Behind the Curtain at TCG

GAO report on Grants.gov is critical (again)

GAO is charged with monitoring the performance and progress achieved by Grants.gov over its lifetime and its latest report was released earlier this month. The highlights include:

• Agencies are being charged by Grants.gov based on their size and not their use of Grants.gov itself. This means that agencies like HUD (which is very large) is charged more than 2.6 times the fee levied on NEH (which is a much smaller agency), despite the fact that their use of Grants.gov is about equivalent to each other.
  
• The Grants.gov PMO doesn't report some important costs, which means that agencies have trouble understanding how much they should expect to pay for particular kinds of services.
  
• This also means that Grants.gov doesn't charge agencies for all known costs, meaning that some agencies subsidize the use of Grants.gov by other agencies.
  
• Funding from agencies is received at unpredictable times -- and often later than really needed -- meaning that the Grants.gov PMO cannot sufficiently plan investments and improvements.
  
• Accountability for governance of Grants.gov is split between the PMO, the Grants Executive Board (GEB), and HHS's Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). It's unclear how the GEB's input is used to set Grants.gov's future direction, and who is responsible for what.
  
• Grants.gov's performance metrics haven't been updated in a long time, and may not give an accurate representation of system performance.
  

The report also includes this note of optimism, though:

"A new federal grants governance model under OMB review would merge various Grants.gov governance entities and serve as the federal grants advisory body responsible for establishing the direction for and coordinating all governmentwide grants initiatives, including Grants.gov. As a preliminary, concept document, it is understandable that it contains few implementation details; however, the proposal lacks even an overview of several critical elements, such as how grants initiatives would be managed as IT investments."

If you're interested in learning more about how Grants.gov got to this point, take a look through this blog's archives.

Pass-the-hat funding gets a slap from OMB Watch

NextGov highlights an OMB Watch report that discusses the challenges facing e-gov initiatives that are funded using a "pass-the-hat" approach. Grants.gov is one of these initiatives, and faces multiple challenges in this area, as a recent GAO report about Grants.gov examined. OMB Watch does a fine job of illustrating what some of these challenges are, and how they impact the ability of government to operate effectively and for citizens to obtain the services they need.

Grants.gov will be competed among 8(a) firms

Much of the discussion lately in the grants management systems community has been about the upcoming recompete of the Grants.gov IT support contract, currently held by General Dynamics IT. A sources sought was issued in April and now word reaches me that a decision has been made to issue an RFP to only 8(a) small businesses. Clearly the responses to the sources sought from 8(a) companies convinced the Grants.gov program office and/or procurement officials that enough capability exists within that community to service Grants.gov's needs over the next five years.

Still, this is a change in approach for Grants.gov which has, up to now, procured all of its services through the CIO-SP2i contract vehicle managed by NIH. CIO-SP2i includes a few small businesses but is predominantly large business focused (though the new CIO-SP3 contract will be split between large and small businesses).

I'm curious to see whether the upcoming RFP includes suggestions for how Grants.gov may innovate over the next five years. A move toward cloud computing was mentioned in the sources sought notice, and has been discussed almost endlessly in the last few years. More importantly to the grants community, though, is the need to shift away from an e-forms architecture to a web-based approach, to avoid the overhead and difficulties associated with offline forms processing.

It should be an interesting summer!

NGMA Announces Federal Grants Management Training Webinar

The National Grants Management Association (NGMA) in alliance with Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell LLP is hosting a grants training webinar "Program Income--What Federal Strings Are Attached?" on Tuesday, May 17th starting at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Click here for more information and to register.

TCG Exhibits at NGMA Conference

TCG exhibited at the National Grants Management Association’s (NGMA) 32nd Annual Grants Management Training Conference at the Hershey Lodge and Conference Center in Hershey, PA, May 1-4, 2011. The conference was attended by over 300 grants professionals—representing both grantors and grantees—from federal, state, and local agencies, as well as non-profit organizations, foundations, and educational institutions. NGMA provides tools for grants professionals to support and maintain high levels of grants management competency and to establish standards of excellence for grants managers. TCG is proud to support NGMA as a Director Level Corporate Alliance Partner.

FDP January presentations now online

The Federal Demonstration Partnership held its last meeting in late January, and all the presentations are now available on their web site. There's some very informative data here:

• Updates from NIH, NSF, NASA, ONR, AFOSR, and USDA
  
• The Future of the Grants Management Line of Business
  
• Grants.gov interface redesign
  
• Grants.gov JAD team update
  

Thompson launches new grants blog

Thompson Publishing is responsible for the Federal Grants Management Handbook, the bible of anyone with responsibility in managing government grants and ensuring compliance to agency and Federal law and regulations. They've now launched Funding Attractions, a new blog that will post timely news and information focused on grants management professionals. If you enjoy the grants management material here on Behind the Curtain, you'll certainly appreciate Thompson's new site.

[Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Advisory Board for the Federal Grants Management Handbook.]

Rumors of a new cloud-based grants filing initiative

Mark Forman, the former OMB leader responsible for initiation of the Grants Management Line of Business (GMLoB), has announced that he will be "joining a colleague of mine in government reform, jumping into the cloud, with a cloud-computing initiative around grants filing." This will follow Mark's retirement from KPMG, where he has been since he left government. When he was at OMB during the Bush administration, Mark set up the E-Gov office through what was known as the Quicksilver program.

Exactly what kind of "grants filing" Mark's talking about is unknown. It may be something similar to the Recovery Act's reporting mechanisms, which I believe are cloud-based, but that's purely speculation on my part.

Grants.gov webcast - now 2/2/11 at 1pm

Head on over to http://videocast.nih.gov at 1pm on February 2nd to join the Grants.gov Stakeholder Webcast. Looks like an interesting agenda:

1. Introduction – Webcast Participants
2. Grant.gov Status Update
3. Grants.gov/Grantsolution Partnership
4. Grantsolution Services
5. Grants.gov/COE Discussion
6. Grants.gov Support
7. Q&A – Questions from the Audience

Executive Leaders Radio Issues Case Study about TCG’s Dan Turner

Executive Leaders Radio, which airs on Washington, DC’s WHFS 1580 AM, has issued a case study about TCG President Dan Turner. The case study, which highlights how Mr. Turner built TCG into the success story that it is today by “delegating by design,” is a complement to an interview that featured Mr. Turner on the show on June 5, 2010. Read the full press release here.