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GREAT ACT MAKING GREAT PROGRESS

Companies today look for any avenue to reduce their liabilities and costs. Although grants are a welcome addition to business, as compliance reporting structures become more complicated by the day, any law to ease the process is much appreciated. Agencies and the public seek transparency in the information reported by grant recipients about how the grants were put to use efficiently and effectively, thus encouraging the US government to introduce the Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act of 2019.

GREAT Act

This Act enables the availability of open data to modernize federal grant reporting. The enactment is an endeavor to standardize and even revamp the reporting system, of their grants/federal funds to the respective entities and other recipients of funds. This Act has been introduced to simplify the arduous task of disclosing information to the general public, through a central government website called USAspending.gov. The effort is to stress standardization and transparency through modern technology. This Act was passed by the Senate recently on 21st October 2019 and is now with the Oversight & Government Reform Committee for further action. Hopefully, this attempt will transform the reporting process from a scenario of totally different documents to a robust, uniform, cost-effective reporting system. Not only will this Act as a tool for timely decision making, but will also facilitate single-window access and information retrieval mechanism for easy compliance.

Let us now see how this initiative is scheduled to be operated and also get to understand the nuances of its requirements. 

GREAT ACT – Process and Requirements

  • The Act requires perusal of parameters for data related to grants, applicable to grantees, not limited to state/local governments, who are recipients of federal awards equal to, or more than $750,000.
  • The Act requires certain necessary information from the entities requesting a grant. They are, among other things, the name of the entity, the amount of grant, the agency and the location.
  • The Prime Awardees are entities receiving a grant from the Federal Government and are required to submit their periodical progress reports concerning the details on receipt of grants and how they have disbursed them. These progress reports are to be filed through the FFATA sub-award Reporting System (FSRS).
  • Further, there are sub-recipients who are entities recipients of sub-grants. These entities must submit their periodical progress reports to the prime awardees.
  • There are also certain conditions and prerequisites for compiling data for reporting. They are, inter-alia, traceable and auto-readable with intelligent searches, non-proprietary, incorporate standards developed by designated bodies and FFATA, in keeping with standard accounting practices and standards etc.
  • It is also mandatory that the sub-recipients receiving awards equal to or above $25,000, need to share their data to their prime awardees for the prime awardees to share the same through FSRS.
  • There are a plethora of Standard Grant Reporting Forms that are required to be used, right from applying for a grant, through the entire reporting system.

The Act also provides exceptions and limitations in that there shall be:

  • No personally searchable or otherwise vital information was published.
  • The OMB Director to permit exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

 

Hopefully, the above initiative will encourage reporting discipline and provide a platform for much-needed instant access to data, in keeping with the right ideology of “Right to Information”. Are you a company on the lookout for support with changes in the light of this Act? We’re here to help you navigate this and be on the right side of the law. Give us a call today!

 

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DataTracks is a leading global compliance reporting software and services company, providing a broad range of compliance services and solutions to seven of the top ten accounting firms and over 17,000 enterprises worldwide. With presence across 24 countries, DataTracks helps companies to comply with the standards of regulators such as the SEC – USA, HMRC – UK, Revenue – Ireland, ACRA – Singapore, MCA – India, CIPC – South Africa, SSM – Malaysia, ESEF – ESMA and various other EU regulatory authorities. DataTracks drives innovation and technology to improve the way compliance reporting is done.