The GovNavigators Show

As Close as We Can Get to Breaking News? SIN Launch at Grant QSMO

• Season 4 • Episode 161

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This week on the GovNavigators Show, Robert and Adam are joined by Andrea Sampanis, Director of the Grants Quality Service Management Office (Grants QSMO) at HHS, and Stacie Massey, Deputy Director for Grants and Financial Reporting at the Office of Budget and Management for the state of Ohio. Andrea takes us on a deep dive into the new SIN launch for grants management services, walking us through what the new Special Item Number (SIN 518210GM) means for federal agencies and how cooperative purchasing opens it up to state, local, and tribal governments as well. Stacie brings the recipient side of the equation, sharing what it's actually like to manage $11 billion in grants across a patchwork of systems and agencies, and why this SIN changes the game. They also dig into the shift from compliance-heavy grants management to outcomes-focused oversight, the proposed Uniform Grants Regulation and what it means for the field, and why data standards are the foundation everything else is built on.

Show Notes:

What's on the GovNavigator's Radar?

SPEAKER_03

Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you seasick. We're the Gov Navigators. I'm Robert Chad. And I'm Adam Hughes. We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.

SPEAKER_02

Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators, brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast Fedhead.

SPEAKER_03

Really? Nothing's going on. Well, that's one way to look at it. Maybe nothing's getting done. Well though, a couple things got done. I think we got a lot on the list this week.

SPEAKER_02

Are we talking about the universal guidance last time?

SPEAKER_03

We did not. We should start with that.

SPEAKER_02

The Office of Management and Budget released as a draft regulation the requirements for recipients of federal financial assistance, otherwise known as grants. And grantees are in for a whole slew of new requirements, the most important of which, in my view, relate to fraud. Yep. Fraud tolerance. Fraud's not very popular these days. I don't know if you've been following the news. Fraud has taken a hit in the public opinion polling. Correct. Yes. But it's very controversial. New requirements for grantees and responsibility for their sub-recipients. And new attention to what can happen if you don't follow the rules.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Which includes termination of your grant withholding of funds.

SPEAKER_03

So it's time to step up and get things done right.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_03

Is that how we're viewing this?

SPEAKER_02

Submit a comment through the Federal Register and change their mind.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Also possible. Agreed, indeed. Possible. Well, we also had an old friend come back from long ago. Schedule F is back this week.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but that's not what they're calling it. It's policy career.

SPEAKER_03

Obviously. But you don't think they thought no one would notice if they changed the name, do you? I mean, the branded marketing folks are in there. They were pulling some late nights. They're like, we can't call this thing Schedule F. Because you already blew Schedule F out of the water when you were on John Oliver. That's why they waited so long. They needed the reaction to die down.

SPEAKER_02

It is interesting that it's taken so long for them to get this done. One of the most interesting things that no one ever about an EO is that there's an appendix. Oh yeah. Do you remember there being an appendix to an executive order?

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_02

That's the kind of questions we tackle here at the Governigator Show.

SPEAKER_03

There was a couple doozies at the beginning of the Obama administration that were just needlessly long, but I don't think they had an appendix.

SPEAKER_02

So this is a 229-page appendix, which is basically the list of positions being converted. That's wow. We've been looking for stuff to decorate the bathroom at the Governators HQ. And I think that we may have found our you think 229 pages would cover it?

SPEAKER_03

That would do it. That would definitely do it. Yeah, so this will be about 8,000 positions across the federal government. That's right. Wow. I mean, I can't think of a better thing to do than wallpaper the bathroom with it. Also coming back this week, uh, we talked recently about the delayed EO on artificial intelligence, but that was, according to some news reports, quietly signed this week by the president with some small modifications from the draft that was leaked last week.

SPEAKER_02

Basically, if you volunteer to submit your model for review to the government, they have fewer days to review it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So the original draft wanted 90 days, the AI companies wanted 14 days, they settled on 30 days. But also, if it's voluntary, I don't understand why does it matter how many days it is. If it's voluntary, just release it when you want to release it. Right? I mean, what am I missing? Okay, so this is the best news, and this is as of recording. The Senate has tried to go back. You also might recall that the Senate punted on their reconciliation efforts before the Memorial Day holiday, and they have gone back to it. But they ran into some bumps again. And this time, this is related to again this slush fund, I can't remember what the administration calls it, the 1.8 billion that they were going to use through the Justice Department, which the administration said, look, we've dropped it. We don't, we're not gonna do it, we're moving on. But some senators are like, Well, I'd like to have that in writing. And Senator Schumer had a motion this morning to send a bill back to committee to add language so that in writing this could be done. And the vote, I think, was held open for over two hours as senators negotiated, because this motion only requires 50 votes. And so they spent basically all day on Thursday last week trying to figure out how to write into law that this weaponization fund cannot be used. A lot of arm twisting, classic like backroom Senate stuff. So I just I enjoyed watching it, reading about it all day. I'm assuming they're gonna move forward with it, but this is taking a long, long time. And as we heard from Charles Cooper last week, there's many, many, many other things that Congress really needs to move its attention to.

SPEAKER_02

Let's talk to somebody who's actually doing something.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, please. Robert, you know that this is not known as a breaking news podcast, right? We don't Anderson Cooper has not been on. We don't break news.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I don't know that's true. We should go and audit. We might have said some stuff.

SPEAKER_03

We're we're about as close as we can get to breaking news today. We're so excited. Andrea Sampanis, who is the director of the Grants CUSMO at HHS, and Stacy Massey, who is the deputy director for grants and financial reporting at the Office of Budget and Management for the state of Ohio, are joining us to talk about the Grants Keysmo and a new SIN. Welcome to the Gov Navigator Show.

SPEAKER_02

We can have a federal and a state personnel at the same time.

SPEAKER_03

Is that is there a rule? I mean, it's our podcast. We can kind of decide what we're doing. When we're friends, it works. Sorry to interrupt. No. So, Andre and Stacey, can you guys just give a little background about yourselves and your careers for the audience? And then we'll jump into the details on the Grants Cismo. Andre, you go first.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. I'm the director of Grants CUSMO, which stands for Quality Service Management Office, essentially Grants Shared Services, particularly focused on establishing a marketplace for agencies to buy off of. I've been in the shared service space for quite a long time. I came to the government when the Obama administration created the Unified Shared Service Management Office. And then that office turned into OSPI, which created the CUSMO concept under the first Trump administration. And now I've set up and been running the Greens CUSMO since.

SPEAKER_03

All right, Stacey, what about you?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so I will start off with I'm a recovering auditor. So I started my career.

SPEAKER_03

It's good to get that out in the open. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

I might have a little bit of an audit lens on when I talk, but I'm a recovering auditor. I even live my personal life that way. But when you're an auditor, it's trust but verify. So I'm a recovering auditor. I started my career doing single audits years ago for the state of Ohio Auditor's Office. I moved on to be a CFO at a state agency. I managed federal grants. I was more in the emergency management space. So I was at the state's emergency management office for many years as chief over there of grants, finance, and the operational stuff administrative. And then I moved on to the budget office. I think I've been here 10 years. And what I was kind of charted to do was look to streamline grants in the state. And so I started this group called the Ohio Grants Partnership. And I built this community of grant professionals, whether they be recovering auditors like myself or finance grants managers, just anybody touch a grant, come around the table, share challenges, try to work to streamline grants across the state. And so I also have financial reporting, which is also doing the financial statements for the state. So I don't want to kind of not talk about that today, but I also have a GAB hat. But yeah, so we've been building the partnership. We have a newsletter every month. We have like over 10,000, I think it's 12,000 now subscribers. So we're we really are just trying to bring more grants to the state of Ohio and prove transparency, accountability, and streamline, maximize the use of grant funds in Ohio. And so that's kind of what I've been doing.

SPEAKER_02

So it is a joke about having you both on at the same time. But I don't think we do enough of making sure that the partnership between the federal government and its stakeholders is working as it should be. So can you talk about how this relationship has matured?

SPEAKER_01

That's a good question. Stacey, I try and remember, I think I met you from Jennifer at an NGMA event, probably. Right? She introduced us from the state of Maryland at the time. And I think we all just naturally started, you know, I got a lot of speaking with states to understand what their needs were. At that time, the state of Maryland was trying to create their own centralized grant system. And I was here in the federal government try to do something similar, not a full end-to-end centralized grant system, but really try to understand what technology is out there, what are the struggles. And so hearing from the states was really helpful. And it's just a very natural thing.

SPEAKER_00

When I met a lot of other state partners, we had, and I hate to say this, the statistics are on my side, right? We had a failed state enterprise grants management project. So in IT, I mean, what is it, like 60, 70% of IT projects either fail or don't go out as planned. So I I've met that statistic, I guess. But I connected with Utah and Rhode Island and Nevada and Arizona, like a lot of other states doing enterprise grants type of work, whether it be building a system or looking at being a single point of contact. Illinois, I'm not sure I mentioned them. So as I was connecting with all these states and Maryland, we try to share information. And I think that's how we got connected because we were sharing notes with Andrea on some of the issues that we had run into on our project and others.

SPEAKER_03

But I feel like that underscores too what was behind Robert's question, right? Which is if you're not able to talk to folks in that ecosystem, how are you supposed to get the info to make things work better? Whether it's state feedback coming to the federal level or vice versa, where Andrea, I know you've been like, what can we provide that can help do this easier and faster and better? So I think that's such a key part. And I do think it's at least in the time that I've worked in government, it's either become more difficult or people are more risk-averse or both, and they just don't want to do it. And I feel like it's the key part of making government work better together. Well, speaking of which, trying to make things work better. So the grants keys smell, Andrew, you're gonna get the first question and talk about this. You have a special item, a new special item number that was recently released. Talk about that and why it's important.

SPEAKER_01

Recently released as of today. It's live.

SPEAKER_03

We're breaking news here on Government Navigator.

SPEAKER_01

Breaking news, yes. We're very excited. The SIN, which stands for special item number. I often find people don't understand what that is. So essentially it's a government-wide contract that is really categorized around grants management that is open for vendors to start applying. The application is out very public today. That's what really went live today was that application website at GSA. We've always done a ton of vendor engagement at the grants. QUSMO had commercial offerings as part of what we call the catalog of market research. But the way we did that was through an RFI, request for information. This is the new style. You may have heard of the term sin because the financial management QSMO does it. And they've had really a lot of success. A lot of vendors on their agencies, I think they're getting ready or almost have passed the $1 billion in spending mark. So, really, when we are going to spend money, one, we want to do it as a government together. It's very much in line with the administration's focus of pushing more work towards the multiple award schedule. But we want to do it and make sure that money is being spent in compliance with requirements and most importantly, using our data standards, because if we don't have standard data, we can't do all the fun things like AI and ensure we have compliance and fight fraud. So that's what we're doing. The other big thing, the CIN, why it's exciting, is it does expand beyond just core award management systems, which that's the big dog. That's the pre-award review application, submit the award out, manage the award. That has been part and will continue to be part of the SIN, but it's also this sort of wraparound services, too. So additional support, IT implementation, et cetera. That is now also going to be part of our SIN. Agencies were asking for it at the Great Skews Mode. We joke, there's a graphic we have. It says, if you build it, they will come. But we cross out the build and we say if you listen, they will come. Back to your point, Adam, of like talking to the users, talking to states, what do they need? We made a lot of the updates based on vendor feedback and agency feedback. So we're excited. And I think we'll talk a little bit more. Also, very big deal, this government-wide vehicle because of where we put it and in working with GSA, it is also open for state, local, and tribal governments to leverage it through the cooperative purchasing process.

SPEAKER_03

And you were able to work a Field of Dreams reference too into your website, which I feel like it always makes everyone happy. Right. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Still not my favorite Kevin Costner movie. We just had this debate the other day.

SPEAKER_03

I'm hesitating to ask because I don't think I want to know. Yeah. Okay, fine. What's your favorite Kevin Costner movie?

SPEAKER_01

You're gonna laugh. It's Tin Cup.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, no, that's a decent choice. That's a decent choice. That's a good movie. I could defend that. I thought you were gonna say pences with wolves. I was gonna get mad at you. Okay. Sorry, back to your regularly scheduled programming here.

SPEAKER_02

Stacey, how are you looking at the kind of reforms that Andrea's driving? How are you preparing for hopefully what's a new day for grants management, especially with reference to the data standards she mentioned?

SPEAKER_00

I think this is great because right now we live in this world where, at least in Ohio, we don't have a standardized enterprise system. We had at one point in 2013, we did kind of an analysis. We had like 52 agencies using, or no, 52 systems across 26 different state agencies just doing grants in some form or fashion. I still know there are folks on spreadsheets. We build a home ground system that my teams ran at like $11 billion through in the last five years, but it's not perfect. And it was for COVID funding. So it was somewhat specific and it's flexible, but not full life cycle. So I am encouraged because I get asked all the time, I'm looking for a system. Can you recommend anyone? And so I'm trying to, from my perspective, just meet with people, figure out what they have, and kind of build lists. And I don't have the resources or the bandwidth, nor am I in a position to be doing that. So I think that this is great because I can point state agency partners to this and say, these have already been vetted by the federal government. They have the same data standards that you need to follow. Like this should be the list you're picking off of. And so we can at least bring people into a pool of really good systems. There's a lot out there, and there's some systems that have folded in the last few years. So it's difficult to just put a list together and keep it going. And that could be a full-time job. So this is very helpful. I think the states, especially those that are not on an enterprise platform, just start getting something that meets the criteria and also has data standards because if we never get to an enterprise platform, at least we have data standards where if we were to dump data into the data lake, we could start pulling enterprise reporting and figuring out what's going on across the enterprise versus piecemealing information.

SPEAKER_03

That's funny too, because I feel like you're just echoing Andrea's voice in my head because she every chance she gets, she's like, if you don't have data standards, you're screwed. And I'm like, I believe you. You don't have to keep telling me. You don't have to keep telling me. Okay, so Andrea, you talked about listening to federal agencies. We talked at the beginning about your outreach and integration with state level folks. What's the reception been so far? The SIN is active as of today, but it's been announced for a couple of weeks at least. What has the feedback been? What has the reaction been? State level, other federal agencies. Talk about that for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, gotcha. I thought you were meaning by vendors. I'm like, well, I hope. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I mean you can't. If you want to talk about vendors too, you can.

SPEAKER_01

They are excited. We had four times the number of vendors attend our industry day than have in the years past. So that's a sign that definitely we think interest is there. Well, agencies, we've been working with agencies for a while. There's a lot of guidance out there that really pushes agencies to consider consolidation, to work with the Grants Cismo. It is part of many, many OMB documents saying to work with Grants Cismo. So we're just continuing to do that. We had a big title wave here recently, but every we meet every year, at least once a year, with the senior financial assistance officer, SFAO, so the head grants person, generally the CFOs there and the CIO to sort of say, hey, this is your systems environment. Looks like this is coming up for recompete in two years. Let's start talking about it now. We've really seen a lot of movement towards consolidation, either internal consolidation or movement towards shared service providers. And that's really great. There's a lot to continue to push towards that. Stacey was joking earlier, I think about the success rate of modernizations is not high. It's not known to be high. And so at the Q so we're thinking, how can we make it? How can we support them more and just give them all the resources? We have trainings we're doing for agencies, sample documents, et cetera.

SPEAKER_03

We are going to I love that you have that meeting too that you referenced too, because that just made me think of like Congress passed a law to try to get the CIO and the chief acquisition officer to meet. Right. So the fact that this is happening, that you're driving some of this change where people should be collaborating more when at times they don't, you need those folks all in the room sometimes at the same time in order to make sure there's no blind spots and you're moving ahead that you're all rowing in the same direction. So I think that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01

We definitely always ask the same. Why is someone not here from this group, from this group? NASA is a great example where they were really bringing everyone together to watch demos of future potential systems. I think that's been successful because you've got to have everyone in the room from the beginning. It just avoids a lot of rework. Yeah, so I'm excited. We're looking to do more outreach because that cooperative purchasing agreement program allows states, local governments, tribes to purchase off of this SIN also. So we've been starting to plan outreach, looked at NASDAQ, they have a conference coming up, which we're excited to be speaking on a panel there. AGA Stacey and I will be on a panel together talking more about this. Yeah, to plug this.

SPEAKER_02

Y'all go to the best parties.

SPEAKER_03

Auditors and accountants. I mean, come on, that's always a problem.

SPEAKER_00

Recovering auditor, recovering.

SPEAKER_03

Recovering, recovering. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

I'm a very proud GFM. I was just plugging the AGA gala thing in Virginia to someone, and they made fun of me. They're like, you're such a nerd. That's what you're excited for, Andrea.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I went to the AGA Virginia Gala and I was on the Government Gator show. You just need a third strike, and then you're Stacey. Talk about your perspective of grants management overall. You see this from the recipient's perspective and the grantor perspective. What are we missing? Give us what are the biggest challenges in that space and what are we missing fixing?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I don't know. I will say it's tough to be in this spot right now because I wrote an article that was in the last AGA journal about the executive order that came out on grant making last August that kind of talked to a lot of the things that are actually proposed in the uniform grant revisions that were proposed right now on how grant making is kind of transcending, but it's also moving to not only a little bit more compliance heavy, but it's moving towards performance outcomes. So we have set our systems up on kind of driving compliance checklists and making sure that we're doing everything that meets all the compliance standards of the uniform. It's going to be hard for me. I'm used to saying the uniform guidance, it's going to be the uniform grant regulations. So the UGR. But now we have to kind of think of grants from a different lens. Like, are we really achieving what we have applied to the federal government to do? So as a state, we're doing that application. We're passing it through to our sub-recipients that are our boots on the ground, and they're doing all of the good work to get this done. And we need to make sure that that matches outcomes. We're not just tracking outputs. Like I delivered 50 training courses for a workforce development grant. Well, did you put people in jobs? That's your outcome.

SPEAKER_03

You're just literally you're hitting all the hotspots here at Gov Navigators. We've done like three podcasts today, and every single one has talked about that distinction. But I think we usually bring it up. But that's a crucial part of it, right? Please, I interrupted you. Please continue.

SPEAKER_00

I joke that I'm a recovering auditor and auditors are compliance heavy, right? But it's a whole nother side of, I don't know, I want to say side of your break, like it's a whole nother outlook. It's Whole other way to think about outcomes because I don't think a lot of grants folks have really thought about their program and what they're achieving. They're just trying to meddle through the actually getting through all the compliance requirements. And I always joke it's like Maslow's pyramid, and the outcomes are at the top of the pyramid, and we're on the bottom at the food and safety trying to get all get like I'm in a dark wet cave and I haven't had enough food to eat today, right?

SPEAKER_03

Are you describing the life of advanced manager?

SPEAKER_00

Because we lack capacity, we lack systems, and so that's the things we're talking about today. We need to put some investment into how we're managing it because we're surely not going to get more people. And we have all of AI capabilities and data analytics that we could be doing with less. And now there is an increased awareness that as a state, because like Robert said, we're grantees, but we're grantors, we have thousands of sub-recipients that we have to review single audits for. We have to go out and see what they're doing, actually going out, not just looking at invoices and documentation, because AI now can generate a really high-quality looking invoice that could be completely fraudulent. You need to actually go out into the field. I have found more stuff. We don't have time for all my stories, but I have found more things just by going out and saying, okay, you said that you were gonna buy a trailer for a dive team with this Homeland Security dollars. Let me see it. And I'll find cats living in the trailer, flat tires. Poor lady got fired after that visit. But it does not you find some things that you just don't expect. And it seemed like it was a lot of just weirdness popping up, but on it, they bought the trailer. So everything looks good from that perspective. But if you're really gonna start monitoring, making sure there's not waste and abuse, I'm not even gonna touch the dirty F word today, but waste and abuse, then you have to get out there, and it's hard. Capacity is not there. So that's where modernization and using data to the fullest, which means getting up to date on all these systems, is just gonna be critical because we're shifting to this environment where we care about two sides of the house, and then we're not gonna get more people to do it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So unbelievably, we are out of time. It has gone incredibly fast. We didn't get even through the questions. I had like four more questions I wanted to ask. So we'd love to have you both back on in a couple of months when this is a raging success with the new Sin for the Grants Keysmo. But most of all, we really appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you for the hard work that you do every day. It's incredibly important, and you don't get enough kudos for it. So we really appreciate everything that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Well, something we forgot to mention at the top of the show was we attended the annual Data Foundation Summit.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I was sadly not able to attend, but most of the Gov Navigator team was there. How was it?

SPEAKER_02

It was great. It was great. Good practical insights into the state of data, what we need to do to improve it, how we should get an AI ready. A lot of health and regulatory flourishes. So yeah, I thought it was uh time well spent. Awesome. Congrats to the data foundation team.

SPEAKER_03

What's up this week? So this week, the government service delivery conference is on the 10th and 11th, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Our friends at GovExec have their 35th annual government procurement conference on June 11th. And we talked about that a little bit last week. It's amazing that they're 35 years in, still doing lots of stuff going on in procurement. So I feel like this is a not-to-be-missed one if you're in the federal govcon space for sure. And probably most important, my wife and I are going to see Mumford and Sons on Thursday night at Wrigley Field. Wow. Yeah, pretty fantastic. Yeah, we're really excited shipping the kids off to Paris to see their grandparents tonight, and then we're heading out in a couple days.

SPEAKER_02

Boy, did Hughes have a hard Hughes family. Everybody shed a tear for the Hughes family. It's a tough start to the summer. Enjoy though.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators. We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process and didn't get C sick. Right, of course. If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com. Ahoy!