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National Emergency Grants: Labor Has Improved Its Grant Award Timeliness and Data Collection, but Further Steps Can Improve Process

GAO-06-870 Published: Sep 05, 2006. Publicly Released: Sep 05, 2006.
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Highlights

Between January 2004 and December 2005, more than 30,000 mass layoffs involving 50 or more workers occurred in the United States, causing more than 3.4 million workers to lose their jobs. National emergency grants expand services to laid-off workers when other state and federal programs are insufficient to meet their needs. GAO assessed (1) whether Labor has shortened grant award times since GAO's 2004 report and was meeting own timeliness goal, (2) the uniformity of the program data that Labor now collects, and (3) Labor's oversight of national emergency grant projects. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed information for program year 2004 and the first 2 quarters of 2005 and compared it with data collected for program years 2000- 2002.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Labor In order for Labor to better manage the grant award process and system, accurately assess the time it takes to award grant funds, and improve its guidance to states and local areas, the Secretary of Labor should take additional actions. In particular, Labor should extend its electronic application system and its own timeliness measurement process to capture the entirety of the award process from the perspective of grant applicants, specifically through final approval and issuance of award letters by the Secretary.
Closed – Implemented
The Office of National Response reported that it would explore possibilities to build on its present process and improve procedures. In FY2010, Labor reported that its National Emergency Grant e-System now captures and records the time that a complete grant application is submitted through the e-System until the time that the grantee receives an award. This captures the timeliness of the entire awards process.
Department of Labor In order for Labor to better manage the grant award process and system, accurately assess the time it takes to award grant funds, and improve its guidance to states and local areas, the Secretary of Labor should take additional actions. In particular, Labor should solicit information from users of the application system to guide future refinements to this system.
Closed – Implemented
The Office of National Response has upgraded the National Emergency Grant application system and has incorporated feedback from users and the results of comprehensive testing by the Employment and Training Administration's technical team.
Department of Labor In order for Labor to better manage the grant award process and system, accurately assess the time it takes to award grant funds, and improve its guidance to states and local areas, the Secretary of Labor should take additional actions. In particular, Labor should distribute more complete guidance and tools for monitoring grant projects.
Closed – Implemented
Labor has implemented a process to better manage and improve grant performance reporting, including eliminating duplicative reporting requirements for grantees and issuing clear guidance to grantees on performance reporting expectations. In addition, Employment and Training Administration regional offices work with state grantees to ensure the entire workforce system understands monitoring priorities. They use several monitoring guides, including one specifically designed to monitor disaster grants, to ensure consistency of reviews across the nation by different reviewers, and to ensure grantees understand how monitoring will take place and what will be reviewed during monitoring efforts.
Department of Labor In order for Labor to better manage the grant award process and system, accurately assess the time it takes to award grant funds, and improve its guidance to states and local areas, the Secretary of Labor should take additional actions. In particular, Labor should explore cost-effective ways to disseminate information to states and local areas to help them learn about promising practices for managing national grant projects.
Closed – Implemented
In 2008, the Employment and Training Administration awarded Abt Associates a contract to conduct an analysis that will identify and document promising practices for reemployment and strategic partnerships that were implemented under National Emergency Grants. Doing this in a usable and transferable fashion can assist the replication of these activities nationwide.

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Topics

Data collectionEmployment assistance programsFederal aid programsFederal grantsstate relationsGrant administrationGrant award proceduresPerformance appraisalProgram evaluationProgram managementTimeliness