Janet Rosenzweig,

1
The Added Value of Activity Codes

• Janet Rosenzweig,
• Based on work completed at
• Harvards Kennedy School
• Bill Levis, Urban Institute
• NGP Webcast, February 10, 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
Example, continued Non HHS CFDA codes

• 10.573 Homeless Childrens Nutrition Program
  AG
• 84.335 Child Care Access Means Parents in School
  E D
• 84.360 Dropout Prevention Programs
  ED
• 84.310 Parental Assistance Centers
  ED
• 16.730 Reduction and Prevention of Children's
  Exposure to Violence
  Justice
• 16.523 Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block
  Grants
• 16.547 Victims of Child Abuse
  Justice

6
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.

7
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

8
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

9
Existing Taxonomies of Activity Codes

• 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.
• http//nccs.urban.org/classification/NTEE.cfm

10
For More Information

• Bill Levis, Urban Institute
• qrlevis_at_aol.com
• Janet Rosenzweig MS, PhD, MPA
• jfrosenzweig_at_comcast.net
• Thank you!