US federal guard-service contracts
Data > US federal guard-service contracts
Every US federal contract action coded S206 (Housekeeping, Guard) on USAspending.gov, FY2008 to FY2026: 215,353 contract actions on 50,726 contracts, $79.3 billion in obligations, checked against USAspending's published totals to the cent.
Download the dataset (34 MB, zip, from Zenodo) · Code and documentation
| Source | USAspending.gov |
|---|---|
| Covers | FY2008 to FY2026 |
| Size | 215,353 rows, one per contract action |
| Format | CSV (gzip), with a documentation file and the code that builds it |
| Version | 1.0.0, published 29 October 2026 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 (code: MIT) |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.23750992 (all versions) · 10.5281/zenodo.23750993 (this version) |
What it is
The United States government hires private companies to guard embassies, military bases, immigration detention centres, courthouses and federal buildings. Each of these contracts is reported to USAspending.gov, the government's public spending database, under the product and service code S206.
This dataset holds every contract action coded S206 from October 2007 to September 2026: 215,353 actions on 50,726 contracts, $79.3 billion in obligations, of which $15.8 billion was for work outside the United States. It shows where the money went by year, by country where the work was done, by agency and by company.
What it cannot be used to say
- The amounts are obligations, not payments: money the government commits to pay. Later changes can take money back, so 18 percent of rows are negative, and they are kept as reported.
- Amounts are in current dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
- The 2026 financial year is probably incomplete for the Department of Defense, whose contract records arrive with a 90-day delay.
- "Guard" is broad. The code covers armed and unarmed guards, at home and abroad, including detention officers. Other security work coded elsewhere, such as surveillance, is not included.
- Some recipients appear only as undisclosed or miscellaneous awardees, because USAspending reports them that way.
- Companies are grouped by the parent company reported for each action, so a firm that was later bought may appear under its old or its new owner.
How it was checked
- For every financial year, the sum of the cleaned rows matches USAspending's own published total for S206 contracts to the cent.
- Every row has code S206 and a financial year from 2008 to 2026, and no contract action appears twice.
What is in the file
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
transaction_key | USAspending's unique key for the contract action |
award_key | USAspending's unique key for the contract the action belongs to |
piid, modification_number, parent_piid | Contract number, modification number, and the umbrella contract it is ordered under, if any |
action_date, fiscal_year | Date of the action and the U.S. fiscal year (October to September) |
obligation_usd | Money obligated by this action, current U.S. dollars; negative means money taken back |
awarding_agency, awarding_subagency, funding_agency | Agency that signed the contract, its sub-agency, and the agency paying for it |
recipient_uei, recipient_name | The company's unique entity ID and name |
recipient_parent_uei, recipient_parent_name | The parent company, as reported |
recipient_country_code | Country of the company's address |
pop_country_code, pop_country_name, pop_state_code, pop_city | Where the work was done |
award_type, action_type | Type of contract and of action (new award, modification, and so on) |
psc | Product and service code (always S206) |
naics_code, naics_description | Industry code of the work |
extent_competed, contract_pricing | How the contract was competed and priced |
contingency_operation | Whether the contract supports a contingency, humanitarian or peacekeeping operation |
description | The contract action's description, as entered by the agency |
Cite
Azom, Kazi Affnann (2026). us-guard-spending: U.S. federal guard-service contracts (PSC S206), FY2008-FY2026 (Version v1.0.0) [Data set]. Mercenomics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23750993
The DOI above is for version 1.0.0. To always point to the latest version, use 10.5281/zenodo.23750992. Found an error? Report it on the Corrections page.