For years usgovernmentspending.com and usgovernmentrevenue.com have shown on the Numbers tab the data source type for the spending and revenue numbers. The data source type for each number is shown by color code as follows, in decreasing order of reliability, as follows: Actual, Interpolated, Budgeted, Estimated, or "Guesstimated."
Now we are showing the data source for each number on the home page and on the Charts tab. Bar chart values are show in blue for "actual" and red for "estimated" (including budgeted, estimated, and "guesstimated"). In addition, values shown as numbers on the Charts tab are tagged with their data source, a-i-b-e-g, as appropriate.
Typically, the values that you see on the site are "rolled up" from individual spending items into broad functional categories. The rolled-up values may include, e.g., actual and guesstimated. When rolled-up values have different data source types, the type displayed is always the less reliable one. For example, if any component of the rolled-up value was sourced as "guesstimated" then the rolled-up value will display as "guesstimated."
