Abstract
Washington Fax reported on September 23 that the federal E-grants program, an electronic government-wide grant application system, is expected to be deployed by October 1, 2003, which is the start of fiscal year 2004. The E-grants program will replace the Federal Commons grant application system. As one of 24 E-government program initiatives designed to improve access to government services through the Internet, E-grants is supported by 11 department and agency partners, with HHS as the managing partner. The partners who are members of the E-grants executive board meet approximately once per month.
Although only four agencies—NIH, the NSF, the Department of Defense Office of Naval Research, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—were to participate in posting funding opportunities on Federal Commons, E-grants will be open to all 26 government agencies. At FedBizOpps, the single government point of entry for government funding opportunities greater than $25,000, agencies began submitting funding opportunities in July.
HHS has created the E-Grants Program Management Office (PMO) to lead E-grants development. The program is designed to be a “one-stop electronic grant portal where potential grant recipients will receive full service electronic grant administration,” PMO states. Mandated by the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act (PL 106-107), the Federal Commons was intended to “provide a Web-based gateway and a searchable synopsis of grant programs and funding opportunities” throughout the U.S. government.
Federal Commons has evolved into E-grants successfully and passed on its vision and much of its work to the new E-grants program, NIH Office of the Director representative Paul Markovitz, speaking for PMO, told the Federal Demonstration Partnership on September 19. “The vision that we had for the Federal Commons is now being called the vision of E-grants.” As with the Federal Commons site, E-grants will allow applicants to register and apply at a single point of entry, involving a “central piece that you can communicate with that acts as a broker between the agencies,” Markovitz said. The architectural structure of Federal Commons was “cut and pasted” into the E-grants program, he noted, in that “how that broker communicated with the agencies remains the same.”
In part, the Federal Commons’ downfall resulted from the fact that “the work was all done by volunteer groups, and there was no sense of ownership; there was no one who was truly responsible for the product,” Markovitz said. “So, when there were obstacles and hurdles, it was very difficult to overcome them because there wasn't anyone directly pushing forward,” he explained. Also, in a pilot project for Federal Commons, it was found that a potential applicant would have to “bounce all over the Internet” by searching for funding opportunities in one system, then another to view the grant program information, which “wasn't really a good solution,” Markovitz explained. “So, we have a portal pilot to bring [the systems] together, and right now we're going to find out how to best use” the E-grants program. E-grants’ Business Partner Network, formerly the Central Contractor Registration under the Federal Commons pilot, will be the one-time “central registration point” for all grant applicants and also will maintain organizational profiles of agencies “so that you won't have to keep registering with agencies and maintaining the profiles of agencies,” Markovitz said.