This bill requires executive agencies to provide detailed annual reports on their advertising contract expenditures, specifically tracking spending with small, socially and economically disadvantaged, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses.
Eleanor Norton
Representative
DC
The Federal Government Advertising Equity Accountability Act mandates that executive agencies provide detailed breakdowns of their advertising contract expenditures in their annual budget requests, starting with fiscal year 2027. This new reporting requirement forces agencies to specify total advertising spending alongside amounts directed toward small, socially and economically disadvantaged, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses. The goal is to increase transparency regarding federal advertising investments and equity in contract awards.
New Federal Reporting Mandate Tracks Ad Dollars Sent to Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses
The newly proposed Federal Government Advertising Equity Accountability Act is a straight-up transparency measure aimed at tracking where federal agencies spend their advertising money, specifically focusing on equity. Starting with the budget request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2027, executive agencies will have to submit a detailed breakdown of their advertising contracts to Congress.
The New Scorecard for Federal Ad Spending
Think of this as a new, detailed receipt required for every agency’s ad budget. When an agency submits its annual budget proposal, it must now report two key figures for the previous fiscal year and its estimates for the upcoming year. First, they must report the total amount spent on all advertising contracts. Second, and this is the core of the bill (Sec. 2), they must specifically detail how much of that money went to businesses owned by women and minorities, and to small businesses certified as socially and economically disadvantaged under the Small Business Act (Section 8(a)(4)).
Why This Matters to Your Wallet and Your Business
This isn't just bureaucratic paperwork; it’s about making sure federal contracting opportunities are visible and accessible. If you run a small, minority-owned marketing firm or a woman-owned creative agency, this bill provides Congress with the hard data needed to see if agencies are actually meeting diversity goals. For example, if the Department of Labor spends $50 million on outreach ads, this new reporting requirement will show exactly how much of that $50 million went to disadvantaged firms versus large, established ad agencies. This transparency creates accountability, which could lead to more federal contracts flowing to smaller firms that often struggle to compete with industry giants.
The Administrative Lift
For the agencies themselves, this means a bump in administrative work. They can no longer just report a lump sum for 'advertising.' They now have to implement systems to track and categorize every dollar spent on advertising services by vendor type—a necessary but sometimes complex task for massive federal bureaucracies. While this might add a slight burden to agency accountants, the benefit is clear: Congress and the public get a much clearer picture of federal spending equity. By making this data public via the budget process, the Act provides a powerful tool for monitoring whether federal advertising dollars are truly reaching the diverse businesses they are intended to support.