“In 2017, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) launched an initiative to make grants management more efficient. Little did the agency know that the initiative would improve operations for an emergency like a pandemic, where many organizations now urgently need efficient grants management to receive the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding right away.”
“In the financial year 2019, 69% of federal grants were administered by HHS, according to USAspending.gov. The ReInvent Grants Management (RGM) team was tasked to develop an HHS grants model that could benefit the wider government as well. After interviewing grants professionals across the agency, RGM decided to build a Grant-recipient Digital Dossier (GDD), which is a tool that grabs disparate sources of data into one easily consumable application for pre-award risk assessments. The pre-award process identifies an applicant’s risk before awarding grant funds, according to HHS’ Office of Inspector General.”
“’In some cases, the current process for a pre-award risk examination takes 4 to 8 hours,’ said Brandon Edwards, Technical Lead for HHS RGM. ‘We were able to get that down to 15 minutes.’”
“The initial model received praise and positive feedback. Users were eager for it to launch, and agencies outside HHS wanted – or needed – the tool right away…” Read the full article here.
Source: HHS Improves Grants Management for CARES Act Funding – By Pearl Kim, July 30, 2020. GovLoop.
