**MAY 2004 STAKEHOLDER MEETING MINUTES**

**May 26, 2004**

[Next Meeting]{.underline}

Date: June 30, 2004

Time: 2:00 -- 3:30

Place: HHH Building, Room 800

All meeting materials and presentations are available at Grants.gov by
visiting http://www.grants.gov/meetingmaterials052604.

**Opening Remarks and Presentation:**

Ms. Becky Spitzgo, Grants.gov Program Manager, began the meeting at 2pm
with the following agenda:

-Grants.gov Update

-Grants Line of Business Task Force

-Satisfaction Survey Results

-Agency Update

After welcoming the audience, Ms. Spitzgo introduced the guest
presenter, Mark Carney, Deputy CFO, from the U.S. Department of
Education, who spoke on the Grants Line of Business (LOB) Task Force.

**Grants Line of Business (LOB) Task Force**

Mr. Carney began by providing background information on the LOB, which
was initiated on March 7, 2004 to develop business-driven solutions and
target architectures for five LOBs that support the Federal government.
The LOBs share core business requirements and similar business
processes. The LOBs include:

-   Financial Management (FM)

-   Human Resources Management (HR)

-   Grants Management (GM)

-   Case Management (CM)

-   Federal Health Architecture (FHA)

Executive champions of the LOB Task Force include Karen Evans,
Administrator for Electronic Government and Information Technology
(OMB), Linda Springer, Controller, Office of Federal Financial
Management (OMB), and Kay Cole James, Office of Personnel Management
Director.

Mr. Carney's main focus for purposes of the presentation was the GM LOB.
He began the presentation by briefly addressing the concerns or issues
within the GM LOB related to Grants.gov. He stated that Grants.gov is
recognized as a key component of the GM LOB and the customer facing
front end by both the LOB Task Force and OMB. Any solution and target
architecture will work in tandem with existing Grants.gov platform. The
Task Force is actively seeking other initiatives and programs that can
provide good linkages within GM LOB because there is a large effort of
inclusion among the different LOBs.

Mr. Carney then discussed the relationship between the E-Government
initiatives, the LOBs and how they come together. It was realized that
there was a need to focus on this issue and that the integration of
Grants.gov was an important step in maintaining the relationship between
the E-Government initiatives and the LOBs. The scope of the work within
GM LOB from application intake through award closeout and financial
reconciliation must find a common solution that works with Grants.gov.

He then briefly touched on the progress that has been made since late
March 2004 in regards to the RFI. Touchstone, an outside vendor, is
currently collecting and grouping RFI responses and agency surveys
received, in order to find patterns across RFI analysis criteria
including:

-   Value Proposition

-   Scaleable Government-Wide

-   Adaptable to Changing Requirements

-   Enabling Interoperability

Next steps include attempting to document and draft common solutions and
target architecture, share solutions and target architecture with all
agencies, develop the business case by early September of this year and
by 2005/2006 send out RFPs.

Mr. Carney then spoke specifically on the GM LOB. The GM vision is a
government-wide solution to support end-to-end GM activities that
promote citizen access, customer service, and agency financial and
technical stewardship. Goals include:

-   Improving Customer Access to grant opportunities

-   Increasing efficiency of the submission process

-   Improving decision making

-   Integrating with Financial Management processes

-   Improving the efficiency of the reporting procedures in order to
    increase the usable information content

-   Optimizing the post-award and closeout actions

Mr. Carney then provided some background information about the GM LOB.
For instance, there are 16 fully participatory partner Federal agencies
including the National Science Foundation and the Department of
Education, leading the GM LOB,

In conclusion, Mr. Carney spoke about draft RFI Solution Patterns for GM
LOB. There is an understanding of unique and differentiated grants
services across agencies at the sub-function level. However, vendors
have different approaches to core/non-core sub-processes and are very
product centric. There is hope that a single shared services approach is
possible in the long term. GM LOB is also trying to leverage current
grant processes/packages to provide a government-wide solution but no
current program or vendor exists that has all solutions being sought.

> [Audience Questions:]{.underline}
>
> Q: Do you foresee the development of system-to-systems coming together
> in pieces and then building on it?
>
> A: We anticipate a phased approach. We did Find and Apply as pieces. A
> foundation is already in place to build on.

Ms. Spitzgo, then returned to provide some additional remarks,
reiterating that it is clear that Grants.gov is a component of the GM
LOB and recapped Grants.gov's response to the GM LOB RFI. As a proven
and effective link between the Federal grant-making agencies and the
large, diverse grants community, it was important for Grants.gov to
state its role in the end-to-end grants management process, particularly
the customer facing systems currently in place with Find and Apply. The
Grants.gov system is readily expandable for additional functionality to
incorporate the remaining customer-facing aspects of the grant lifecycle
through new deployments of electronic forms and enhancements to the
Grants.gov portal. Also, by leveraging the Grants.gov architecture and
service delivery model, the GM LOB would have a proven base to initiate
work on its new goal of establishing a common grants solution and target
architecture that includes both front office and back office
functionality.

Other customer-facing aspects of the grants lifecycle that should be
developed by Grants.gov and become part of the overall Federal grants
solution as described in the GM LOB include:

-   Integrating the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) and
    Grants.gov

-   Award Notification functionality

-   Reporting mechanism (Financial and Progress)

-   Payment Request Entry Point

-   Closeout mechanism

Ms. Spitzgo encouraged the audience to review the Grants.gov GM LOB RFI
response executive summary provided, as a handout, with the meeting
materials. GM LOB RFI response will also be posted on the Grants.gov
website. Grants.gov looks forward to inviting Mr. Carey back in July for
an update on the GM LOB RFI compilation. Ms. Spitzgo also recommended
that agencies find out who the GM LOB contact is within their agency.
She or Mr. Carney is available to provide assistance in identifying that
contact.

**Satisfaction Survey Results**

Ms. Katie Root with the Grants.gov PMO office provided an update on the
Customer Satisfaction Survey. The electronic survey includes both
Grantors and the Grant Community and is conducted on a quarterly basis
to track the progression of and satisfaction with the program. The Wave
1 survey results were fielded in April 2004 and compared to the Apply
Pilot Satisfaction Survey Findings that were conducted last summer.

Wave 1 responses included a total of 259 completed surveys, of which 190
were from the Grant Community and 69 were from Grantors. From the Grant
Community, respondents included those that had interaction with the
website. Half had registered to receive grant opportunity email notices.
Most of the Grantors responding had signed up for and used Grants.gov.
Half had published opportunities on the site.

Overall results from the survey showed moderate satisfaction with
participants continuing to see the potential. They acknowledge that
Grants.gov is a viable solution, but realize it is still evolving and
hope for a more streamlined and intuitive process in the future. They
were impressed with the achievements that Grants.gov has made to date in
such a short period of time. The most common problems involved
downloading applications and registration, which Grants.gov is actively
working on.

Other highlighted findings are that three-quarters of Grantors are at
least moderately satisfied with Grants.gov and nearly one third are
highly satisfied. These results were unexpected but promising, in light
of the early bumps and obstacles in the form development process.

The Grant Community was satisfied with:

-   User friendliness

-   Organization of tools and information

-   Notification function

-   Search capabilities

The Grant Community was unsatisfied with:

-   Registration

-   Application downloading

-   Unclear, incomplete instructions

-   Complicated search function

Grantors were satisfied with:

-   Ease of use

-   Applicant reach

-   Availability of the tools

-   Grants.gov staff and help desk

Grantors were unsatisfied with:

-   System confusion

-   Grant posting process

-   Application downloading

-   Unclear business rules

Overall, the Grant Community would like the "Prepare to Apply" process
to be easier; Grantors would like the completed application download
process to be easier.

Nonetheless, when comparing Grants.gov to the traditional paper process,
more than half of the Grant Community and one third of the Grantors feel
that Grants.gov makes the grant application process better, which is a
definite improvement. However, Grantors are still split between favoring
Grants.gov versus their original processes. Grants.gov needs to focus on
having the Grantors adapt and adopt the Grants.gov process.

Next steps include addressing key Wave 1 findings to enhance customer
satisfaction. Grants.gov will field Wave 2 of the survey in July with
reported findings available in August. We hope to find dramatic
improvement between the second and third wave.

> [Audience Questions:]{.underline}

Q.  Of the grantors that do not find Grants.gov an improvement, how many
    already had an e-file system in place?

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A.  The answer is currently unavailable. We will be adding questions to
    the survey to make results of this nature available on the second
    wave.

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Q.  What is Grants.gov doing to address registration problems beyond
    Outreach?

> Perhaps a solution would be to create a test registration and
> application submission site/ process for user to experience the whole
> process without the stress of application deadlines.

A.  A test site would have to tie into the authorization process,
    however we will follow up to see if that is feasible.

Ms. Spitzgo added that there are many new concepts developing within
Grants.gov. We waited to survey the Grant Community and Grantors until
we had more users and until issues had been dealt with for better
response. The Grantor/agency input helps to improve the application
process and to move forward.

**Agency Update and Closing Remarks**

Ms. Spitzgo provided the Agency update as part of her closing remarks.

Last month, we mentioned the goal to have all agencies post packages by
October 2004. Next month, charts will be unveiled to measure progress
and show efforts of all agencies. Grants.gov is in the development
phases to acknowledge agency work from charts that were pulled together
last month across agencies. Additionally, Grants.gov plans to take the
opportunity during the Stakeholder meeting to acknowledge agencies for
their support and adoption of Grants.gov. We also plan to share this
information with the Executive Board.

Other updates:

-   We've had big numbers in the last few weeks: 60 new application
    packages were published. 325 applications were submitted
    electronically and the numbers continue to climb. 177 applications
    were submitted in just the last two weeks, particularly with ACF and
    USDA. The applicant community is finally getting the through
    registration and the number of registered users and Authorized
    Organization Representatives (AORs) is increasing significantly.
    Very exciting.

-   Research & Related (R&R) forms and schemas will be in final
    development and in testing in the next week or two. Grants.gov will
    be testing as will IV&V (application and software testing
    contractor), NSF, NIH and others. If your agency is interested in
    participating, contact Carol Huber (Carol.Huber@hhs.gov).

-   Kim Deutsch from NSF will be back for the next 3 months as interim
    Grants.gov Deputy Program Manager as we post for the position. Peter
    Brunner, on assignment from the Department of Labor, has been
    extended for another six months through December.

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-   Grants.gov's new page designs and functionality makes it easier for
    applicants and Grantors to use the site.

    -   New home design, navigation and site map to direct applicants to
        the most requested function and information

    -   New Grantor page now available to find information, documents
        and links most requested by agencies

-   OMB is issuing an implementation memo to all agencies to submit an
    MOU for Find and Apply with Grants.gov. The implementation memo is
    expected to be issued in the next few weeks.

-   GAO began conducting an audit on 5/26/04 on PL 106/107 to learn more
    about usage and to provide insight on how the Grants.gov process
    works. They were particularly interested in agency adoption, usage
    and integration of Grants.gov data into agency back-end systems.

-   The Stakeholders Meeting has now been shortened to 2-3:30 instead of
    2-4.

> [Audience Questions:]{.underline}

Q.  If an MPIN wasn't initially created during registration at CCR, and
    an applicant goes back to create it, how long does it take to
    process at Grants.gov?

> A. Turnaround time is 1 day.