Four major agencies to stop using Grants.gov

The Office of Management and Budget is asking agencies to pony up more than $6 million by April 13 to pay for the enhancements to Grants.gov.

In a new memo issued late last night, OMB director Peter Orszag says the money from the 11 agencies is needed to help deal with the surge of applications from the Recovery Act.

Orszag says on average Grants.gov received about 4,000 grant applications a week, but in one week in March they received 11,000.

"That pace is expected to grow as key Recovery Act deadlines approach," he says.

"As it currently stands, the existing infrastructure would not be able to handle that influx of applications."

OMB spokesman Tom Gavin tells FederalNewsRadio that the administration expects at least 75,000 more grant applications to come in through Grants.gov over the next few months.

"That is a 60 percent increase on weekly basis," Gavin says.

"We have a real project ahead of us. We have a short and long term path to make sure Grants.gov continues to operate and provide this important service."

And because of this expected increase, at least four agencies will stop using Grants.gov in the short term.

Gavin says the departments of Defense, Education, Homeland Security and Justice have identified other internal systems to use.

"They will be making a temporary switch from Grants.gov in part or whole to their own systems," he says.

"It will offload 50,000 applications from Grants.gov."

Gavin adds that over the next few weeks OMB will have a final number of agencies who plan to temporarily stop using Grants.gov.

David Cassidy, a vice president at the Turner Consulting Group and a member of the National Grants Partnership Steering Committee, says the move of these and possibly other agencies away from Grants.gov likely is only for the short term.

"It is not surprising these agencies are moving out of Grants.gov given the volume of applications they will receive," he says.

"Agencies are falling into one of three buckets: those that have to stick with Grants.gov, those that have their own system they think is more appropriate and are moving completely toward that; and those folks in the middle, who could continue to use Grants.gov and but are in limbo."

Repeated e-mails to HHS seeking comment on the status of Grants.gov were not answered.

In the meantime, Orszag is calling for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor and Transportation as well as NASA, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Small Business Administration to provide anywhere from $129,299 to $1,067,885 in funding to upgrade the find and apply site that the Department of Health and Human Services runs.

Most agencies already have submitted funding for the program, about $6 million overall. HHS is expecting about $12 million for 2009.

For those agencies that need congressional approval before providing funding, OMB offers a letter template. Those letters must be provided to OMB and submitted to Congress by April 13.

Orszag says OMB and the agency senior accountable official will assess progress on a weekly basis.

OMB says the money will be used for a variety of changes to the program:

• Additional servers to facilitate increased user log-on capacity and faster processing;

• Storage to ensure the system can handle the larger volume of applications coming in;

• Software and network enhancements to help balance the system load and use the existing hardware more efficiently;

• Operation and maintenance, and other reoccurring costs for software licenses and hosting;

• Contact center expansion to provide support during the Recover Act surge that is expected;

• Independent validation and verification of the system architecture;

• Monitoring tools to address performance issues from the user perspective;

• Business support costs to address surge issues, such as change management and other issues;

In the long term, OMB says the General Services Administration will launch a pilot to using the FedBizOpps.gov platform.

"Over the next 60 days, GSA will work with a smaller group of grant making agencies to define and begin the pilot," Gavin says.

"There will be more transparency by harmonizing the data elements and data processes."

Gavin adds that GSA will work with the Grants Executive Board, the Integrated Acquisition Environment and others to develop the way forward.

"After 60 days, GSA will analyze and map the legacy data," Gavin says.

"The goal is to strengthened the infrastructure and bring it up to date."

Cassidy says using the FedBizOpps.gov platform makes sense in many ways, but he is unsure whether it will address the underlying problems with Grants.gov.

"What I've not heard recently is people are not happy with the find function," Cassidy says.

"Most of the complaints are around the apply function, and I'm not sure the apply function is something FedBizOpps will help with. I'm not sure what the rationalization is for engaging FedBizOpps. It may have less to do with the system, and more to do with capability of the system and its scalability."

He adds that the Obama administration clearly wanted to send a signal of their intention to improve Grants.gov over the long term.

"The technical investments OMB wants to make would mitigate some of those risks around the apply function," Cassidy says.

"The other things they are doing will allow them to better serve the customers to get through the spike in activity expected with the Recovery act. The investments are not necessarily aimed at long term improvements."

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio -- Improvements to Grants.gov at least 90 days away

FederalNewsRadio -- OMB calls for a review of grant application systems

OMB -- Memo on Grants.gov (pdf)

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