Reporting and DATA Act Open Dialogue Ideas

Comment from June 10 Data Act Summit breakout session on Recipient Reporting: As a Federal Award recipient, I want transactional data reporting to be a more efficient method than a weekly form. There’s a need to minimize weekly re-entry of the same information that was submitted previously. Also the government already has a lot of this information, so the recipient should only be required to report what the government ...more »

Last year, the Coalition for Government Procurement submitted a number of recommendations in response to the Chief Acquisition Officers Council (CAO) Council Open Dialogue to improve the economy and efficiency of the Federal acquisition system. The Coalition urges the government to take action on the previously submitted recommendations to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of Federal procurement. Implementing ...more »

Princeton University suggests that the Federal Audit Clearinghouse (FAC) should provide more guidance (e.g. definitions, acronyms) on how to access and leverage annual reports to monitor subrecipients per Uniform Guidance requirements in order to reduce the burden. Assistance in navigating through the forms similar to guidance provided to comply with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) would ...more »

Comment from June 10 Data Act Summit breakout session on Recipient Reporting:

As a Federal Award recipient, I want to see more pre-populated forms and drop-down options to minimize the burden of completing reporting.

Section 5 of the DATA Act of 2014 requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish a pilot program to test whether standardizing the data elements used in recipient reporting can reduce the burden that grantees and contractors experience in reporting on the federal funds that they receive and spend. In this fiscal year, federal agencies have awarded $540 billion in grants and $297 billion in contracts. ...more »

Grant Proposals indicate all institutions involved and require separate budget submissions. Not only is it a waste of taxpayer $ to pay institutions F&A on the first 25K of each sub, but it is so inefficient to dole out the $ to us to turn around and pay out the subs when you can utilize a LOC payment system. Then you impose subrecipient monitoring on us and everybody has to document everyone else's audit report/FCOI ...more »

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.

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 »

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 »

Research administrators work in a world of constant and continuous audits by various Federal OIGs. These are in addition to the ongoing annual "A-133" audits designed to attest to our having systems and procedures in place to provide proper stewardship over Federal funds under our purview. The OIG audits have been extremely aggressive and are characterized by initial allegations of wrongdoing, high cost disallowances, ...more »

There is much redundancy in the current reporting. Suggest the following: 1) one annual Progress Report 2) Performance Measure surveys ONLY to be done ONCE in the 3 year grant period 3) when submitting renewal grants if the workplans are not changes have a box to simply check that off. 4) same for budgets 5) Accessability and Site Safety checks only to be done ONCE in the 3 year grant period and reflected in the MOU. ...more »