With the arrival of Donald Trump as president last week, grant applicants and recipients may have already noticed that the federal government is not running “business as usual.” For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) website is typically where grantees would go to find grant documents such as the uniform guidance, former OMB circulars, annual releases of the OMB Compliance Supplement, executive orders and federal forms.

However, the OMB site has been down since last Friday. As of then, the site has simply read “Thank you for your interest in this subject. Stay tuned as we continue to update whitehouse.gov.”

So until changes are made and the site is up and running, where can awardees go to find the documents that they traditionally found on the OMB website? Not to worry. We have them available on Thompson’s Grants Compliance Expert website under the Guidance & Regulations, Laws & Proclamations and Tools & Forms tabs. We’ll continue to provide you with the resources you need to maintain compliance with your grant even if the federal government does not.

On a related topic about OMB, Congress this week continued to conduct confirmation hearings for President Trump’s cabinet positions, including his pick of South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney for OMB director. During a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Mulvaney faced stiff challenges from Senate Democrats who expressed concerns about his stance on issues such as the Violence Against Women Act, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Mulvaney stressed that federal agencies must do more to reduce improper payments, and that those agencies that have had success in making such reductions should share best practices with other agencies. “Part of fixing that problem also means taking a hard look at government waste … and then ending it,” he said. “American taxpayers deserve a government that is efficient, effective and accountable.”

Mulvaney also said he supports the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), stating that OMB can continue to “drive structural reform to make it easier to understand how the government works.”

Whether Mulvaney is confirmed or not remains to be seen, but we are definitely in a whole new world involving federal grants. Stay tuned!

Let us know your reaction to the changes involving OMB. We’d love to hear from you.