On February 17th, 2009 President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) or Stimulus Package to restart the economy. The package contains extensive funding for science, engineering research and infrastructure, and more limited funding for education, social sciences and the arts.

The University of Washington responded by setting up several ARRA project teams and work groups to coordinate a technical reporting solution and broad ranging communication. Representation is provided by management sponsors, central offices and campus. See organizational chart.

01/15/2010: RECIPIENT REPORTING PERIOD EXTENDED-Recovery.gov

January 15 to Midnight P.S.T. on January 22, 2010
Extended Reporting Period

The Recovery Board's decision to give recipients additional time to report was based on several circumstances:

• The change in calculating jobs -- The guidance on the new calculation was issued just two weeks prior to the start of the reporting period

• Hard Edit Checks -- Put in place to improve the quality of the data, the edit checks also resulted in recipients needing morel time to fill out each report.

• Timing -- There were only five business days to report between the first day on January 1 and the final reporting date on January 10.

NOTE: Reports filed after January 15, 2010 will be considered late reports.

ALERT FOR PRIME RECIPIENTS: The period for commenting on sub-recipient reports has been changed. It is now from 12:01 A.M. on January 23 to midnight P.S.T.

ALERT FOR FEDERAL AGENCIES: The period for reviewing recipients' reports has been changed. It now begins at 12:01 A.M. on January 24 and ends at midnight P.S.T. on January 29, 2010.

If you have not registered nor reported, see the information below.

FIRST TIME REPORTERS
If you received a Recovery Act grant or loan award of $25,000 or more – in the period of September 30, 2009 to December 31, 2009 – you are required to report on the expenditure of those funds. Even if you have not yet received the funds. If you received a federal contract award of any dollar amount, and have invoiced under that federal contract, you must report.

Register at FederalReporting.gov
If you need assistance in registering, the following are available at FederalReporting.gov in the Downloads section:

• Registration Guide

• Recipient Point of Contact Guide

• Registration Quick Reference Card

RETURNING REPORTERS
You may need to update your reports.
You do not have to re-register.

You Must Report If:

• You reported in October 2009 and the Recovery project is not yet complete.

• You reported in October 2009 and the Recovery project was completed after October 30, 2009

• You reported in October 2009 but still have not yet received the award funds

01/15/2010: HOW JOBS ARE CALCULATED-Recovery.gov

HOW RECOVERY AWARD RECIPIENTS CALCULATE JOBS

Recipients of Recovery Act contracts, grants, and loans are required to report quarterly on the number of jobs paid for with Recovery funds. The method or formula for calculating jobs was simplified after the first round of recipient reporting.

How did the job estimate guidance change?

*

The initial guidance captured jobs for a period of time longer than a quarter (February through September). The new guidance captures jobs for a single quarter (e.g., October through December). In addition, the new guidance eliminates the distinction between a job created and a job retained. Jobs are now simply based on the number of hours worked in a quarter that were paid for by Recovery funds.

It does not matter if the hours were worked by a person who was newly hired, a person whose job was saved by the Recovery Act, or a person who is in an existing position that is now being funded by the Recovery Act.

In December 2009, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the changes in guidance to align with the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office. OMB believes the new formula will help improve the overall quality of recipient reporting.

The Math

*	If a normal full-time schedule is 40 hours a week, multiply 40 hours x 52 weeks = 2,080 Total Hours per year
*	Divide 2,080 Total Hours by 4 to equal 520 regular quarterly hours.
*	If two full-time employees each worked 520 hours (1,040 hours) for the quarter and another half-time employee worked 260 hours, the Total Hours for the three employees is 1300 (520 + 520 + 260 = 1300).
*	Divide 1300 by 520 to equal 2.5 Recovery funded jobs during that quarter.

12/24/09: OMB Releases Additional ARRA Jobs Reporting Guidance

As expected, although perhaps a little later than hoped for, the Office of Management and Budget Dec.18 released "Updated Guidance on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – Data Quality, Non-Reporting Recipients, and Reporting of Job Estimates." According to OMB, this guidance "incorporates lessons learned from the reporting period" that ended Sept. 30 and "addresses recommendations" of the Government Accountability Office in its November report on data quality and reporting issues. Jobs will now be reported on a quarterly, rather than cumulative, basis. And the change is not retroactive; recipients will not be required to go back and amend the process they used to report jobs for the quarter ending Sept. 30. Another important change is in the definition of a job created or retained. According to OMB, "Previous guidance required recipients to make a subjective judgment on whether a given job would have existed were it not for the Recovery Act. The updated guidance eliminates this subjective assessment and defines jobs created or retained as those funded in the quarter by the Recovery Act."

Part 1 of the guidance, which applies to both ARRA award recipient and contractor reporting, provides guidance to federal agencies, according to OMB, "to improve the quality of data reported under ARRA." It also "outlines" steps federal agencies must take to identify recipients who have not reported and actions to bring them into compliance. Part 2 updates Section 5: Reporting on Jobs Creation Estimates by Recipients (M-09-21), which was issued by OMB last June. It simplifies "the manner in which job estimates are calculated and reported" and includes examples of "how the simplified formula should be applied."

OMB states that "Recipients should implement the updated methodology to the greatest extent possible for the January reporting period. Federal agencies should consider the efforts put forth and the complexities and challenges of the recipients when reviewing compliance." With respect to federal contractors, they must still comply with FAR Clause 52.204-11 and an updated example of how to calculate jobs will be posted to the FAQs for federal contractors at FederalReporting.gov.

As expected, although perhaps a little later than hoped for, the Office of Management and Budget Dec.18 released "Updated Guidance on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – Data Quality, Non-Reporting Recipients, and Reporting of Job Estimates." According to OMB, this guidance "incorporates lessons learned from the reporting period" that ended Sept. 30 and "addresses recommendations" of the Government Accountability Office in its November report on data quality and reporting issues. Jobs will now be reported on a quarterly, rather than cumulative, basis. And the change is not retroactive; recipients will not be required to go back and amend the process they used to report jobs for the quarter ending Sept. 30. Another important change is in the definition of a job created or retained. According to OMB, "Previous guidance required recipients to make a subjective judgment on whether a given job would have existed were it not for the Recovery Act. The updated guidance eliminates this subjective assessment and defines jobs created or retained as those funded in the quarter by the Recovery Act."

Part 1 of the guidance, which applies to both ARRA award recipient and contractor reporting, provides guidance to federal agencies, according to OMB, "to improve the quality of data reported under ARRA." It also "outlines" steps federal agencies must take to identify recipients who have not reported and actions to bring them into compliance. Part 2 updates Section 5: Reporting on Jobs Creation Estimates by Recipients (M-09-21), which was issued by OMB last June. It simplifies "the manner in which job estimates are calculated and reported" and includes examples of "how the simplified formula should be applied."

OMB states that "Recipients should implement the updated methodology to the greatest extent possible for the January reporting period. Federal agencies should consider the efforts put forth and the complexities and challenges of the recipients when reviewing compliance." With respect to federal contractors, they must still comply with FAR Clause 52.204-11 and an updated example of how to calculate jobs will be posted to the FAQs for federal contractors at FederalReporting.gov.

12/24/09: IGs 'Assess' Federal Agencies Processes for ARRA Data Quality Review

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), has released a "summary" report of the federal inspectors general (IGs) examinations of their agencies' "processes in place to perform limited data-quality reviews of recipient-reported information and to notify recipients of the need to make appropriate and timely changes." According to the report, "As of November 3, 2009, 20 IGs had issued 21 reports." Because many of the IGs' assessments took place prior to the actual reporting and data correction periods, the IGs did not examine whether the processes "operated effectively." According to the report, however, "most of the 20 IGs indicated that they intend to evaluate the effectiveness of agency processes in future reviews."

All but five of the IGs assessed agency processes for reviewing information reported by both grantees and contractors; the five other IGs looked at processes for grantees only. The Recovery Board was created under ARRA to provide "transparency" in the use of funds and "to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement." The report is "Summary of Inspectors General Reports on Federal Agencies' Data-Quality Review Processes" (A-09-10-01002).

12/17/09: UW responds to heavy reporting requirements for economic stimulus money

by Catherine O'Donnell - News and Information

"ARRA requires reporting on up to 99 data elements. That would have been a time burden for principal investigators, so we took responsibility," said Jessie Garcia, associate vice president of campus human resources operations and a member of the stimulus team.

Based in Human Resources, the team created DataMart, a massive database. "History told us we would be getting large awards and many of them, so we had to be ready," Garcia said.

The team drew from large units -- Human Resources, Payroll, Grant and Contract Accounting, and the Office of Sponsored Programs System to Administer Grants Electronically (SAGE). Each office has separate systems that don't normally talk to one another, but since last February, there have been scores of meetings, not to mention hundreds of e-mails and phone calls between staff members. "We had to do this; otherwise, there could be duplicate information, indeed conflicting information," Garcia said.

The University could have used a spread sheet offered by the federal government but it would have been more work and could have led to mistakes, Garcia added. Since February, she's spent about half her average workday on ARRA reporting.

"The support groups in all units are working hard to keep up with the workload, but it's put stress on all parts of the system supporting research efforts," Lidstrom said.

However, from listserv conversations, Garcia and other members of the ARRA team learned that the UW was ahead, sometimes months ahead, of other research universities in creating its reporting system.

As of Nov. 29, the UW has received 370 awards ranging from $5,000 to $36 million. The first ARRA reports to the federal government were due October 10 and included job information: 72 new positions and 738 retained at the UW. Undergraduates got the largest number of new jobs, 15, with professional staff following at 14 and faculty and graduate students with 10 apiece. Faculty members have the largest number of retained jobs, 275, followed by professional staff, 232, and bargaining contract classified staff, 71.

It's the first time job creation or retention has been tracked as part of federal research grants, said Dan Hamlin, executive vice president of Eclat Consulting in McLean, Va., which specializes in research grants and contracts in higher education. Before ARRA, Hamlin said, grant reporting could typically include 40 or 50 data elements but additional ones such as job creation and retention have increased the amount.

Principal investigators and research staff said reporting requirements and paperwork have not been a burden, apart from hustle to file grant proposals on time. "The application process was particularly hard because all the requests for applications came out at the same time," said Kathy Tietje, director of research operations at the Tumor Vaccine Group.

Tietje and researchers said reporting has been quite streamlined so far. The National Institutes of Health have asked researchers to submit quarterly reports in addition to a standard annual report, said Dr. Tom Montine, UW professor of pathology and neurological surgery. "That means for a two-year supplemental award, we'll give the NIH seven or eight reports, but they're shorter," he said.

11/12/2009: Recipient of stimulus funding aims to increase Native American enrollment in higher education

http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?visitsource=uwkmail&id=53522