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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.
Government Executive
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A new survey shows that administrative costs have spiked, while funding agencies struggle to measure outcomes.
REI Systems, the George Washington University, and the National Grants Management Association recently presented the results of their fifth annual grants management survey to an audience of more than 350 grant managers. Those survey results included some that could be easily foreseen, and some big surprises. All of the results have important implications for federal managers and policy-makers.
Among the easily foreseen results: COVID-19 has had a big impact on grant management and grant managers have a hard time measuring performance.
The surprises illustrate the challenges grantors face: