As our nation’s population continues to get older, it becomes even more critical that older Americans can find jobs to avoid becoming a drain on a community’s economic infrastructure. To this end, the Department of Labor (DOL) this month made $338 million in grants available for national organizations to provide critical job training and related services to low-income, older American workers through the Senior Community Service Employment Program.

The never-ending war on drugs may always be with us, but the federal government took a big step last week to tackle the issue. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided $94 million in Affordable Care Act funding to 271 health centers in 45 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to expand the delivery of substance abuse services, specifically focusing on the treatment of opioid use disorders in underserved populations.

Following grant programs like we do, we typically see that a federal agency has made awards within a grant program in the millions of dollars. However, my eyes widened this week when I saw that the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $1.6 billion — with a b — in grants to provide funding to 6,400 local homeless housing and service programs across the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A rundown of the totals awarded to each state and territory are available here.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) After two audits of a jointly administered program, Operation Inherent Resolve, under the Department of State (DOS) and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the DOS Office of Inspector General (OIG) determined that both DOS and BBG should specifically include the disclosures provision, cited at §200.113 in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) uniform grant guidance, not only in that program’s award agreements, but in all standard departmental guidance and award agreements.

Last month, I attended the Association of Government Accountants’ National Leadership Training in Washington, D.C. During one presentation, several key federal agency leaders discussed enterprise risk management (ERM) and how now is the time for federal agencies to assess their program and financial risks, prior to a new presidential administration entering office next year. For more on this session, Thompson grants subscribers can check out a story we wrote on the session at the Grants Compliance Expert website.