This website is required by the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (Transparency Act).”
The FAQ describes its purpose as:
To provide the public with information about how their tax dollars are spent. Citizens have a right and a need to understand where tax dollars are spent. Collecting data about the various types of contracts, grants, loans, and other types of spending in our government will provide a broader picture of the Federal spending processes, and will help to meet the need of greater transparency. The ability to look at contracts, grants, loans, and other types of spending across many agencies, in greater detail, is a key ingredient to building public trust in government and credibility in the professionals who use these agreements.
An amazing amount of data which can be searched or browsed in a number of ways.
It is missing one ingredient that would change it from an amazing information resource to a game changing information resource, you.
The site can only report information known to the federal government and covered by the Transparency Act.
For example, it can’t report on family or personal relationships between various parties to contracts or even offer good (or bad) information on performance on contacts or methods used by contractors.
However, a topic map (links into this site are stable) could combine this information with other information quite easily.
I ran across this site in Analyzing US Government Contract Awards in R by Vik Paruchuri. A very good article that scratches the surface of mining this content.