Grants Blog

Archive for October, 2011

The Office of Management and Budget has just created a new Council on Financial Assistance Reform to ”foster more efficient and effective federal financial management.”

The council will work with the Government Accountability and Transparency Board and federal agencies to:

• coordinate the development and implementation of a standardized business process, data standards, and IT
• work with key stakeholders  to eliminate unnecessary regulatory, reporting, and grant agreement requirements and increase flexibilities for satisfying grant requirements;
• identify emerging issues in grants management and policy; and
• serve as a clearinghouse of information on innovations and best practices in grants management.

The council replaces the Grants Policy Committee which was established in 1999 and the Grants Executive Board which was established 2004.

I’ll keep you posted on any new developments and council actions as they occur.

The Office of Management and Budget has approved a new Real Property Status Report Form, providing grantees with a governmentwide form for reporting on real property status or seeking disposition instructions.

The General Services Administration published the form (SF-429) as interim final last September, but OMB returned it to GSA in December 2010 for further revisions. OMB has now approved the revisions.

The report has a cover sheet and three attachments: A. General Reporting; B. Request to Acquire, Improve or Furnish; and C. Disposition or Encumbrance Request.

On the new form, GSA:

Here is a link to the new form and instructions.

Log in next week (Oct. 17-24) to join an online conversation discussing ways to prevent fraud and abuse in federally funded Recovery Act programs. This week-long public dialog is sponsored by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and the National Academy of Public Administration.

While the scope of this discussion will focus primarily on oversight of Recovery Act funds, the sponsors are also interested in ideas related to the oversight of other federal spending that might be applicable to Recovery Act dollars.

Some of the questions to be addressed include:

The board and the academy encourage a variety of participants from the general public, state and local governments, the private sector, the nonprofit field, and academia. For more information, visit the dialog’s page on Facebook or go to http://www.fedaccountabilitydialogue.org.