CNCS was created in 1993 with the enactment of the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. The agency is led by a Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors who are appointed by the President, and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Chief Executive Officer oversees the agency, which includes about 600 employees operating throughout the United States and its territories. The agency provides grants to volunteer organizations throughout the United States to strengthen communities and foster civic engagement. For example, the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 established the CNCS and authorized it to make grants such as through the AmeriCorps state and national grant programs. The act also made the agency responsible for administering Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and National Senior Volunteer Corps. The Serve America Act was also enacted in 2009, which gave CNCS responsibility for administering several newly established programs, such as the Social Innovation Funds, which provide community-level grants. CNCS grants are typically awarded to fund programs for a 3-year period, with funds distributed annually. In fiscal year 2016, CNCS received appropriations totaling more than $787.9 million and used $783.9 million to fund approximately 2,300 grants. Table 1 shows the amounts and number of grants disbursed by each of the programs in fiscal year 2016. Within CNCS, the Chief of Program Operations, Chief Risk Officer, and Chief Financial Officer share responsibility for managing the grants. Program officers under the Chief of Program Operations and grant officers under the Chief Financial Officer manage the administration of the grants, including monitoring the use of grant funds by grantees. The program officers focus on issues related to grantee performance and compliance with program objectives, while the grant officers focus on grantees’ financial issues and performance. The program and grant officers use IT systems to support monitoring and related activities. These systems are developed and maintained by the Office of Information Technology (OIT). This office is led by the agency’s CIO, who reports to the Chief Operating Officer. Figure 1 illustrates the position of the grant management entities within the agency as of April 2017. To manage its grant program, CNCS conducts a four-phase process that covers pre-award grant reviews through actions taken to close out the grants when the period of related projects expires. According to CNCS policy, during the pre-award phase (before CNCS makes a grant award), grant officers evaluate the potential grantee’s financial management capabilities and other aspects, such as whether the grantee has any open audit findings on any current or prior grants, to determine if the grant should be awarded. Once grants are awarded for the upcoming fiscal year, CNCS program and grant officers take steps to assess the grants and plan for monitoring the use of funds provided to the grantees. During the agency’s annual assessment phase, which is conducted between August and October of each year, the officers establish the upcoming year’s monitoring plan. During the monitoring phase, program and grant officers carry out the plans made during the assessment phase. Lastly, when the period of the project supported by a grant expires, the grant is closed. During closeout and no later than 90 days after the expiration date of the grant, grantees submit required documentation to their grant officer and pay any outstanding obligations. CNCS’s program and grant officers verify completion of these actions and reconcile funds, then notify grantees when they have met all programmatic and fiscal requirements of the award. At that time, the grant is officially closed. An overview of the four phases of the monitoring process is depicted in figure 2. Grant monitoring activities are initiated by program and grant officers during the assessment phase, when awarded grants are assessed, rated, and prioritized, and monitoring plans are made. The assessment phase is made up of four steps. In the first step of the assessment phase, officers determine which grants are to be monitored in the upcoming year. The universe of grants being assessed typically includes all grants that are active at the time CNCS is ready to begin the assessment phase, usually in mid-August of each year, and that are expected to be active during the fiscal year beginning in October. At the second step of the process, the officers further assess each of the grants to be monitored to identify potential vulnerabilities based on a set of criteria related to program compliance, financial weakness, or other issues defined by the program and grant officers. CNCS defined 19 criteria that indicate a grant’s potential vulnerabilities to be examined during an assessment. The officers may consider other key concerns or challenges in their assessment on a case-by-case basis. Based on the outcomes of the second step, a third step is taken to determine the priority of each grant for monitoring purposes. Each grant is rated as high, medium, or low priority to determine the types of monitoring activities to be conducted during the year. The three priority categories are determined based on the presence of any of the pre-determined 19 criteria and an automated scoring process performed by the IT system that is used to support the agency’s grant monitoring process. The plan typically is to be prepared by the end of October. Finally, during the fourth step of the annual assessment, program and grant officers plan the monitoring activities for each grant that are to be conducted during the year, based on the priority ratings determined during the third step. For example, grant monitoring plans may include on-site compliance visits to the grantees’ facilities, desk reviews of documentation submitted by the grantees, reviews of grantees’ financial activities, and follow-up visits based on the outcomes of compliance visits and other reviews. The monitoring phase is conducted each year between October and August, when program and grant officers are to complete the activities described in their plans. During that time, they may add or omit activities, with supervisory approval, for a number of reasons. For example, program and grant officers may consider adding an activity for a grantee based on newly identified issues, such as findings of the OIG that suggest the grantee may have demonstrated poor financial management capabilities in the past. In such cases, the officers may add additional on- site or follow-up visits to their plans. The officers produce reports on the progress made by grantees to accomplish the objectives and meet performance measures associated with a particular grant. For example, the reports could include data that reflect the number of individuals who received assistance in disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts; the percentage of economically disadvantaged people who received housing-related support; or the percentage of students served by a grant program who showed improvements in academic performance. In addition, the officers review grantees’ financial status reports that identify funds expended compared to funds allocated for the grantees’ awards through the CNCS budget. The information reported is used by the program and grant officers to help them identify areas that may need more focused attention or targeted monitoring. In our March 2017 report on CNCS’s efforts to improve grant monitoring, we noted that the agency’s annual assessment process may not result in the riskiest grants receiving a high priority for monitoring because of limitations in its scoring model. We also noted that CNCS has not evaluated its monitoring efforts to identify opportunities to improve its assessment of, and response to, risks related to grant management. We recommended that CNCS, as part of its efforts to establish enterprise- wide risk-based management, develop a risk-based approach to grant monitoring and establish a policy to ensure that all grants expected to be active in a fiscal year are assessed for potential risk. Such an approach would incorporate key practices, such as identifying risks relevant to the use of funds awarded by the grant program, analyzing and responding to the risks, and addressing risks as part of the grant monitoring process. The agency did not comment on this recommendation and has not yet addressed it. CNCS’s legacy IT system, eGrants, has been used since 1998 to provide functionality needed to support the agency’s grant management process. Grant management includes annual assessment and monitoring activities such as planning, documenting related activities, generating correspondence, and reporting financial status and progress of grantees’ actions toward meeting performance goals. CNCS officials reported that, in fiscal year 2016, they spent about $11 million maintaining their legacy IT environment, which includes eGrants and other systems used to manage functions such as payroll and benefits. To support the annual assessment process, program and grant officers record in eGrants the results of their evaluations of each grantee. Such evaluations are based on the 19 criteria that were defined to determine the priority of the grants to be monitored and the monitoring activities to be conducted. The officers indicate which of the criteria are present by choosing “yes” or “no” from a drop-down list. Then, based on the criteria, the system sorts and rates the priority of each grant as high, medium, or low. Figure 3 depicts the input screen of the eGrants Monitoring and Oversight Assessment Module, which is used by the officers to select criteria used to indicate the priority level of grants. Once the assessment has been completed, the program and grant officers record activities that they plan to take during the year, such as conducting a follow-up visit with the grantee based on any audit findings in eGrants, along with the proposed time frames for conducting the activities. The program and grant officers also use eGrants to generate notification letters that are sent to grantees to schedule a site visit. After the visit has been conducted, the grant or program officers enter information regarding the results of the visit into the system, along with the grantee’s responses. After a site visit, the officers may also identify follow-up actions to be taken and use eGrants to record those actions. The program and grant officers also use the system to generate reports on the progress of the grantees toward addressing any deficiencies identified as a result of monitoring activities they conducted. Grant officers also enter information about the results of financial reviews into the system. However, CNCS has encountered challenges in using eGrants.