Requirements published for stimulus reporting

The Office of Management and Budget today published a notice of the standard data elements to be used in the reporting of grants, loans and cooperative agreement spending under Section 1512 of the economic stimulus law.

The data elements include the name of the federal agency, name of recipient, performance period and an assessment of percentage of work completed, according to the notice in the Federal Register, and comments are invited until May 1.

The elements also include a narrative description of the project’s effect on employment, including descriptions of the types of jobs created and number of full-time-equivalent positions created or retained.

After the data standards are approved, recipients of federal grants, cooperative agreements and loans made through the stimulus law must report the information and data electronically through a central federal portal or through an agency collection process.

The recipients of the grants and other funding are expected to include states, local governments, universities, nonprofit organizations and commercial organizations.

Standards for collecting data for contracts under the stimulus law are still under review, the notice said.