CRS (2019) and GAO (2022) independently found that DoD lacks the systematic data needed to track Other Transactions funding by subject area

other-transactions-authoritygaocrsdefense-fundingdata-gap

The Congressional Research Service's dedicated background report on DoD's use of Other Transaction (OT) authority states that "DOD lacks authoritative data that can be used to assess OT effectiveness and better understand broader trends associated with these agreements," attributing the gap to a split between two separate tracking systems — the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation for prototype OTs, and the Defense Assistance Awards Data System for research OTs — that makes a consolidated view of OT data difficult to obtain. Three years later, GAO's audit of consortia-based OTs (GAO-22-105357, September 2022) reached the same structural conclusion for a different slice of the program: per DefenseScoop's direct quotation of the report, "DOD has collected some data on consortia-based OTAs, but it does not have data on the obligations each consortium has received because it does not have a systematic approach for tracking which consortia receive awards."

Both findings describe an absence inside the department, not a methodological dispute between the two watchdogs — CRS and GAO examined different (though overlapping) slices of OT activity three years apart and reached the same conclusion independently. GAO had to assemble its own estimate of which technology-focused consortia received the most money using outside and industry data sources rather than DoD's own records, see claim-gao-2022-ot-consortia-breakdown-shows-conventional-categories-not-fringe-physics. The gap is long-standing rather than newly discovered: Congress's own 2014 repeal of a prior by-technology disclosure requirement shows the department once had, and then lost, a mechanism that would have produced exactly this accounting.