Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., James Lankford, R-Okla., Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., reintroduced the Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act today. The GREAT Act would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the leading administrator of grant programs to create a comprehensive and standardized data structure to cover all data elements reported by recipients of federal awards, including grants and cooperative agreements.
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“In its current form, grant reporting can be inefficient and overly complex,” Enzi said. “The GREAT Act would simplify the grant process and increase transparency to help keep track of federal dollars. By creating a standardized structure, this bipartisan bill would reduce compliance costs and burdens on grant recipients while utilizing modern technologies so taxpayers know how their tax dollars are being spent.”
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The U.S. government awards more than $600 billion every year to state and local governments, agencies and other organizations. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 required OMB and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct a pilot program to alleviate reporting burdens for grant recipients. HHS is currently the top awarder of federal grants. The pilot program found that grant recipients are often required to enter identical data multiple times, and there is no single repository for the data. This redundancy is burdensome for grant recipients and for congressional oversight.
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