GOV422

HTTP 422: the server understood your request, but the data was wrong.

Government data is full of errors. We document the ones we find: bad records, impossible values, silent schema changes, and the quiet ways federal data breaks downstream systems.

Record detail

"subcontract_id": "JH11-00071"
"description": "NMIS C-BAND RADAR ANTENNA"
"subcontract_amount": invalid value: "$39,157,943,915,794.00"
"pct_of_prime_award": invalid value: "9,107,462.1%"
"source": "SAM.gov Subcontract Reports"

L3Harris holds a $430 million Navy contract for flight-test instrumentation. Five days before Christmas 2023, a subcontract for a single C-band radar antenna was reported at $39.16 trillion. Contractors self-report these numbers to SAM.gov, and checking the math is left to the user. NORAD has tracked Santa by radar every Christmas Eve since 1955; who knew antennas were so expensive?

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Record detail

"subawardee": "TOWN OF VAN BUREN"
"subaward_amount": invalid value: "$1,000,000,000,000,000,100"
"description": "CONTRACT AMENDMENT TO ADD FUNDS."
"prime_award_total": "$11,645,252"
"source": "USAspending"

HUD awarded Maine $11.6 million in Community Development Block Grants, split across 62 subawards to small towns. The Town of Van Buren initially received $350,000 for public infrastructure. Then a contract amendment came through to "add funds" to the tune of one quintillion dollars. That's roughly 10,000 times global GDP, for a town of ~2,000 people. A quintillion here, a quintillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

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Record detail

"number_of_offers_received": invalid value: "999"
"total_obligation": "$325.32"
"description": "UNDER DESK CABLE MANAGEMENT TRAY"
"award_type": "Delivery Order"
"source": "USAspending"

GSA placed a $325.32 delivery order for an under-desk cable management tray and reportedly received 999 offers. That's roughly 3 vendors per dollar. In reality, the government uses 999 as a default placeholder when the actual number of offers isn't recorded. I got 999 offers but validation ain't one.

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Record detail

"status": invalid value: "Case Currently Open"
"filed_date": "2020-02-10"
"due_date": invalid value: "2020-05-20"
"file_number": "B-418462.1"
"source": "GAO"

Goldschmitt & Associates filed a bid protest in February 2020. GAO set a due date of May 20, 2020. Six years later, the case is still listed as Currently Open on the GAO website. To be fair, a lot of things stopped getting resolved in mid-March 2020.

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