the actual location determined by geocoding. For example, a bank might have reported a loan to a Borrower with an address in Kentucky but based on the zip code, the address was determined by geocoding to be in Kansas. The location of the dot indicating the location of the Borrower is in Kansas.

All Pandemic Awards – The data on the All Pandemic Awards Dashboard is pulled from USAspending.gov. Full descriptions of the known limitations to that data are available here. 

The Disaster Emergency Fund Codes (DEFC) are the unique identifiers specific to the coronavirus response that designate the legislation that provided the funding for a particular award.

• DEFC "L"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-123, Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act
• DEFC "M"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-127, Families First Coronavirus Response Act
• DEFC "N"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-136, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
• DEFC "O"
  • Not designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-136, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
  • Public Law 116-139, Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act
• DEFC "P"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-139, Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act

• DEFC "U"
  • Designated as emergency
  • Public Law 116-139, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
• DEFC "V"
  • Not designated as emergency
  • Public Law 117-2, American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

The PandemicOversight.gov posting schedule for data on contract, grant, and loan awards is:

If federal agencies submit data corrections to USAspending during the month, the data on PandemicOversight.gov will be updated accordingly. 

NOTE: The Department of Defense reports data on a 90 day delay in order to protect operations.

The authoritative source for the data on PandemicOversight.gov is USAspending.gov. The federal agencies that received funding from the CARES Act and three related pieces of legislation report financial data to USAspending.gov and PandemicOversight.gov imports that data through APIs.