NIST Grants Management Participant Management Training - Supporting Statement

OMB Control No. # 0693-0033 – NIST Generic Clearance for Program Evaluation Data Collections

NIST Grantees to Participant in Grants Management Training

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The group that will be surveyed are all the current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) grantees with active awards. This specific group would be the appropriate group to contact, as they are the most intimately involved in the grants process and their feedback would provide NIST with the specific topics that will assist NIST with designing the most effective training for them.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

The survey was developed by brainstorming with the grants policy team, grants supervisors and senior grants management specialists who work very closely with the grantees. This group would be the most familiar with the grants management process and specific challenges involving the NIST grantees. Additionally, the Grants Management Division (GMD) reviewed the most recent A-123 internal controls review report as well as the external audit report to determine where training is needed to eliminate internal control deficiencies. GMD participated in the annual National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grantees training to learn from their best practices and to determine if those practices can be adopted by NIST. The goal of the training is to mitigate potential waste, fraud, and abuse.

2. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

Each grantee with an active grant will receive an email requesting completion of the survey that will be attached to the email. The survey is a fillable Word document that the grantee can complete and send back to NIST via electronically. The expected response rate is 60%. To improve response rate, the grants management specialist who works directly with the grantee will follow up with a personal phone call encouraging participation.

2. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The results received will be analyzed by The Grants Policy Team and the Grants Officers to determine which topics are most important to the grantees. These specific topics will be discussed during the plenary session of the proposed training. Topics that received lesser votes will be covered in breakout sessions. Once the topics are determined, NIST plans to explore how to provide videotaping sessions of the training developed and may post it on our website. NIST plans to make the training slides available on our website.