Government Atlas
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5 mapped changes in 1789
Changes within this atlas, not a complete count of government growth. Renames and transfers do not create an additional organization.
About this atlas & sources
Clear sources. Honest limits.
Government Atlas is an independent project by XMarvin, not an official government website. This edition pairs sourced organizational histories with official spending data. Historical coverage remains incomplete.
What is—and isn’t—in the chart?
The chart covers major cabinet departments, selected independent agencies and bureaus, and relevant predecessors. It is not a complete inventory of federal offices, programs, commissions, government corporations, or state and local government. The agency directory exposes the broader Federal Register inventory and identifies entries whose histories are not yet mapped. Counts on the chart include departments and nested organizations in this atlas; they are not a census or a measure of overhead.
Organization history begins in 1789, when the new government under the Constitution began operating. Continental and Confederation arrangements before 1789 are outside this edition. Names and parent relationships use calendar year-end snapshots. A year with a transfer shows the destination at year-end. Intermediate structures within that year may not appear. Executive-department status is distinct from cabinet membership: the Postmaster General joined the cabinet in 1829, but the postal department received formal executive status in 1872. In 1947–1948, Army, Navy, and Air Force are shown as executive departments; they were coordinated through the National Military Establishment before becoming subordinate military departments in 1949. Histories are curated, not a live feed.
U.S. Government Manual collectionWhere do spending figures come from?
OMB FY2027 Historical Tables: table 4.1 (outlays by agency) and table 10.1 (GDP and price indexes). Only actual fiscal years 1962–2025 are used. Sources retrieved November 4, 2026; future estimates are excluded.
Social Security’s on-budget and off-budget rows are added together. Offsetting receipts are retained, so the accounting rows reconcile to total spending subject to rounding. OMB’s 1976 transition quarter is not included as a separate year.
Download OMB table 4.1 (XLSX) Download OMB table 10.1 (XLSX)How are comparisons calculated?
2025 dollars: nominal outlays × (2025 GDP price index ÷ selected-year GDP price index). This broad adjustment is not an agency-specific cost index.
Share of GDP: outlays ÷ fiscal-year nominal GDP × 100. Both dollar amounts use the same units before division.
OMB reports agency amounts in millions of dollars. The interface rounds for readability; the data table and CSV give more precision. Some source entries are zero at the published precision.
Why does an agency have spending before it existed?
OMB adjusts historical agency figures to fit the structure of the budget edition. Earlier amounts can belong to predecessor programs. The spending view keeps those series intact and labels them; it does not claim the modern agency existed then.
We do not reconstruct historical parent budgets by adding modern agency rows. Detailed original-year budget documents would be needed for that.
OMB’s explanation of historical reclassification