Sneak Preview: OMB Seeks More Comments on Draft Data Standards

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Officials with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently reiterated their call for stakeholder comments on a set of draft grants management data standards, stressing their desire to develop the most accurate data elements for agencies to use when seeking information from grant applicants and recipients.

In a Nov. 16 Federal Register notice, OMB issued the proposed data standards, which were developed by the Grants Management Federal Integrated Business Framework and drafted as part of the “Results-Oriented Accountability for Grants” Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goal under the President’s Management Agenda. The standards include 426 proposed grants management data elements, definitions and related authoritative references. The proposed data elements include both pre-award and post-award elements.

“Once finalized, the core grants management data standards will contribute to a future state where grants data are interoperable, there are fewer internal and public-facing grants management systems, and federal awarding agencies and recipients can leverage data to successfully implement a risk-based, data-driven approach to managing federal grants,” the Federal Register notice stated.

As of Dec. 11, fewer than 50 comments had been submitted on the draft standards. At a recent forum hosted by REI Systems and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University, OMB’s Rhea Hubbard and Jennette Mandycz Connor emphasized the importance of getting feedback on these standards. “What we’re looking for is feedback from all folks in the grantsmaking process,” Connor explained. “We’re hopeful that we’ll see some more traffic [from commenters] to really see where we have some issues to tweak and what we’ve gotten right. [Nonfederal entity recipients] know their programs and know what will work and what won’t. What we’re trying to get to is a common language where we are able to create data that makes sense to everyone. However, to get to that point, we really need the feedback to tune them up.”

Added Hubbard: “What we have out there is Version 1 of the draft data standards. There will be subsequent versions with more details.”

Hubbard said the development of the draft standards has been underway for several months through representatives from 18 federal agencies. “We were trying to take a methodical approach to determining what capabilities we need as a community to execute our awards from a grants management perspective,” she said. “Once we determined the capabilities, we looked at the next step and sought to determine what data you need to complete these capabilities. When we drafted the data standards, we purposely didn’t just consider the data that we currently collect. We took a step back to see what [data] is actually needed in the award lifecycle. In order to have a future tool [that all agencies may use], we felt that data standardization is really foundational to that.”

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

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