After Creating System for ARRA Reports, OMB Pledges Fixes to Existing Database

Theresa Defino has provided NGP with the following article providing an update of the pilot and other action surrounding the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA). Reprinted with permission of Report On Research Compliance at: http://reportonresearchcompliance.com/-----

After Creating System for ARRA Reports, OMB Pledges Fixes to Existing Database

The federal government is delaying fixes to the subaward reporting problems vexing its public Web site, USAspending.gov, until it establishes a work­able system for posting data regarding grants and contracts issued through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

But the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) approach doesn’t mean universities can stop collecting subaward data, which OMB said eventually will be posted — it just failed to say when.

Under a 2006 law, federal agencies are required to post prime award data on USAspending.gov, and the prime awardees, in turn, are required to post sub­award information. However, OMB never established an electronic pathway for the subaward data, despite a Jan. 1, 2009, deadline, so none of this data currently appears on the site.

ARRA itself has many reporting requirements, the cost of which universities are being asked to bear (see box, p. 3).

OMB laid out its position on USAspending.gov in a letter to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). RCC obtained a copy of the letter late last month; Coburn posted it on his Web site May 1. The letter has not been widely cir­culated, and it appears OMB has not shared it with the university community at large or other federal grant­ees or contractors, who have been wondering when — and how — to submit the subaward data.

Dated April 27, the letter was written by OMB Director Peter Orszag, in response to a March 19 let­ter from Coburn seeking answers as to why OMB had blown the Jan. 1 deadline (RRC 11/08, p. 1).

Along with now-President Obama, Coburn co-sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA), which established USAspending.gov and the reporting requirements.

OMB did make a Jan. 1, 2008, deadline for report­ing on prime awards, but Orszag’s letter confirms there are serious concerns about the reliability of this data — a criticism leveled by universities for months with no official response.

A handful of universities that participated in a pilot test of subaward reporting that concluded in November has also been left hanging as to the pilot’s findings, which Orszag’s letter also addresses.

High Error Rate in Existing Database

In his letter, Coburn complained about problems with both prime and subaward reporting, saying “there appear to be several agencies, including the Economic Development Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department of the Treasury” that were experiencing “consistent prob­lems fully reporting” as required under FFATA.

Orszag acknowledged this situation, writing that “significant data quality and completeness issues remain. … This is especially true for assistance data (primarily grants and loans),” which he said “lack the same level of business process standardization and data quality assurance as exists for federal contract data.”

Specifically, he said that as of the writing of his letter, 21 of 24 federal agencies required to report “have valid assistance data submissions, up from 15 in September of 2008.”

He said that agencies “in the past” may not have “un­derstood the importance” of sending in their data, and as such, “did not properly allocate staff and other resources to provide timely and accurate data submissions.”

Perhaps more disturbing than incomplete data is the error rate. “The total error rate for assistance data submissions has dropped from 15% to 13% over the past year,” Orszag wrote. He added that OMB is undertaking “aggressive steps to improve the com­pleteness and accuracy of usaspending.gov and close remaining gaps.”

Some of these steps include offering technical assistance to agencies that hadn’t posted data before and now are having problems; OMB also intends to prepare “updated guidance” for issuance in the near future that will “make file submissions and data cor­rections easier for agencies,” Orszag said.

Orszag assured Coburn that “the administration is committed to the full implementation” of FFATA. But he said OMB’s priority now is complying with ARRA’s reporting requirements, which are many“Our first priority is to enhance and expand the current Transparency Act reporting model for funds expended under ARRA,” Orszag wrote.

Problems With Both Subaward Pilots

Orszag acknowledged that there had been pilots to test reporting of subgrants and subcontracts, but each failed in some way. The grant pilot ran from Oct. 8 to Nov. 14, 2008, and consisted of 18 participants who entered 516 awards.

The subcontract pilot, run by the General Services Administration, began in April 2008 and “required minor system modifications and the establishment of a contracts clause to require the prime contractors to submit data.” However, this pilot “was not completed due to the lack of a contract mandate for the prime recipient’s subawardees to report their data,” Orszag said.

The pilots failed to “generate sufficient informa­tion on which to base an operation model or project plan for how subaward information should be col­lected” or to provide “sufficient information on which to base an accurate assessment of the burden placed on award recipients,” the letter stated.

Yet, the pilots “did underscore that the central col­lection and reporting of subaward information from hundreds of thousands of federal award recipients will require significant data and process standardization across federal and non-federal entities, and investments in our information technology infrastructure,” Orszag wrote. “The pilots also emphasized the need to give appropriate guidance to recipients on how they account for awards utilizing both federal and non-federal resources, and to put in place a robust data quality assurance model.”

However, addressing these issues will have to wait because of ARRA. “Instead of further delaying imple­menting and pursing new pilots, the administration is working closely with the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board to move forward aggressive­ly on meeting the subaward reporting requirements of the Recovery Act and displaying this information on Recovery.gov,” Orszag’s letter said.

After OMB gets this figured out, it can go back to focusing on subaward data for non-ARRA funds, he said.

“Once subward reporting capabilities are in place for Recovery Act funds and these data are displayed on Recovery.gov, the administration intends to begin broadening subaward reporting requirements to all federal funding, to comply with the Transparency Act,” Orszag said.

Some of the bugs still to be worked out with ARRA reporting include roles and responsibilities for primary awardees and subrecipients; data standards and definitions; the process for information flow from “subrecipients to the federal environment”; and data quality and assurance.

OMB did not respond to requests for follow-on comments on Orszag’s letter.

Universities Are Frustrated

The University of Michigan was among those participating in the FFATA subgrant pilot, and its representative, Bob Beattie, has been outspoken in his criticism of how OMB has managed compliance with this law. Beatty, the university’s liaison to Grants.gov and a member of its electronic research administra­tion, termed the government’s attempts to run two separate FFATA pilots — for subawards and subcon­tracts — “a huge mistake.”

And he decried the lack of communication be­tween OMB and universities. “In the implementation of a project to provide transparency, OMB has been very opaque,” Beattie said. He also noted that in his letter, Orszag blamed the failure of the grant sub­award pilot on the previous administration, yet it ap­pears that now the same individuals are charged with FFATA/ARRA reporting compliance.

“The current administration has had since November to get involved. What has been done? This is Mr. Obama’s project; why the delay?” Beattie asked.

Going forward, what the government needs to avoid is “Big Brotherism,” Beatty told RRC.

“This is not the time for OMB to just impose some half-thought-out system on users,” he said. “The stakeholders — those reporting the data — must be involved in the design and testing of the system.”

He suggested that OMB “immediately” develop a “user advisory committee” in consultation with the National Grants Partnership and the Federal Demonstration Partnership, two organizations that include both institutional representatives as well as those from local governments and U.S. agencies.

Link to Coburn letter (provides link to Orszag letter): http://tinyurl.com/o2jzpg. G

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