The total covers ALL award types together (contracts, IDVs, grants,
loans, direct payments, other), so for most civilian agencies it is far
larger than contract spending (VA FY2026: $313B here vs $84B contracts).
For the split by award type use get_agency_obligations_by_award_category().
toptier_code is auto-padded to 3 digits if a shorter numeric value is
supplied.

fiscal_year defaults to the last completed fiscal year, not the current
one (USAspending's own default, which right after October 1 holds only a
few days of data). The answer always carries fiscal_year.