(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Legislative officials working with the sponsors of the Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act of 2017 (H.R. 4887) recently told attendees at a forum hosted by REI Systems and the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, that the bill, if enacted, would assist all grant recipients, but would particularly prove beneficial to smaller nonfederal entities with limited budgets in managing their grants because the bill’s requirement for the use of standardized data for grant reporting would simplify grant management compliance.

In football, there’s the two-minute warning. For the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), we now have the one-year warning.

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) plans by March 2019 to fully update its Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) guidance to ensure that agency reviewers conducting a management evaluation (ME) of program recipients fully document findings in their reviews, in response to recommendations in a recent USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit.

In an odd way, I found myself thinking about the anti-drug public service announcement campaign from the late 1980s while attending a Grants Training Forum yesterday hosted by Thompson Information Services and the Public Contracting Institute here in Washington, D.C. If you’re part of the younger generation and haven’t seen this rather famous TV commercial, it features a sizzling frying pan, and the announcer says, “OK, last time. This is drugs.” Then an egg comes down on the pan and begins frying, to which the announcer continues, “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” The 15-second spot proved a creative metaphor for the dangers of drugs. Now, why did this commercial come to mind when discussing grants? It actually has nothing to do with drugs as much as the start of the commercial — in particular, the phrase, “OK, last time.”

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently issued guidance to federal agencies overseeing disaster relief funds available under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (Pub. L. 115-123), which, among other funding, provides about $84.4 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations for awards to respond to and recover from recent hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters. Agencies are to use the guidance to develop and submit internal control plans to OMB.

For all those auditors and auditees out there who have waited seven years for the next revision of the Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS), also known as the Yellow Book, the wait may be over in the next couple of months. Yesterday, we attended a meeting with GAO officials and its 18-member GAGAS Advisory Council as they discussed proposed amendments to an exposure draft of the revised Yellow Book that GAO had released last spring. GAO said that it plans to take the information gleaned from its meeting with council members to finalize the document and publish a revision to the Yellow Book, hopefully around June 30.

(The following has been excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) Citing “multiple deficiencies” in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) award closeout processes and practices, a recent DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit contained 61 recommendations, including calls for three DOJ components to update their closeout policies to mirror provisions in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) uniform guidance.