Janet Rosenzweig,

1
The Added Value of Activity Codes

• Janet Rosenzweig,
• Research Fellow, Harvards Kennedy School
• Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and
  Government
• Bill Levis, Urban Institute
• NGP Webcast, March 31 2009

2
FFATA

• Searchable database of grants, contracts and
  other types of federal contracts, assistance
  and other payments available at
  www.usaspending.gov
• Purpose of grant is identified by CFDA code,
  which does not describe the activities
  undertaken by the recipient.

3
Purpose of Initial Research

• Explore potential improvements in the utility
  of the FFATA database of grants made federal
  agencies by the adding a field to classify data
  by activity
• For Example..
• a public administrator could identify all funds
  coming into a states for activities related to a
  multi-disciplinary services such as prevention
  of child abuse through family support services,
  or prevention of juvenile delinquency
• a public administrator could identify all funds
  coming into a specific city, county or state by
  location and category to support budgets
  planning

4
Example CFDA Codes relevant to family support
services HHS only

• 93.551 Abandoned Infants
• 93.995 Adolescent Family Life Demonstration
  Projects
• 93.670 Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary
  Activities
• 93.643 Children's Justice Grants to States
• 93.974 Family Planning Service Delivery
  Improvement Research Grants
• 93.926 Healthy Start Initiative
• 93.136 Injury Prevention and Control Research
  and State and Community Based Programs
• 93.556 Promoting Safe and Stable Families

5
Whats Missing?

• A description of WHAT activities the recipient is
  conducting!
• The addition of activity codes can make this
  database remarkably useful for state and local
  planning and coordination.

6
Opportunities

• The continued development of the FFATA database
  presents an opportunity to further the existing
  NGP objective of establishing uniform object
  expense categories and definitions for grant
  budgeting and reporting by adding uniform
  activity codes to federal CFDA program
  classification.
• Current interest by OMB in expanding the utility
  of the CFDA coding scheme presents a unique
  opportunity for collaboration
• There will be a tracking system from ARRA funds

7
For Background Information on NGPs Uniform
Guidelines Initiative

• In November 2004, the Uniform Guidelines
  Coalition (co-sponsored by the NGP) released
  Uniform Data Elements and Definitions for Grant
  Budgeting and Financial Reporting, Version 1
  (UDED) -- http//www.nasact.org/downloads/11_04-UD
  ED_v1.pdf

8
Updating the CFDA

• A federal domestic assistance program is
  identified in terms of its legal authority,
  administering office, funding, purpose, benefits,
  and beneficiaries.
• New CFDA version will be up-to-date, electronic
  and searchable.
• Standard codes do not exist to identify purpose,
  benefits and beneficiaries adding them to the
  new version of the catalog will increase the
  utility.
• Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance

9
Tracking Recovery Act Funds

• Section Reporting Requirement
• 2.2 Major communications
• 2.3 Formula block grant allocation reports
• 2.4 Initial weekly reports to help populate
  early phases of Recovery.gov
• 2.5 Monthly financial reports
• 2.6 Award-level reporting consistent with what
  is currently required for USAspending.gov
• 2.7 Agency-wide Recovery Act plans
• 2.8 Program-specific Recovery Act plans
• 2.9 Recipient reporting Starting 7/10/09
• Source recovery.gov

10
Can we identify a consistent taxonomy?

• There is no perfect taxonomy!
• Programs/services are described very differently
  that infrastructure projects
• What will end users want from these systems?

11
Existing Taxonomy -- NTEE

• National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities
• The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE)
  system is used by the IRS and NCCS National
  Center for Charitable Statistics to classify
  nonprofit organizations. It is also used by the
  Foundation Center to classify both grants and
  grant recipients (typically nonprofits
  or governments).  NCCS and the IRS use the
  NTEE-CC system while the Foundation Center uses
  a slightly different version with more codes, as
  well as "population/beneficiary" codes to
  indicate the type of population served and
  "auspice" codes to indicate religious or
  governmental affiliation.
• Includes Codes to identify target populations
• Stongly recommended for th FFATA database in
  use by 2 million non profit organizations
• http//nccs.urban.org/classification/NTEE.cfm

12
Existing Taxonomy -- NAICS

• The North American Industry Classification System
  (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal
  statistical agencies in classifying business
  establishments for the purpose of collecting,
  analyzing, and publishing statistical data
  related to the U.S. business economy.
• NAICS was developed under the auspices of the
  Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and
  adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard
  Industrial Classification (SIC) system. It was
  developed . to allow for a high level of
  comparability in business statistics among the
  North American countries.
• NCCS has developed a cross-walk between NAICS and
  NTEE

13
Type or Purpose of Funding Matters

• NTEE codes may be more applicable to
  operating/service grants and contracts.
• NAICS codes may be more applicable to capital
  grants and contacts.
• NTEE population codes may be universally
  applicable to identify target groups.

14
Next Steps

• Conduct focus groups of end users of the CFDA
  and FFATA databases.
• Articulate the ways the databases may be used to
  ensure that the future development is directed to
  meeting those needs.
• Are NGP members interested?
• Maintain collaboration between teams working on
  the CFDA, FFATA and ARRA databases

15
For More Information

• Bill Levis, Urban Institute
• qrlevis_at_aol.com
• Janet Rosenzweig MS, PhD, MPA
• Janet_Rosenzweig_at_ksg08.harvard.edu
• Marguerite Pridgen
• Marguerite_E._Pridgen_at_omb.eop.gov
• Thank you!