One of the longest clean streaks in the federal government.
The National Science Foundation holds an unmodified — clean — opinion on its financial statements, and has for decades, audited by Kearney & Company under the oversight of the NSF Office of Inspector General. That means the auditor found the statements presented fairly, in all material respects — reliably, year after year. This monitor states the confirmed record and its sources, and reads it against the structural contrast below.
The audit record
Why this monitor
The confirmed record is a long, unbroken run of clean, unmodified opinions on NSF's financial statements. A clean opinion means the statements can be relied on — the same data discipline this monitor demonstrates on the budget: every figure resolves to a published source and recomputes against the budget's own arithmetic, with the five appropriation accounts validated to the published Total NSF Discretionary Funding and the mandatory Antarctic Research Vessel kept strictly out of the discretionary headline. NSF obligates the great majority of its money as grants and cooperative agreements to thousands of universities and research institutions, and a clean opinion means those transactions reconcile, reliably, back to their source. The streak start year (~FY1998) is derived from the consecutive count rather than pinned to a single primary quotation — so it is shown as approximate, not asserted as hard, exactly the kind of restraint this project exists to keep.
Sources are linked at each node. The streak, opinion, and auditor are drawn from the NSF Agency Financial Report (FY2025 — 28th consecutive) and the NSF OIG Independent Auditors' Reports (Kearney & Company); the DoD contrast is drawn from CRS and GAO, not asserted beyond those sources.