Over 1,000 federal grant programs are disbursed and managed by 26 federal agencies and other federal grant-making organizations. Because of concerns about the burden on grantees of the varying requirements imposed by these different grant programs, Congress enacted the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999, commonly referred to by the grants community and OMB as Public Law 106-107. Among other things, the act also required OMB to direct, coordinate, and assist agencies in developing and implementing a common application and reporting system that included electronic processes with which a nonfederal entity can apply for multiple grant programs that serve similar purposes but are administered by different federal agencies. In response to Public Law 106-107, among other things, OMB created Grants.gov (initially known as e-Grants), and included it among the initiatives designated in OMB’s 2002 E-Government Strategy. As these programs were initiated shortly after the E-Government Act of 2002 became law, we refer to them in this report as legacy E-Gov initiatives. The Grants.gov Web site was deployed with both the “Find” and “Apply” tools on October 31, 2003, and was meant, in part, to improve the announcement and application stages (together known as the pre-award stage) of the grant- making process for grantees. OMB has directed that almost all federal discretionary grant opportunities should be posted to the Grants.gov Web site; applicants can search for grant opportunities by agency or across agencies using the “Find” mechanism. Many grant announcements include a link to application forms and instructions. As with all legacy E-Gov initiatives, OMB established a management structure to oversee the initiative and to facilitate a collaborative working environment for Grants.gov. This management structure included a managing partner agency—HHS—to manage the system and to coordinate agency involvement in managing and developing procedures supporting the use of the system. The Grants.gov oversight and management structure also includes the GEB, and the Grants.gov Program Management Office (PMO). Managing Partner Agency. As managing partner for Grants.gov, HHS is responsible for managing Grants.gov. HHS is also responsible for managing Grants.gov as an information technology (IT) investment through HHS’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). The OCIO is required to manage Grants.gov through HHS’s capital programming and budget process. The HHS Office of Grants provides departmental input to Grants.gov and other governmentwide grant initiatives, and key leadership and oversight on Grants.gov management and implementation. Grants Executive Board (GEB). The GEB was established in 2002 at HHS’s request to help coordinate agency involvement in managing Grants.gov and consists of grant-making officials from the 26 partner agencies. The GEB’s role is to provide strategic leadership and resources to Grants.gov, including reviewing implementation and operational policies, the Grants.gov budget, and the level of financial contribution of each partner agency. The GEB charter states that it “will serve as an authoritative voice for the grant-making agencies, providing a governance body that can vote on proposals and deliverables as representatives of the grant-making agencies.” Grants.gov Program Management Office (PMO). Day-to-day management of the Grants.gov initiative and its budget is the responsibility of the Grants.gov PMO, which is located within HHS and is currently staffed by 10 employees plus supporting contractor personnel. The PMO is also responsible for managing the process to update the standard grant application forms (SF 424 series) approved by OMB for governmentwide use. In addition, the Grants Policy Committee (GPC), established by the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Council, has overall responsibility for implementing Public Law 106-107. One of its goals is to “simplify federal financial assistance processes to make them more uniform across agencies and eliminate unnecessary burdens on applicants, grantees, and federal agencies.” Specifically, the Grants Policy Committee is to, among other things, coordinate all federal grants policy recommendations submitted to OMB, recommend uniform forms and formats for grant applications and post-award reports, recommend standard and streamlined federal-to-grantee business processes, facilitate greater community input and outreach in streamlining federal financial assistance, and collaborate with the GEB on Grants.gov and other streamlining issues. The committee’s pre-award working group is responsible for developing policy proposals for streamlining and simplifying the pre-award stage of the grants life cycle. Figure 1 illustrates the various entities involved in the grant pre-award stages at the federal level. The legacy E-Gov initiatives are funded using a variety of approaches, including partner agency contributions, fee-for-service, direct payments from the managing partner agency, or some combination of these. OMB defines contribution and fee-for-service models as follows: Contribution model: Commitments of funding and/or in-kind services provided by partner agencies to initiative managing partner agencies in support of developing, implementing, and/or migrating to E-Gov common solutions. Contribution amounts are determined annually through collaborative, interagency E-Gov initiative governance structures and subject to approval by OMB. Fee-for-service model: A transfer of funds by partner agencies to initiative service providers in exchange for services rendered by the initiative service providers. The amounts are typically based on a transaction/usage-based fee structure (e.g., for payroll processing, payroll service providers base their service fees on the number of employees at a customer agency). Initiative service providers use fees collected from partner agencies to cover ongoing operational costs, perform routine maintenance, and support their customer base. In June 2004, OMB issued a memo detailing the Grants.gov funding model and partner agencies’ Grants.gov contributions, as approved by the GEB. Grants.gov is funded by payments from its 26 partner agencies. Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) between the Grants.gov PMO and the partner agencies establish the amount and timing of the contributions to be made and the Grants.gov services to be provided. Annually, the GEB votes on both the Grants.gov budget and the calculation that will be used to determine each agency’s payment. In keeping with OMB’s expectation for legacy E-Gov initiatives to move toward a fee-for-service model, starting with the fiscal year 2010 budget, the Grants Executive Board (GEB) approved changes to the Grants.gov contribution calculation to better reflect agencies’ use of Grants.gov’s services. Grants.gov partner agency charges are based on three factors (see fig. 2): charges based on agency size comprise 20 percent of the Grants.gov budget, charges based on the number of grant opportunities posted by an agency comprise 40 percent of the Grants.gov budget, and charges based on the number of grant applications submitted comprise 40 percent of the Grants.gov budget. To determine agency size for the purposes of Grants.gov, partner agencies are divided into five groups based on an agency’s total dollar value of discretionary grants: extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large. The component of an agency’s contribution based on agency size is the same for all agencies within a size category. For example, for fiscal year 2011 the agency size component of an agency’s contribution is $50,000 for all small agencies and $200,000 for all large agencies. Two measures of Web site usage comprise the other two components of the contribution calculation: (1) an agency’s share of total grant opportunities posted on Grants.gov, and (2) an agency’s share of total grant applications submitted through Grants.gov. According to fiscal year 2007 data—on which the GEB based its fiscal year 2011 calculations— agencies posted from 3 to 1,167 grant opportunities on Grants.gov. Grant applications submitted through Grants.gov ranged from 13 to 107,961. The Grants.gov contribution calculation results in different contribution amounts for agencies with similar usage profiles. For example, under the fiscal year 2011 contribution calculation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (categorized as a large agency for the purposes of Grants.gov) posted 40 grant opportunities, received 4,817 applications through the Grants.gov Web site, and paid $414,422. However, the National Endowment for the Humanities (categorized as a small agency for the purposes of Grants.gov) posted 42 grant opportunities, received 4,577 applications through the Web site, and paid $155,159. As shown in table 1, the majority of this difference is due to the agency size component of the funding calculation. NEH’s agency size component is $50,000; HUD’s is $200,000. According to the GEB, the agency size factor is one of three factors used as a proxy for total agency Grants.gov system utilization. The GEB stated that gauging actual system use would require a longitudinal analysis of factors, including opportunities posted, applications submitted, and applications received. HHS and PMO officials told us that they consider agency size to correlate with an agency’s use of the Grants.gov system; however, we found only a moderate correlation between partner agencies’ use of the Grants.gov Web site (as defined by the Grants.gov contribution calculation) and agency size. When we analyzed fiscal year 2011 Grants.gov data for agency size, grants posted, and applications submitted, we found no clear pattern of increased system usage as agency size increased.