(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Because Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) field office staff have sought guidance on Section 8 requirements under the Housing Opportunities for Persons with Aids (HOPWA) program, HUD’s associate general counsel recently clarified that grant recipients participating in the HOPWA program are subject only to those Section 8 rental assistance program requirements in the HOPWA program regulations. However, grant recipients administering HOPWA rental assistance may voluntarily follow other Section 8 program requirements as long as these requirements do not directly conflict with HOPWA statutory or regulatory requirements.

And now for the word of the day — “Resilience.” According to the dictionary, resilience means “the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed or stretched” or “the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity or the like.” You may think I’m using resilience in response the East Coast showing resiliency in recovering from the monstrous blizzard we had this weekend; however, I’m really referring to a recent announcement that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Rockefeller Foundation provided $1 billion in grants to 13 states and communities under the National Disaster Resilience Competition. The 13 recipients were selected from 40 finalists.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has updated its guidance regarding the sale or lease of property purchased with Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) award funding, and will provide ongoing technical assistance regarding property management requirements, in response to a recent Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General audit that found that NTIA’s oversight regarding the management of BTOP-funded excess equipment was inadequate.

It’s been played out countless times. A prisoner serves his time, gets released, realizes he has no sufficient skills to support himself, gets back in trouble with the law, then finds himself back in prison once again. The Department of Labor (DOL), however, aims to use federal grant funds to tackle this situation.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) In response to concerns about child care availability following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) recommended that the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) require states receiving grant funding under the Child Care Development Fund to develop plans for the rebuilding of child care facilities impacted by such disasters.

In case you haven’t heard by now, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is leading a grants pilot under Section 5 of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act). Even better, however, is that the agency is not simply assigning a couple of personnel to the pilot and giving it minimal resources. The department has designated a special office — the DATA Act Program Management Office — to establish and oversee the strategic framework for HHS’s implementation of the DATA Act and the pilot.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The Virgin Islands Housing Authority is taking steps to train and certify its internal inspectors about Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) housing quality standards after a recent HUD inspector general office audit found that almost all of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program units that the inspector general recently reviewed failed to comply with the standards.

By now we’ve all seen the U.K.-based T-shirts with the words “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Over time, the slogan has been altered in countless ways, but it always seems to start with two words, “Keep Calm.” That was my first reaction upon seeing a recent guest blog post on the Digital Transparency Council’s website concerning data systems affected by the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act).