Grants Blog

Archive for April, 2010

In a new memo, OMB has directed all federal agencies to once again begin using Grants.gov now that the portal has been upgraded and is capable of handling a large influx of proposals. The system was overwhelmed last year after enactment of the Recovery Act, and OMB had allowed agencies to move away from Grants.gov and to use alternative methods for receiving applications.

But according to the memo, recent upgrades and planned improvements have alleviated any risk that Grants.gov might fail and all agencies must move back to Grants.gov for receipt of applications by the end of April.

OMB also notes in the memo that the departments of Energy and Interior are conducting a “proof of concept” that would use the FedBizOpps.gov contracting platform for grants. However, OMB gave no details about the effort and said it expects to have results of the test sometime this summer.

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Nearly four years after it was enacted, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act is once again on OMB’s radar. According to a recent memo, OMB is revamping the USAspending.gov site, creating a new mandate for ensuring the accuracy of Transparency Act data, and perhaps most notably, establishing a deadline for agencies to begin reporting subaward information.

Agencies have been reporting primary recipient award data to USAspending.gov for several years, but now they must begin to collect and report subaward data by October 1 of this year. (That information was supposed to have been available more than two years ago.) This subaward reporting requirement only applies to new awards made on or after that date, and only to first-tier subrecipients.

The information to be collected is similar to what is already being reported for Recovery Act awards, with one notable exception. The Transparency Act requires that entities report the names and total compensation of the five most highly compensated officers if the entity received 80 percent or more of its annual gross revenues in federal awards and $25 million or more in annual gross revenues from federal awards; and if the public does not have access to compensation information through IRS or SEC records.

Well, there is much more to this new OMB memo and it will take more time for me to wade through it all and digest the information. But I wanted to let you know about it as soon as possible. You can read the complete guidance by clicking here.

And remember, we’ll be covering this, as well as other developments, in our Federal Grants Update class. You can find dates and locations of this one-day seminar by clicking here.

Recipients of Recovery Act funds that have not filed the required reports detailing their use of funds and their programs’ progress may soon find themselves facing severe consequences – including the loss of funds, suspension and debarment, and even punitive actions.

In a new memo, President Obama directs federal agencies to “further intensify their efforts” to improve reporting compliance and to report the identities of noncompliant entities.

While the vast majority of recipients filed reports, the White House estimates that prime recipients failed to file more than 1,000 required reports covering an array of Recovery Act programs.

The president called on OMB to review the current guidance regarding reporting compliance and to issue even more guidance, if necessary.