ARRA COMPLIANCE
The federal government is committed to ensuring that Recovery Act dollars are being spent appropriately. Unprecedented accountability measures will be put into place for recipients of stimulus dollars.
OMB issued preliminary guidance in February which outlines steps that Federal agencies must take immediately to meet these objectives. The complete OMB memorandum can be found here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/memoranda_fy2009/m09-10.pdf
Below, we are highlighting Section 2.9 of the OMB memorandum, which we believe will be most relevant to any SUNY recipients of federal stimulus dollars.
Excerpt from OMB ARRA Guidance, p. 18 (Feb 18, 2009)
2.9 What reporting will be collected from recipients of Federal funding for reporting on Recovery.gov?
The Recovery Act and this guidance require extensive reporting from recipients of Federal funding. The Recovery Act defines "recipient" as any entity that receives Recovery Act funds directly from the Federal Government (including Recovery Act funds received through grant, loan, or contract) other than an individual and includes a State that receives Recovery Act funds. See Section 1512 of the Recovery Act.
These requirements apply to:
- Prime recipients. Reporting requirements only apply to the prime non-Federal recipients of Federal funding, and the subawards (i.e., subgrants, subcontracts, etc.) made by these prime recipients. They do not require each subsequent subrecipient to also report. For instance, a grant could be given from the Federal government to State A, which then gives a subgrant to City B (within State A), which hires a contractor to construct a bridge, which then hires a subcontractor to supply the concrete. In this case, State A is the prime recipient, and would be required to report the subgrant to City B. However, City B does not have any specific reporting obligations, nor does the contractor or subcontractor for the purposes of reporting for the Recovery.gov website. All recipients of Federal funds must continue to comply with existing agency and program reporting requirements.
- Only recipients receiving awards funded through discretionary appropriations. These reporting requirements only apply to non-Federal recipients who receive funding provided through discretionary appropriations. The reporting requirements do not apply to funding received through entitlement or other mandatory programs, except as specifically required by OMB.
As required by Section 1512 of the Recovery Act and this guidance, each recipient, as described above, is required to report the following information to the Federal agency providing the award 10 days after the end of each calendar quarter, starting on July 10th.
These reports will include the following data elements, as prescribed by the Recovery Act:
(1) The total amount of recovery funds received from that agency;
(2) The amount of recovery funds received that were obligated and expended to projects or activities. This reporting will also included unobligated Allotment balances to facilitate reconciliations.
(3) A detailed list of all projects or activities for which recovery funds were obligated and expended, including--
(A) The name of the project or activity;
(B) A description of the project or activity;
(C) An evaluation of the completion status of the project or activity;
(D) An estimate of the number of jobs created and the number of jobs retained by the project or activity; and
(E) For infrastructure investments made by State and local governments, the purpose, total cost, and rationale of the agency for funding the infrastructure investment with funds made available under this Act, and name of the person to contact at the agency if there are concerns with the infrastructure investment.
(4) Detailed information on any subcontracts or subgrants awarded by the recipient to include the data elements required to comply with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-282), allowing aggregate reporting on awards below $25,000 or to individuals, as prescribed by the Director of OMB.
The final guidance issued by OMB for the Recovery Act will lay out in more detail specific reporting instructions and how the data collection for this reporting will work government-wide. OMB is actively pursuing options for collecting some of this information centrally, focusing first on the data required in (4) above in the standard formats currently used by Federal agencies to report to USASpending.gov. OMB is also actively considering how to centralize the collection and reporting of the information required in section (3) above, though the current preference is that, to the extent possible, this data should be collected and reported through existing program level systems. Agencies should develop initial contingency plans for collecting and reporting this information directly on the agency recovery website within the 30 days specified by law.
Instructions for reporting this information will be provided in subsequent guidance. Agencies should be cautious before making investments in new system capabilities before further guidance is issued or before consulting with OMB.
Regarding the reporting requirements in 3(d), usual methods for reporting jobs created by a contract do not take into account the time frame over which the jobs are created. As a result, they are likely to be inconsistent with macroeconomic estimates of jobs created at a point in time. For this reason, departments and agencies should use conventional jobs estimates for internal planning purposes only. Uniform reporting requirements for estimates of job creation will be specified at a later time.
Federal agencies must instruct recipients covered by these reporting requirements that Recovery Act funds can be used in conjunction with other funding as necessary to complete projects, but tracking and reporting must be separate to meet the reporting requirements of the Recovery Act and this Guidance.
For information related to the Recovery Act to be fully transparent to the public, each agency must develop a list of agency systems which will capture significant program-related information related to the use of Recovery Act funds from recipients, either through existing or new reporting requirements. Further, agencies must identify what information each system captures, if it is publicly available in a user-friendly format, and if not, what technological or policy barriers exist to it being made public. For those systems presently unable to make information public in a user-friendly format, agencies should provide an estimate of resources necessary to achieve full transparency. This list need not include core financial and other systems which make information available through existing financial reporting, USASpending.gov, or other government-wide reporting requirements. Each agency should assemble this list and provide it to the E-Gov Administrator no later than March 15th. Reports can be sent to recovery@omb.eop.gov.