Sneak Preview: Speaker Promotes Grant Program Outcomes Broker
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants 360 article.) As grant programs continue to be more efficient in producing performance data, awarding agencies should consider designating an outcomes broker to evaluate this data, bring departments together and recommend methods to improve program quality, according to a former performance management official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Speaking to attendees during a recent webinar hosted by REI Systems and the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, Shelley Metzenbaum, founder of the BETTER Project and former associate director for performance and personnel management at OMB, talked about conclusions she had reached in a recent report she authored for the IBM Center for The Business of Government. She explained that the federal government generally focuses on grant compliance issues rather than award outcomes. She cited one study that found that researchers were spending 40% of their time on administrative matters “rather than making discoveries in applied research that they were funded to do.” In other surveys, grant managers have reported that “because of compliance issues, they don’t have time to figure out [which outcomes] they should be focusing on.”
However, Metzenbaum noted that this shift to focus more on outcomes is in keeping with the intent of laws such as the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (Pub. L. 113-101) and Grants Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act (Pub. L. 116-103). In addition, the federal government in April 2020 released the document “Managing for Results: The Performance Management Playbook for Federal Awarding Agencies,” which “re-emphasizes the importance of balancing grant compliance and outcomes,” she added.
“If you are not focusing most on grant outcomes, then you are just putting money on the table,” Metzenbaum said. “You need to focus on improving grant outcomes and operational quality. This includes sharing knowledge with others in the field. Grant programs ought to make grant recipients their priority and get them the knowledge they need [to produce sound outcomes] by sharing it effectively. Operational quality, including cost effectiveness and risk management, and transparency to strengthen accountability, also are critical in creating good government.”
Metzenbaum discussed the importance of evaluating outcomes or performance evidence within all grant programs to determine areas that need improvement. She added that many awarding agencies have specialists who oversee various aspects involved in the management of grant funds within programs, but “you need someone to synthesize the information on program results, and that could be done by an outcomes broker.”
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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