Grants Blog

Archive for April, 2009

Here’s some information I picked up at the recent National Grants Management Association annual training conference. According to Terry Ramsey of HHS (formerly of OMB), the draft Circular A-133 Compliance Supplement is being circulated and should be released “soon” and will include an appendix dealing with the Recovery Act. OMB also plans to release an addendum to the Compliance Supplement with more specific Recovery Act information as close as possible to June 30 so that auditors can get started on auditing the Recovery Act funds.

We’ll let you know when we learn more…

Just a quick note for those of you interested in the Recovery Act. OMB published 2 CFR Part 176 – the requirements for grant and assistance reporting, Buy America and Davis Bacon – as interim final guidance in today’s Federal Register. Comments are being accepted until June 22.

To read the announcement, click here.

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, there could be significant changes to the federal government’s single audit process in 2009.

At the request of members of Congress, GAO took a look at how the OMB Circular A-133 single audit process could be revised to improve federal oversight and accountability of grant funds. The current process, GAO reported, offers no way to ensure how or even if federal agencies implement single audit requirements. Further there are variations among federal agencies as to how they carry out their oversight responsibilities, such as quality control reviews.

GAO went on to describe current efforts to improve the audit process. OMB anticipates that revisions to Circular A-133 and the checklist for performing quality control reviews will be completed in the fall of 2009. Also, the AICPA plans to finalize applicable auditing standards and the AICPA Audit Guide, and to develop illustrative practice aids in 2009, GAO reported.

GAO’s report is available here.

For those interested in A-133, Management Concepts offers a two-day course, Audit of Federal Grants and Cooperative Agreements. For information about this training, click here.

The Office of Management and Budget has just added a new part to Title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations to establish a standard award term for grants, cooperative agreements, and loans funded with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars. The new interim final guidance and award term was released late Friday as part of OMB’s second installment of the more comprehensive guidance to federal agencies on implementation of the Recovery Act. The new 2 CFR Part 176—which should be published in the Federal Register in the next day or so—covers several issues related to the receipt of grants and other assistance under the Recovery Act: reporting, Buy America, wage rates, and single audits.

Management Concepts is currently working to sift through the new guidance and the standard award term to understand its impact on grants administration. We’ll keep you updated here on the blog, as well as in our classroom and online courses.

In the meantime, you can view the entire OMB implementation guidance, including the new standard award term, by clicking here.

The Office of Management and Budget today issued the proposed data elements that would be required for recipient reporting on projects funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

OMB is proposing four basic sets of data. Grant recipients would provide fairly standard  information about themselves and their Recovery Act award. They would also have to describe the funded project or activity and its current status.

Things get a little more complicated in the third and fourth sets of required data elements. Recipients would have to provide detailed information about their subrecipients, including, for example, the entity’s DUNS number and organization type. But OMB is also proposing that recipients list the total amount of funding awarded, as well as the total amount they expect to give to the subrecipient over the course of the project, among other things. One interesting requirement being proposed by OMB is that recipients list the names and salaries of the five most highly compensated officers of the entity, if that information is not otherwise available to the public.

Comments on the proposed data elements are due May 1. To view the proposed data elements, click here.

You can learn more about the Recovery Act and its impact on federal grants administration at our Federal Grants Update 2009 seminars, which are now running in locations around the country. Click here for additional information.