Education Discretionary Grants: Awards Process Could Benefit From Additional Improvements
HEHS-00-55
Published: Mar 30, 2000. Publicly Released: Mar 30, 2000.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Education's redesigned discretionary grants process, focusing on: (1) Education's progress in implementing the redesigned awards process; (2) the management controls used to help ensure a fair peer review process and the costs of peer review; and (3) the extent to which grant awards are consistent with the results of peer review and the legislation governing individual grant programs.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected Sort descending | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Education | To improve the peer review process, the Secretary of Education should amend Education's directive dealing with conflict of interest and applicable peer reviewer certifications to include a statement certifying that peer reviewers do not have nonfinancial conflicts that could impair their objectivity. |
Closed – Implemented
Education amended its peer review certification forms to include examples on conflicts of interest that arise from personal, professional, and other nonfinancial relationships.
|
| Department of Education | To improve the peer review process, the Secretary of Education should develop written policy on the protocol that program officials must follow to identify and document actions taken when a peer reviewer must be dismissed due to poor performance. |
Closed – Implemented
Education established policy to require that program offices include the process for replacing reviewers in the Application Technical Review Plan for the grant competition.
|
| Department of Education | To improve the peer review process, the Secretary of Education should amend Education's directive concerning discretionary grant planning, review, and award procedures to specify that peer reviewer feedback be collected and analyzed, peer reviewers' performance be documented and tracked, and scoring variations among panels be assessed to determine the effectiveness of peer review management controls. |
Closed – Implemented
The Department of Education has substantially addressed this recommendation. Education amended its Discretionary Grants Handbook to require that feedback from non-federal reviewers on their review experiences be collected. Education also amended its handbook to require that peer reviewers' performance be documented and tracked and that variations among peer review panels be assessed, which GAO believes will assist Education in determining the effectiveness of its peer review management controls. These actions will help Education to identify problems in the peer review process and ensure that the process is conducted in a fair manner. To address GAO's concern that there was no similar requirement to collect feedback from federal reviewers and a requirement to analyze the the feedback results of all reviewers, Education is amending its Discretionary Grants Handbook to include these requirements. Education will disseminate clarification on the revised policy through its department-wide Discretionary Grants Advisory Team until the revised Handbook is published.
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Topics
Conflict of interestsDiscretionary grantsEducational grantsE-governmentGrant award proceduresInternal controlsResearch grantsGrant awardPeer reviewStudents