OMB finishing guidance on how grants management will work

The agencies managing the Grants Management Line of Business Consolidation initiative are finalizing the project's governance model and the way shared-service centers will work.Karen Evans, the Office of Management and Budget's administrator for IT and e-government, said the National Science Foundation and the Education Department—the initiative's managing partners—will present their ideas to the Chief Financial Officers and CIO councils this month. An interagency task force last year determined the best way to consolidate grants management systems was to take a consortium approach, where one agency would become the lead and others with similar grants management requirements would connect to its hardware and software [see GCN ]. "They will lay out how the consortium approach will go forward, and agencies will receive operational guidance as well," Evans said. The CFO and CIO councils have been working together on the governance model, she said,"because the piece is a mature model, and we want to make sure it is totally integrated with the Grants Line of Business piece." OMB must ensure that information flows between Grants.gov systems and agency back-end grants management systems, she said.