Today was the first day of the 2005 National Grants Management Association Annual Conference. The NGMA Conference is a good chance to meet grant administrators and providers of grants management products and technologies. This year has been no exception so far. All the conference proceedings will be available on the NGMA web site in a few days or so but I wanted to highlight one session from today that elicited some interesting audience participation that demonstrates yet again the need for more dialogue between the Federal government and its grantees.
The title "Update on Uniform Data Elements and Definitions: A Uniform Guidelines Project of the National Grants Partnership (NGP)" isn't exactly a snappy lure to a fun-filled hour or so but I'm glad I went. Grant budgeting is the foundation for grant accountability. The numbers in the budget is the measure by which the success of grant programs is often judged. The financial reporting requirements placed on grantees differ between grant programs. This results in grantees having to accommodate a massive spectrum of reporting requirements while attempting to consolidate their grants management systems and processes and minimizing administrative overhead. The lack of consistency in the data elements results in financial reporting errors, audits, and all the costs associated with them -- and also in more money being spent on grant administration that should be used for grant programs!
Bill Levis and Don Berkheimer have been striving to create uniform grant budgeting and financial reporting standards for about five ten years. In this time, they've created a reasonable consensus among states and anyone who's paid attention to their efforts. About two years one year ago they threw the guidelines over the fence to OMB...and nothing's been heard of it since.
The attendees of today's session were, I think, agreed on the need for commonality and standardization of budget and reporting data elements. What's been unclear is how these can be adopted without the participation of OMB and Federal agencies. The session audience asked, "So what's the plan for getting this thing implemented?" After some discussion, with the participation of Andrea Brandon, head of the PL106-107 Program Management Office, it became clear that the missing component has been a forum in which grantees and grantors can talk and exchange ideas about grants administration improvements in an open and collaborative environment. Research grantees have had this for while, through the FDP. State, local, and tribal governments, and non-profits have not had such a conduit.
Enter the National Grants Partnership! The NGP can definitely provide this conduit, and has codified the intention to do so in the organization's mission. Furthermore, the unified guidelines project is one of several efforts highlighted by the NGP as a focus for the group's efforts.
This is wonderful, and great, and I'm very pleased to be participating in the NGP. But I'm irked that it's come to this. For five years, Don Berkheimer and Bill Levis, and others besides (such as Phil Russo, who I met today!), have been struggling with this problem, and they are to be applauded for their sterling efforts. It's time the government did its part and participated as a fully integrated team member in this effort.
GAO and others have pointed out that many Federal guvvies have been reluctant to collaborate with non-government stakeholders due to concerns about possible contraventions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). In their last report on grants management [which I blogged about], GAO said, "because nonfederal participants do not act as full members, the work groups should not be subject to the FACA requirements. Furthermore, FACA would not limit the work groups’ ability to widely publicize their initiatives and invite public comment on an ongoing basis." This gives the green light for OMB, the PL106-107 PMO, and others to talk more freely with the NGP and other groups, and to benefit from the years of experience and knowledge that their members are only too willing to provide.
UPDATE: I should have added to the above that, at one of the last NGP meetings, all the vendors in the room said they'd happily add the uniform guidelines data elements to their grants management products if one or two RFP's requested it. The vendors (of which I am one) believe that data standardization like this is good for them too; they could stop building custom data schemas for each client and focus on improving the functionality of their solutions, which is where they can really differentiate themselves from competitors.
Comments