The GREAT Act and its impact on your federal grants
The Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act was signed into law on December 30, 2019. It calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to partner with the federal agency that awards the most grants and cooperative agreements to develop a governmentwide standard for how and what grant recipients report. The federal agency that awards the most grants and cooperative agreements is the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It also calls for the creation of a single website that collects this information from all recipients. This will streamline data standards and continues the federal government’s efforts to minimize the recipient reporting burden.
Last year 35 federal agencies awarded over $750 billion (with a ‘b’) to 40,000 recipients (non-profits, universities, etc) for 1,800 different programs. With 35 agencies collecting data from a large number of recipients using varying data standards, it isn’t hard to understand why a study revealed there are 440 unique federal grant reporting forms with similar data being collected but there were sometimes different field titles for that data. OMB later reported that after reviewing 30 of its 115 approved forms, there were 371 instances where duplicative data elements were being requested.
Personal note: Managing multiple grants from multiple agencies into various portals and different formats is a reality for many grants managers. When published, the new standards will hopefully streamline the grant reporting process especially when combined with some of the other data, award, and payment tracking innovations being piloted by the federal government.
Check out this link for the full article: https://www.govexec.com/…/great-act-scaling-tower-b…/162596/
