(The following was excerpted from an article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, aims to better assess the financial status of individual grant awards by changing its payment procedures.

Let me say this right up front — can someone from the Department of Agriculture please contact me and explain your notice today in the Federal Register in layman’s terms?  Because, frankly, I’m lost. And I’m not the only one. When I read the title of the notice — “Revocation of Statement of Policy on Public Participation in Rulemaking” — to my wife and asked her what she thought that meant, she said, “It sounds like they’re not allowing the public to comment on rules.” I thought the same thing.

Um, last I checked, it was late October and 2014 is right around the corner. But those with single audits due have still yet to see the 2013 Data Collection Form (SF-SAC). What gives?

(The following was excerpted from an article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The New Hampshire Division of Family Assistance plans to update its administrative rules to better explain the electronic benefits transfer card restrictions in the State Supplemental Programs and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, in response to a recent audit by the state’s Office of Legislative Budget Assistant.

As much as I enjoy vacations, sometimes they make it even harder to return to work because I’ll have my work for the current week to do, plus work that had piled up from the previous week. Then I’ll wind up working twice as hard to take care of the backlog until I’m finally caught up. I’m quite sure many of you go through the same thing.

(The following was excerpted from an article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) The Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) is amending its grants oversight manual for the COPS Hiring Program (CHP) to strengthen agency analysis about supplanting, including confirming the absence or presence of supplanting, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.

Was that so hard? Finally, the shutdown is over. Until…

In one of the more memorable scenes in the classic movie “Gone With The Wind,” a determined Scarlett O’Hara dramatically holds her fist in the air and declares “As God is my witness, I shall never be hungry again.” Such determination is admirable, considering the South was soon to lose the Civil War, disrupting her entire way of life. The current government shutdown, in its own way, has created its own share of disruptions.

A few years back, I cut out a political cartoon that ran in our local newspaper to hang on my office wall. The cartoon humorously depicted how life had become in D.C. The cartoon ran in the spring during the Cherry Blossom festival, during which swarms of tourist descend upon D.C to see the beautiful cherry trees in full bloom. Basically the cartoon consisted of a numerous barricades, fences, barbed wire, overhead helicopters, etc. On the fence were the words “Cherry Blossoms” next to an arrow pointing to a small hole in the fence.  Although the cartoon was depicting how security-conscious D.C. had become (especially since 9/11), it also brought home to me just how many barricades there are in this town. It can be next to impossible to get from point A to point B in Washington without coming face to face with some sort of barricade.

(The following was excerpted from an article in the Single Audit Information Service.) Because many projects awarded under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Brownfield program were never started, the HUD Office of Inspector General has urged the agency the increase its monitoring efforts to ensure that projects are progressing as planned, or terminate projects if work never began.