Sneak Preview: OMB Makes Uniform Guidance Technical Corrections

(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants 360 article.) The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) added a definition for “federal awarding agency,” updated incorrect references to citations and federal laws, and made other various minor changes to the uniform guidance at 2 C.F.R. Part 200 through technical corrections published in the Feb. 22 Federal Register.

OMB has made such technical corrections to the guidance in the past. After it released the initial uniform guidance on Dec. 26, 2013, OMB made technical corrections to the guidance through a joint interim final rule issued by OMB and 28 federal agencies on Dec. 19, 2014. On Sept. 10, 2015, OMB made further technical amendments to better meet the intent of the guidance.

The Feb. 22 technical corrections, which address errors in the Aug. 13, 2020, revisions to the uniform guidance, apply to provisions throughout the document. Under the Subpart A definitions at §200.1, OMB included the definition for “federal awarding agency,” which was included in the original uniform guidance but was left out of the Aug. 13, 2020, revised version. The language was not changed, so a “federal awarding agency” is defined as the federal agency that provides a federal award directly to a nonfederal entity.

Within the “oversight agency for audit” definition, OMB corrected the wording in the definition to state that when the direct funding represents less than 25% of the total federal expenditures (as direct and subawards) by the nonfederal entity, then the federal agency with the predominant amount of total funding is the designated oversight (not cognizant as the language previously stated) agency for audit.”

The technical corrections were effective immediately.

In the “Applicability” provision at §200.101, OMB is now including references to §200.216, Prohibition on certain telecommunications and video surveillance services or equipment. The introduction to the program applicability provision at §200.101(e) now reads, “Except for §§200.203, 200.216 and 200.331 through 200.333, the requirements in subparts C, D and E of this part do not apply to the following programs….” Likewise, the introduction to §200.101(f) on additional program applicability now begins, “Except for §§200.203 and 200.216, the guidance in subpart C of this part does not apply to the following program….”

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

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