Open Government
David Curren – NIH
Richard Fenger – University of Washington
Recap from Last Meeting – Jan 2014
• Legislative Update
• DATA Act
• GRANT Act
• GONE Act
• Transparency Impact on Select Issues
• Dual Use Research
• Animal Welfare
• Intellectual Property
Today’s Goals
• Recap from last meeting
• Legislative Update
• DATA Act
• Transparency Impact on Select Issues
• FSRS – An effort discussion
DATA Act
• Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of
2014
• Bill S.994 passed both houses of Congress
4/28/14. Awaiting Presidential signature.
• Amends existing FFATA legislation
• Assigns much of implementation to OMB and
Treasury
• Transfers RATBoard assets to Treasury and
allows central data analysis center
DATA Act – Agency Reports
• Requires Agency reports to USASpending.gov:
▫ data for each appropriations account: amount
appropriated, amount obligated, and "other budgetary
sources"
▫ amount of funds obligated/outlayed for each program
activity
▫ amount of funds obligated/outlayed for each object class
▫ amount obligated (by object class) for each program activity
• Reports preferred monthly but required quarterly
• Reports due to begin 3 years after enactment
DATA Act – Definitions
• Program Activity: A specific activity or project
as listed in the program and financing schedules
of the annual budget of the United States
Government.
• Object Class: The category assigned for
purposes of the annual budget of the President
submitted under section 1105(a) of title 31 USC,
to the type of property or services purchased by
the Federal Government.
DATA Act – Reporting Elements
• OMB/Treasury have one year to define common
data elements for financial and payment
information:
▫ Must include unique Federal identifier for awards
▫ Does not specify reporting frequency, level of reporting
(one tier of subawards, two tiers, etc).
▫ OMB/Treasury must work with public and private
stakeholders in developing standards
• Agencies have two years after common data elements
guidance is finalized to implement
DATA Act – Burden Reduction
• Two-year pilot program to evaluate reporting
▫ Make recommendations to




Standardize reporting elements,
Eliminate financial reporting duplication,
Reduce compliance costs
Automate financial reporting to increase efficiency
and reduce recipient costs.
▫ Include between $1 -$2 billion in Federal awards
▫ Pilot must include data from a 12-month reporting
cycle
DATA Act: FDP Role
• Development of Common Data Elements
▫ Subaward reporting?
 How many tiers?
 Best way to handle reporting by subawardees?
▫ Taking advantage of STAR Metrics?
▫ Problem metrics – Must include real examples of
the burden
DATA Act: FDP Role
• Pilot Participation
▫ Which is simpler, piloting a few small institutions
with many awards, or only a few awards but at
many institutions?
▫ Discuss results of GRIP pilot
DATA Act: FDP Role
• Reducing Burden of Financial and Payment
Reporting
▫
▫
▫
▫
Use electronic systems – FDP eRA Subcommittee
Eliminate duplicative reporting?
Combining transparency and financial reporting?
Reducing audit/compliance burden?
Burden: From A Data Perspective
• Richard Fenger:
▫ Assistant Director - Decision Support Services in
the Office of Research at the University of
Washington
• Identify data within the FSRS reporting process
• Understand the effort required to report
• Determine data requirements and related effort
as it relates to audit standards
Goal: Demonstrate general effort
of sub reporting via FSRS
• Inherently the activity of sub reporting is more
than just FSRS via FFATA regs. Other
regulations like A133 apply
• Systems: eSRS and FSRS
• Process: Proposals to Awards, Reporting &
Maintaining, Reconciliation, and Closing
• Data transverses several systems beyond FSRS
Landscape: eSRS and FSRS
• eSRS (Electronic Subcontracting Reporting
System)
This system is designed for prime contractors to
report accomplishments toward subcontracting
goals required by their contract.
 FSRS (FFATA Sub-award Reporting System) – This
system is designed to collect subcontract and subgrant award information in compliance with the
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency
Act (FFATA).
Landscape: Process – Big Picture
Landscape: Process – Local Picture
Sub Contract Management
(driven by A133)
Proposal
1




FSRS Reporting
Prep work = heavy
Checklists(sub prep)
A133 identification
Scope of Work, PI Justification
Sub Justification
Grant Awarded


2
Subaward Team Work
Human intervention/
Assessments
Templates and Checklists
Assessing Risk
Agreement
Fully Executed
3
Monitoring
Process



Complexity Factors
Tiers
Foreign/Domestic
Profit/Non Profit
FSRS Reporting
1) New Grant fully executed – x1
FSRS Reporting
2) Modifications to sub – every
modification
3) Annually – x Active Subs
FSRS Monitoring
RECONCILE
FTE = TBD



10 elements
30 mins per
report
Entry & Review
Update & Review
4
Close out
Process Simplified for Presentation
Preface: 700 or so…
11. Proposal & Award – (A133)
•
Defined process
•
Foreign or Domestic?
•
Profit or Non-profit?
•
Checklists
•
Subrecipient monitoring and vetting

Capability and reliability of subrecipient

Risk Assessment
22.
FSRS Report Entry/Review & Maintenance 170 or so…
•
Pre-populated data and elements
•
30 mins per new report
•
15 min per maintenance activity (many per year)
Process Simplified for Presentation
33.
RECONCILIATION
•
•
•
•
•
•
Internal data to external data
Awards to expenditures
Common ID: Difficulties relating across systems
Errors: Manual Entry
Internal tracking my not match agency
Tiers?
4
4.
Close-out
Reconciliation Process: Generally
FSRS


Awards
Federal Reporting Sources
Internal Award System
NIH RePORT
 Not searchable via UW DUNS, only by searching
a portion of the award number.
Detailed data on awards and subawards, can
search previous years via UW budget number.
Award values match Federal Award reporting
platforms.
No match for DHHS sponsor award number
USAspending.gov
 13 Award Transactions ( 10- 12),
 no subaward data
HHSN275200800015C / 11
HHSN275200800015C, Mod. 11
275200800015C-11-0-1
Internal
External
Sponsor Award #
HHSN275200800015
HHSN275200800015C, Mod. 11



HHSN275200800015CMOD11
Expenditure Data
Detailed data on direct and indirect
expenditures.
Does not match SEFA expenditure data.
Same Award number as SAGE/SPAERC, so also
different DHHS Sponsor Award Number

Expenditures
State Audit Report (A133) SEFA
Out of 20 unique sponsor award only able to
locate four in other systems and the data did
not match entirely. Small differences in the
subcontract identifiers and amounts for
subrecipients
Reconciliation Process: Detailed
One multi year grant with subcontracts -> Seven Funding Actions - > 1 Budget
NIH
Unique Award Prime
Sponsor Number
HHSN275200800015
Multi year grant
University of Washington
Contract – Grant between NSF and University of Washington (Application)
Award Sponsor Number Award Amount (FA) UW Funding
Action (FA)
HHSN275200800015C U$ 689,576
FA32448
HHSN275200800015C,Mod. 2 U$ 265,752
FA44937
HHSN275200800015C, Mod 6 U$ 3,975,000
FA62221
HHSN272008000015C, Mod. 9 U$ 1,400,000
FA74225
HHSN275200800015C, Mod 10 U$ 1,069,234
FA74484
HHSN275200800015C, Mod. 11 U$ 3,070,707
FA85540
Budget #
Date Award received Budget Biennium
9/30/2008
10/07/2009
09/22/2010
9/23/2011
10/3/2011
9/25/2013
2007
2009
2009
2010
2011
2011
# 61-7858
U$13,439,515
UW Sub #
Subcontractor
Date
SA
reporting amount
SC4861
Washington State University
10/16/12 $301,857
SC6901
Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles
02/11/13 $279,942
Expenses
FY Year
Dir. Expenditure
Indirect Expendit
Total expenditure
2009
U$56,243.35
U$31,4391.23
87,725.58
2010
U$341,691.17
U$113,270.90
U$265,752.00
2011
U$2,675,755.31
U$640,635.79
U$3,266,391.00
2012
U$2,169,399
U$365,539.15
U$2,534,983.33
2013
U$792,640.81
U$257,983.64
U$1,050,624,45
Reporting phase / Reconciliation (without unique identifier)
NIH Reporting
Project Number: 275200800015C-11-0-1
Application: 8151578
Project Start Date: 09/26/2008
Project End Date:09/25/2013
Total Funding: 3,070,707
This grant does not pop up in the report downloaded
from NIH using UW DUNS number (605799469). It
pops up using the NIH search tool directly from the
website.
Grants & Contracts /Calendar Year / Prime number
Award (NIH).
Association with PI background and similar projects
USA Spending Calendar Year
Schedule Expenditure of Federal Awards FY
2013 – WA State
PIID/MOD: HHSN275200800015C / 11
Obligation amount: U$ 3,070,707
Signed Data: 09/21/2012
Award/Contract Control Number:
HHSN275200800015CMOD11
Total Expenditure: U$ 2,174,385
Exp. Amount through subrecipients: U$ 472,775
It shows 13 Transactions from 2010 to 2012
(Complete history of the prime award number)
No reports about subcontractors was found in USA
Spending regarding this grant
From 20 Sponsor Award number, this was one of the
four matches found in the three reporting systems.
Small difference in the subcontract identifier and
amount for subrecipients.
Grants & Contracts /Calendar Year / Prime number
Award (NIH)
General info
Expenditures amount / Fiscal year / No unique
identifier
SEFA Includes
i) SEFA (Schedule of Expenditure of Federal Awards)
Total awards amount from Fed agencies
ii) Note F (Supplemental info) UW is subrecipient of
other institutions except of the WA State
iii) Note G (Supplemental info) UW is subrecipient of
the State
General Findings
• Unique Identifier: among the three entities, even though NIH
prime project number (six digits) is recognized in some level by the
three reporting systems, each source uses an adaption of it. Finding
matches required the inclusion of other fields like PI name or award
amount
• Across Systems: finding matches required the inclusion of other
fields like PI name, award amount, or project name
• Four of 20 grants: were found in SEFA, NIH and USA Spending
reports using Sponsor contract identifier and using amount award
for FY 2013. Between SEFA and internal systems, sub recipient
matches were hard to come by
• Effort: 1 FTE took 40 hours to match info. Process mostly manual
Questions? Thoughts?
Contact Info
First Name: Richard Last Name: Fenger
Organization:
University of Washington
Title:
Assistant Director - Decision Support Services
Department:
Office of Research Information Services (ORIS)
Address:
4333 Brooklyn Ave NE
O2
City: Seattle State: WA Zip: 98195
Phone: (206) 221-6729 ext: Fax: ()
Email: rfenger@u.washington.edu
Contact Info (continued
• David Curren
▫ Special Assistant to the OPERA Director
▫ CurrenD@mail.nih.gov