[skram]

A lot of this data can also be browsed by mere mortals at http://openbeta-contracts-explorer.usaspending.gov/ . More information is available at https://openbeta.usaspending.gov/ too.

[wslh]

I checked but is there any reason why the totals are pretty low? for example looking for Microsoft I found a total of 33M http://openbeta-contracts-explorer.usaspending.gov/#!/year/A...

[skram]

Probably because of the way government contracting works with (value added) resellers. One such is "Carahsoft" (see http://openbeta-contracts-explorer.usaspending.gov/#!/year/A...). If you dig into the details of the transactions you'll see that many are for technology companies' software and services. One example link that includes Salesforce, HP, VMWare, Symantec, etc.: http://openbeta-contracts-explorer.usaspending.gov/#!/year/A...

[danso]

I don't know much about this new explorer tool, but it's based off of USASpending.gov which is a bit fickle...which is to be expected given the messiness of the data involved (companies have varied names, subsidiaries etc., among other real-life complexities).

But you can do an "advanced search" by registered company name, and this is what comes up for "Microsoft" -- probably doesn't include all of its subsidiaries that don't have "Microsoft" in the name: ~$1.4 billion in awarded contracts

https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx?sub=y&...

edit: Oh I know the reason for the discrepancy...the homepage of the beta app says it's only partial data:

> Added more years of contract data to now include 2011 - 2015

[Spooky23]

Government requires competition for purchases. So vendors like Dell, SHI, CDW, Carahsoft, etc are all wholesalers who compete over the pennies for fulfillment to sell Microsoft (and most other) software.

[anton_tarasenko]

Two reasons:

1. Agencies often buy from distributors and integrators, not publishers. In this case, original manufacturers may appear in the variable `descriptionofcontractrequirement`.

2. Spelling may differ. Variable `dunsnumber` is be a better indicator for uniqueness.

[anton_tarasenko]

Yep, and http://government-contractors.insidegov.com/ is pretty easy to use.