Comment from June 10 Data Act Summit breakout session on Recipient Reporting:
As a Federal Award recipient , I would like the ability to submit a single financial report to single place that would be used each agency for its own purposes.
I am surprised more people haven't been commenting or making suggestions. Do you think it might be due to the fact that most of us are so busy with our jobs, lacking funds, burnt out and trying to pick up pieces of pie because we are spending our own time working and ignoring everything else? Our jobs have become so complicated with reporting and regulations that we don't have time to take care of the people and partners ...more »
Review existing agency financial reporting regulations to eliminate intra and interagency redundancy.
Codify the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to eliminate potential interpretation differences of future auditors and inspectors general between Uniform Guidance and FAQs.
OMB should clarify the parameters for the risk analyses that universities are required to make for their subrecipients under the Uniform Guidance. Such a move would help to curtail the proliferation of individualized standards or action plans established by individual universities seeking to carry out their responsibilities under the as prime recipients with respect to their subrecipients.
A single, central reporting portal for all reporting would help achieve the goals of the DATA Act. A central portal should provide the following functions: 1) One Portal a. The goal is to have one place for recipients to report on research expenditures. b. All the agencies conform from the beginning. i. If exceptions are granted, it should be clearly documented who has been granted an exception and, the length of time ...more »
Eliminate multiple federal payment systems. Financial reporting is unnecessarily complex due to variations across Federal agency systems.
Limit the public release of federal audit reports until they have been validated through audit resolution. Since universities are reputation-based organizations, great harm can result from premature release of audit reports that are later found to be out of step with agency policy. In addition, and as a result of some universities efforts to be 100% compliant, premature release of audit reports can result in the enactment ...more »
Enactment of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act in May, 2014 provides many opportunities for the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Treasury to improve the public transparency of Federal spending while simultaneously reducing the overall reporting burden on both Principal Investigators and institutional Research Administrators. However, there are also many implementation scenarios that ...more »
AAU, COGR, and APLU recommend that OMB require all Federal agencies subject to OSTP’s 2013 policy memorandum, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,” to harmonize the procedures by which extramural grantees submit final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents and data to the agencies’ public access repositories. We believe that this harmonization process may most effectively ...more »
Change UG to Allow 120 Days for all Final Reporting (Financial and Programmatic) for all agencies Currently the Uniform Guidance (UG) requires that all financial & programmatic reports are submitted to the sponsor within 90 days after end date. Several agencies, through coordination with the FDP (Federal Demonstration Partnership) and COGR, are adjusting their deadlines to 120 days after end-date. These agencies, most ...more »
If a centralized reporting database could be developed that all federal agencies, grantees, subrecipients, etc. would be required to use for reporting, and it would prepopulate many of the fields once the entity enters their FAIN, this would ease a lot of the reporting burden.
However, first, the FAIN would have to start being included in grant agreements so entities have that piece of information to enter.