Government Executive
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OMB “generally agreed” this is a necessary action.
As agencies are doling out funds from the latest coronavirus relief package, a watchdog recently said the White House should collect and share lessons learned from flexibilities afforded last year on grant administration.
Uniform guidance on grants management, first enacted in December 2014 then updated in August 2020, outlines how the Office of Management and Budget can give federal agencies flexibilities for administering grants under certain circumstances. The Trump administration offered such accommodations last spring for the coronavirus pandemic, which was the third time in recent years a presidential administration did so after a crisis (the others instances were the hurricanes in 2005 and 2017). The use of these flexibilities was the subject of a Government Accountability Office report published last week.