October 5, 2006

We’re building the Neuroimaging Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC)

Our company was recently awarded a new contract from NIH to build and operate the Neuroimaging Tools and Resources Clearinghouse, which we’re calling NITRC (pronounced “ni-trick”).  We are incredibly excited by this project and have already begun work. From our press…

Grants.gov outages and SI transition

Grants.gov just released a notice about their plan for transitioning to the new system integrator, Anteon/General Dynamics. Headline: The system will be down this Sunday, October 8th, from 10am ET to 6pm ET! All other planned outages are contained in this…

Unannounced Grants.gov file format change causes problems

Users of Grants.Gov’s XML downloads of funding opportunity announcements got an unpleasant surprise recently: the XML files changed, without any announcement or forewarning. The problem is apparently in the XML date elements:  PostDate ApplicationsDueDate ArchiveDate Up to now, the ISO…

Grants performance accountability and the PART

GovExec has a nice piece about GAO-06–1046, the report I blogged about a while ago. GovExec’s article has a nice summary of why the report was requested:  The study was requested by Rep. Todd Platts, R‑Pa., chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on…
October 4, 2006

Oracle’s Grants.gov integration in PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9

Oracle issued a press release yesterday about their PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9 product. Part of this is proud to state:  PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9 includes out-of-the-box integration with http://www.grants.gov for organizations to obtain and view their opportunities list, preview grant applications…
October 3, 2006

OMB asks bloggers to help push management agenda

GovExec reports on a meeting between Clay Johnson, OMB Deputy Director for Management, and a group of bloggers who helped push S.2590 through Congress. From the article:  Bloggers from across the political spectrum were credited with helping push the legislation quickly through…

Commentary on S.2590 in Information Today

Information Today has a good article on the history and future of S.2590, the database of the federal grants and contracts. The author notes that,  The database will only be as good as the data included in it. The current data collection…
September 29, 2006

GAO reports on grants performance accountability

GAO released a new report today titled Enhancing Performance Accountability Provisions Could Lead to Better Results (full report, highlights). GAO’s recommendations are as follows:  GAO recommends that the Director of OMB work with agencies and Congress to encourage the use of…
September 28, 2006

Franchise funds and the GMLOB

We’ve been doing some research into the business models that are driving the various Lines of Business initiatives, and recently compiled some information about Federal franchise funds that we thought might be good to share.  “Franchise funds” is a 1994 program that…
September 27, 2006

FPDS-NG likely to be used for S.2590

This GCN article suggests that OMB is seriously considering utilizing FPDS-NG to deliver the datababse of federal grants spending.  Even though all three databases have their flaws, most government officials believe that, with a few tweaks, FPDS-NG is the best place…