Behind the Curtain at TCG

NGMA 2012 Annual Conference Registration Now Open

The National Grants Management Association (NGMA) has announced that registration is now open for NGMA's 33rd Annual Training Conference. The conference will be held April 22-25, 2012 at the Crowne Plaza Old Town in Alexandria, VA. This event is a "must attend" conference for grants management professionals and practitioners. For more information about the conference and to register click here. TCG is proud to support NGMA as a Director Level Corporate Alliance Sponsor.

GAO Says FMCSA Grant Management Still a Risk

The Government Accountability Office says that while the Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had made strides in improving its grants management since the GAO audited the agency in 2010, it did not go far enough. A new report, issued this month, faults the agency for not doing a better job formalizing its grants management policies, training its staff in those policies, and involving its lawyers in reviewing grants. "Some challenges remain," the report says.

An overview of the GAO report may be found at http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d12158high.pdf; the full report is not currently on the GAO site.

NGMA Issues Call for Journal Articles

The National Grants Management Association (NGMA) Editorial Review Committee has issued a call for articles for upcoming issues of its bi-annual Journal of the National Grants Management Association.

The peer-reviewed NGMA Journal publishes articles dealing with specific grants management issues that are of interest to the grants management community.

Prospective authors should contact the editor at ngmaeditor@aol.com before submitting an article. For more information and submission guidelines click here. The deadline for articles for the next issue is December 1, 2011.

TCG's Brian Ibbison Featured in Federal Computer Week Rising Star Profile

Brian Ibbison, who is a technical and project lead with TCG, has been featured in a Rising Star Award profile in Federal Computer Week. Brian's receipt of this award represents the third year in a row that a TCG team member has been recognized as a Federal Computer Week Rising Star. Click here to read the profile.

NGMA Announces Monthly Training Luncheon and Webcast Series Schedule

The National Grants Management Association (NGMA) has announced its monthly training series schedule for 2011-2012. The series will have 8 sessions running from October through June and registration is now open. Here is the full schedule:

• 10/19/11  Grants 101: Featuring Stephen Daniels, CGMS, US Environmental Protection Agency
• 11/16/11   An Update from the OMB: Speaker(s) to be confirmaed
• 12/7/11    Ask a Grants Lawyer: Featuring Stacia Le Blanc, J.D., CGMS, James Drummond, Peter Wathen-Dunn and Jana Gagner
• 1/18/12    Preventing Fraud in Grant Funded Programs: Featuring Kenneth Dieffenbach, US Department of Justice
• 2/15/12    Internal Controls: Speaker(s) to be confirmed
• 3/21/12    The Need for Business Management Systems: Featuring Richard Solloway, Solloway & Associates
• 5/16/12    Performance Measures: Featuring Rose Bynum, Administration of Children & Families
• 6/20/12    Needs Assessment: Speakers to be confirmed

Session 1: Grants 101, with a Twist, featuring Stephen Daniels, National Policy, Training and Compliance Division, US Environmental Protection Agency, will be held Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 11:30 a.m. - 1: p.m. at Maggiano's Little Italy (5533 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, Washington, DC / Metro: Red Line - Friendship Heights station)

For more information and to register click here.

FDP Fall General Meeting Registration Now Open

The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), which is an association of federal agencies, academic research institutions, and research policy organizations that works to streamline the administration of federally sponsored research has announced that registration for the FDP Fall General Meeting, September 14-16, 2011 is now open and will close Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 5:00pm. It will reopen on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 3:00pm for on-site registration with the higher onsite registration fees.  Please click here to register for the meeting. For any questions regarding online registration, please contact Claudette Baylor-Fleming at cbaylor@nas.edu or at (202) 334-3994. Please click on the follow links for frequently asked questions:  General FDP FAQ or Mentoring Program FAQ.

OMB Seeks Comments

In the July 28, 2011 Federal Register, OMB requested comments on the renewal of the SF-425, Federal Financial Report. They are particularly interested in comments on how the SF-425 and SF-426A are an improvement over the data collections they replaced (SF-269, SF-269A, SF-272 and SF-272A), and how using a specification for data exchange or other data model instead of structured forms could facilitate the submission and collection of the financial data identified in the SF-425 and SF-425A. Also of interest are comments regarding any proposals, use cases specifications or models for eliminating redundancies in reporting grant financial information and increasing its usefulness, regardless of how the financial information is reported (form, data input, system-to-system, etc.). For more information read the Federal Register Notice and visit the OMB Grants Forms page.

ACT-IAC releases results of grants management survey

ACT-IAC's Collaboration & Transformation SIG recently released a white paper titled "Industry Survey of Challenges to Improve Federal Grants Management". The group surveyed industry participants to identify opportunities for improvement of the Federal grants management process and associated systems. The conclusions are pretty much what one would expect:

1. Develop additional standardization and a common taxonomy of grants data.

2. Creating a taxonomy is a challenge given the diverse nature of the grants landscape, array of participants, required traceability, difficulty in linking actual expenditures to goals, and the multiple layers of funds distribution.

3. Standardize interface standards and grants business processes such as application workflow, grant evaluation scoring and decision methodologies.

4. Proprietary and open source methodologies and tools can perform data management, virtualization, mining, and analysis. Public data exchanges and data sources may also prove useful.

5. Current websites provide significant amounts of data but struggle with transparency due to a lack of accurate data. 

At the end, of course, the basic recommendation is that the government must establish underlying policies that address these gaps before the gaps themselves can be filled in.

This is the same refrain we've heard many times before: grants management is a complicated beast, which has grown organically as Congress has made laws to serve the nation's needs. A complete, holistic approach to grants management is ambitious -- probably too ambitious, frankly -- but incremental gains can be made by establishing standards in specific areas. We've seen this work with the SF424, for example.

Still, kudos to ACT-IAC for trying to pull this project together into a coherent product.

FDP Posts Draft Agenda for September Meeting

The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), which is an association of federal agencies, academic research institutions, and research policy organizations that works to streamline the administration of federally sponsored research, has posted a draft agenda for the FDP's September 2011 meeting on the FDP website. The agenda can be found on the homepage under Announcements, and under the MEETINGS navigation link on the left of the homepage. The meeting will be held on September 14-16, 2011, at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill. All FDP meetings are open to the public. For registration information, please refer to the meeting information on the FDP website.
 
For more information or questions, please contact David Wright @ dwright@nas.edu.

Grants.gov Announces Stakeholder Webcast

Grants.gov has announced that its next Stakeholder Webcast will be held on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET. This meeting will be a webcast only and registration is NOT required. The program agenda is as follows: 

•    Introduction – Webcast Participants
•    Grants.gov Status Update/Priorities
•    Grant Fraud Prevention
•    Conflicts of Interest
•    Misuse of Funds
•    Embezzlement
•    Grants.gov Support
•    Audience Questions

Instructions:
 
Click here: http://videocast.nih.gov at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 20,, 2011.

Please note that RealPlayer software is required to view this webcast.  The  free player software is at: http://www.real.com. Please test in advance for accessibility at: http://videocast.nih.gov/browsertest. RealPlayer uses RTSP at port 554 and this must be allowed through your firewall. For technical support, please contact the NIH Helpdesk local 1-301-496-4357 or toll free at 1-866-319-4357 or email helpdesk@nih.gov. Email your questions for the webcast panelists before and/or during the program to Grants.gov-webcast@hhs.gov.