Official Signatory Made Easy

Official signatory

good afternoon everybody um thanks for your patience as we get started we've we've got so much technology now to figure out um every time we do this uh just like one little thing changes but i think we're just all set now and i want to welcome you and thank you for joining us today i'm julie wallen as michelle said i'm uh atheist veterinary services coordinator for the national animal disease preparedness and response program or what we refer to as nab prep and i have with me today melinda springer who's our program analyst and laura wilson and donna schultz who are our rant specialists um you may have received some emails already um from our team and what we want to do today is tell you everything that you're going to need to know to get your cooperative agreement stood up and running and so that you can get started on these really great projects we're going to cover getting going how to submit your claims how to do reports and how to do other administrative tasks on your agreement so we're really excited about your project proposals we're happy that you applied for these funds and we really look forward to seeing on what your projects produce so on this michelle said at any time during our presentation feel free to enter your questions into the chat box we have plenty of time at the end of our agenda today to take all of your questions verbally as well so as i said our agenda today i'm going to tell you a little bit about the background of the program and then i'm going to turn it over to my team and they're going to step you through how you stand up your cooperative agreement give you a little overview of easy fed grants cover how to process claims we're going to spend some time talking about how to submit your performance and financial reports i know that's a little bit down the road but the main reason we cover it today is because we won't have another webinar with you guys where we can tell you all you know get you all started up front with the right information we'll briefly cover different situations like if you need to make budget shifts or amendments or you need to request an extension and then as i said at the end we've got loads of time to take all of your questions so i'm going to transition now and just um give you a little bit of introduction to the program just real briefly the 2018 farm bill was passed and it included a substantial amount of new funding for animal disease preparedness and response through programs that usda afs veterinary services manages this three pillar program included the nav prep which is what we're talking about today and where you received funding from it also included funding for a new national animal vaccine and veterinary countermeasures bank that has the priority of stockpiling foot and mouth disease vaccine and it also provided additional funding for the national animal health laboratory network and we also offer cooperative agreements and a competitive funding opportunity through the gnome program but as i said today we're just going to focus on the nav prep program and this is a program where asis veterinary services can enter into cooperative agreements with a wide range of different types of stakeholders to conduct high value projects to prevent the introduction and spread of foreign and emerging animal diseases in the u.s so a few features of the program are that it's know your money which is really nice it allows us to provide awards for projects that exceed one year we have a competitive funding process and um as i said we use cooperative agreements um and we have the ability to enter into partnerships with many different types of entities such as universities livestock organizations states tribal organizations and others so each year in the nav prep program we issue a funding opportunity which you all applied to and every year the funding priorities shift to address a different high area of concern and as you all know this year's funding priorities were aimed at large-scale animal depopulation and disposal events and outbreak response situation and also aimed at projects that will advance livestock biosecurity so this year we received 59 proposals and we funded 46 projects for a total of 9.3 million dollars funded so in the just briefly again in the net prep program we have this annual funding cycle we start by defining priorities and then offering the open period which we started last july through september and then we have a competitive review process we approve get approval all the way to the usda level and announce the awards which we did in december and you all received your email notifications about those awards and where we are now is at the awarding funds or standing up your cooperative agreement stage and then we shift into monitoring and reporting a couple other things about these nav prep agreements that i haven't mentioned yet we can do pre-awards but they're usually not needed because we try to work really quickly to get the cooperative agreements set up we do list all of the projects on our apis website and they're available through other government programs that make public and information available about any federally funded project as a result of all that listing on the internet we do get a lot of requests for information about your projects um and when those informations come to us we pull your quarterly reports to tell the media or others on what's going on so this is why we put a lot of emphasis on those performance reports we also have to demonstrate to congress on the strength of this program and the value of the program on the farm bill as many of you know it's a five-year legislative act so this current farm bill that we're in provided funding from fiscal year 19 through federal fiscal year 2023 and we want to show congress what a good job we're doing and what a good job these projects are doing towards advancing national animal disease preparedness and response so we're happy to have you as recipients and cooperators um your main responsibility of course is to carry out your project and ensure adequate progress on the progress on the project and to complete your project's objectives we also have some administrative tasks that you're responsible for like performance and financial reports on the timely expenditure of project funds and you're responsible for submitting claims so that you'll be reimbursed for the work that you're doing you're responsible for maintaining your official records regarding the agreement keeping an official agreement filed and addressing any issues technical issues that come up with your project with the vs program manager who was assigned to your project your responsibilities also include submitting written requests when you need to make amendments budget shifts or other changes and at the end of your performance period you'll be submitting equipment and property records during the closeout so we thank you for your attention to this we're going to cover these responsibilities today and i also want to um end my little introduction section by saying that we're here to help you so um as you go through these responsibilities you get to different stages in the implementation of your project you of course have your bs program manager whom i said is your technical expert you can also reach out to us as program administrators i'm in our project program team to help you with different kinds of tasks or questions that you have that come up about on your projects and how to administer your award so with that i'm going to switch it over to laura wilson laura is one of our grant specialists and she's going to step you through the information about executing the award getting it activated so they have an active cooperative agreement in easy fed grants and he'll talk with you a little bit more about easy fed grants as well so laura take it away great thanks julie so as you just said i'm going to give a quick recap of the award process thus far from the apus veterinary services grant specialist team let's jump right in so after the proposals were selected and the spending plan was approved the vs grant specialist or gs sent email notifications to all the applicants notifying them of their status there were four different notifications that went out based on each individual project there were those applicants who did not get selected for funding and there were those who were structured for full funding not needing any revisions we had those that were selected for full funding but needed some revisions and then there were those selected for partial funding uh but needed revision so the network staff then assigned via program managers or pm to the awards and sent notification emails with specific instructions on the next steps for executing these awards the pms began working with those recipients needing revisions to documents and we also had several awards that had a start date proposal of january 1st and since we're past that date and to try and alleviate the potential for a pre-award process we ask that the pms work with recipients on those awards to change their start date to either february 1st or march first so if your award notification email asked you to revise and resubmit documents then you should have already been in discussions with your your vs program manager it's important to note that any revised documents cannot be uploaded into easy fed grants by the recipient once the funding opportunity announcement has closed the vf grant specialist has to do this manually so we offset the vs program manager approve and sign the revised document and send them to the nav prep mailbox so that we can then upload those documents into the award package in easy fed grants so what we've covered so far is that the recipients should have now been in communications with their designated ds program manager the next steps that we need from recipients for getting your award executed will be verifying your organization's user profiles and easy fed grants making sure that they're current and active and taking action on approving award requests by your signatory official within easy said grants after those steps and the award is executed and then there are post award management steps that we'll briefly go over later in this presentation so the take-homes from that section is that we really need the recipients to verify that you have access to semi and ebay grant discuss your project and work with your vs program manager for any revisions that are needed and then after that the vs grant specialist completes the agreement an easy fed grant it'll then be routed for signatures and in the uv fight grants overview portion of this presentation we'll go over the agreement approval workflow process in more detail so you can see exactly how that that works which brings me now to the overview of easy fed grants so just a little background on easy fed grants it's usda's required online system for managing cooperative agreements it allows agencies and recipients to manage their awards throughout the life cycle of the agreement and it ensures our compliance with federal requirements for grants and accounting so these are the stages of the project lifestyle that happens within easy fed grants we have the pre-award phase award then post award management and reporting and then the closeout and the financial audit so easy said grant requires that each recipient have a minimum of at least one grant administrative officer and one signatory official it's best practice to have at least one backup in each role in order to keep items such as claims or amendments moving through the system most everyone on this webinar today should already have access to easy fun grants from when you your organization submitted your application however if changes have occurred or do occur over the project life cycle recipients will need to know how to obtain access for the system and to be assigned goals also please keep the mad prep staff posted if there are changes that occur within your organization and as always we're always here to help with that as well but we do have some links here for you instructions for how to obtain access to cindy and ez grants that can be found on the nfc evergrand website link and this is also a couple more links for you job aids and some other materials where you can find information um to get help for easy figurines this next slide is just showing you um for your information only what the external portal of easy said grant looks like and now i'm going to go over the award execution workflow within easy fed grants so the vf grant specialist will complete the draft agreement in egfed grant it's then routed to the vf program manager for approval i'm going to stop here because it's important to note that once the awards approved by the vs program manager the the grant specialist cannot go back in and edit so please notify your program manager if there are any changes and roles for your organization especially the signatory official before the award continues to be routed for signature if we don't have the correct users in the systems it could hold up the process in getting the award executed so after the vfpm approves the award then moves to the recipient signatory official after that signature it comes back to the to apis uh vs for our agency signature signatory official and then to our agency's financial approver and then the award is officially executed so we've now gone over the process we're getting the awards executed and the rest of this presentation will focus on host award management starting with claims once the award is fully executed recipients are able to receive reimbursement for expenses incurred from the work performed recipients submit claims through easy fed grants where the vs program manager and the vs grant specialist can approve there's also a link on this slide here related to processing claims within easy feb grants and it's important to note that claims cannot be processed in easy fed grants if there are any past due reports associated with the agreement so please refer to the recipient guide for further information on reporting and claims um and this next section um melinda will be talking about those performance reports so i'll pass it over to melinda thanks laura and hello everyone and thanks for allowing me to speak to you today about quarterly reports for some reason i don't have control of the slide okay now thanks um so to begin with there are two types of reports that are due during the monitoring and reporting phase of the award that would be the financial report and the performance report reports must be submitted in easy fed grants with all approvals completed by the due date reports are due based on calendar year quarters reports are always due on these days regardless of the start date of the project for example activities performed during january 1st to march 31st which is quarter one are due april 30th those for those activities performed april 1st of june 30th which would be quarter 2 are due on july 31st activities for july 1st to september 30th which is quarter 3 are due october 30th and finally those for those activities perform october 1st to december 31st which is quarter 4 of the calendar year are due january 31st each project will have an award face sheet with details about the agreement this is your guide for report due report due dates are listed under reporting requirements for both performance and financial reports both reports are typical are due the same or due the same day for each project the quarter the first report is due may vary depending on self-identified project start and end date for example some projects will have their first report due at the end of the first calendar year quarter while others may have their first report due at the end of the second calendar year quarter so if you if you want to take a look at your award face sheet you can locate that document by accessing easy fed grants external portal and then if you uh you look down the bottom of the right-hand side of the screen view federal award documents by clicking on that you'll be able to to either save a copy or print a pd save a pdf copy or print a copy of that award patient easy fit grants generates an email um with the award face sheet that is typically sent to recipients recipient admin contacts program contacts and signatory officials those were that were identified um for the application package sf424 if all else fails and you need a copy of that award face um sheet you can email us at ds.nadprep usda.gov and request the copy so next we're going to i'm going to focus specifically on performance reports and it might be helpful if you open up the guidebook that we sent out and look at page 13 that's a appendix one that's an example of the performance report there's a general information about these reports the quarterly quarterly reports are required each quarter the project is active we'll supply you with a pre-filled template with the project's basic information the template's short and really easy to use templates must be used for all report submissions even if there's no activity to report for the quarter if there's nothing to report you can just enter no activity this quarter or nothing new to report in the various sections of the template you'll receive the template prior to the end of the first quarter in 2021 that would be before the end of march if you haven't received the template by then contact your program manager and um and ask them for a copy the first round of reports are due april 30th that is four quarter one which is january 1st through march 31st each report provides a concise snapshot a concise snapshot of the progress over the life of the project and should include a short but precise description of activities completed plans and major achievements each quarter information is updated from the previous quarter submission using the template activities reported must clearly and directly align with the objectives in the project work plan as recipients you complete the pro the report each quarter on time the project is active performance reports must be an easy fed grant by the due date with all required approvals completed again reports are due 30 days after the end of the calendar calendar year quarter so the example there would be those that review for quarter one for january first to march 31st are due april 30th you can refer again to your project award face sheet for a specific recording requirements so next i want to tell you about uh the tasks that are specific to you guys as recipients so you're responsible for completing the report each quarter that each each quarter the project is active on time and using the template you're going to hear me say this a lot to really try to drive that home uh you're responsible for using the guidebook in the workplace sheet of aid including work plan objective alignment and the date of activity for each entry emailing the report to your program manager for review prior to submission and easy grant submitting the report that that contains quality information that briefly shows the progress of the rep of the project and for the approvals of performance reports and z-seg grants that would be your recipient signatory official and your grant person so the next topic that we're going to go over is what's included in these reports you might again you might want to refer to appendix 1 page 13 of the guidebook to follow along so you can see an example as we go through these so basic project information will be pre-filled when you receive the template and that information includes the profile the title the summary and the objective that you i that you listed in your work plan if there are changes to these to this information like your primary investigator your principal investigator or your program manager feel free to update that information whenever whenever the the situation arises each quarter you'll use this template or the last submitted report and provide updates for the current reporting quarter for the next sections of the report so the information updated each quarter includes the report date the completion score the budget status also the activities completed this quarter and those that are planned for the next quarter in this section you'll delete the information that you put in the last report and replace it with updated information for the current quarter so an example of what this information should look like for paper completed this quarter would be like you know march 10 2021 shared final training and exercise document with all exercise players tabletop exercises planned for may 2021 objective 3. that would be a really good entry uh for that section and an example of a good entry for planned next quarter would be hosted tabletop exercise using new infographics to establish proof of concepts scheduled for may 2021 objective 3. another section that you will be updating each quarter is significant changes to the work plan and only those um only those changes that were requested in writing and approved by your program manager should be included here before any that should be done before any deviation from the work plan so a good example for that would be um say covid will prohibit classroom style training and subsequent tabletop exercise associated with this project the project primary investigator or principal investigator has identified options for training and exercise that do not require personnel to meet face to face the tabletop exercise conducted will be conducted in a virtual setting in may 2021 the program manager has approved this to approve this change on january 15 2021. for success stories um we really want to hear anything that especially anything that was an unexpected success story or an unexpected benefit from the project uh and you also want to include any local media articles that are published that are related to your project here we really want to hear all the good stuff and all the good recognition that you're that you're receiving out there for these projects the last section of the report is major project accomplishments this section is humiliating okay we say the word cumulative don't delete this information each quarter keep adding to it so that at the end of the at the end of the the project completion when the project's completed um you'll have a really good timeline of all of the the major accomplishments that happen so that is the only section of the report that you do not delete you just keep adding to it so um an example of a good example of an entry under that section would be a february 6 2021 finalized 20 infographics for describing critical incident management team positions the infographics were shared with training exercise partners in tennessee florida and georgia department of agriculture in preparation for the training and exercise scheduled for april and may 2021 objective 2 and 3. if you have any questions of you know any questions about filling out the the report that you are not finding the answer in the guidebook please feel free to send us an email to the nav prep website i mean the navcrap mailbox so i just want to quickly run through um the do's and don'ts so as far as the dues go we really want you to review uh the example in the guidebook appendix one page 13 and refer to the guide foot refer to the guidebook for report instructions i know i sound like a broken record but i can't stress this enough please submit all performance reports using the template that we're going to that we provide you even if there's no activity to report we want you to include all major activities or high level accomplishments associated with the work plan objectives these activities that show progress we want you to ensure each entry includes activity date and work plan objectives addressed and make sure all significant changes in the work plan have been requested in writing and approved by your program manager prior to deviation we ask that that you don't copy the work plan the text from the work plan for the objectives we're going to do that for you we ask that you not include activities like meetings held identifying or scheduling training planning copying confirming availability to assist organizing logistics information gathering arranging travel [Music] or document uh document drafting nothing like that these these these types of entries don't add any value to the report so we ask that you omit including them please do not use unnecessary language or fluff words and we encourage you to think about who will be seeing the report the time it takes to review it and what they might need to know so what should you do prior to submitting the report the report information that you include can be shared with congress usda executives state animal health officials various livestock organizations industry representatives the media or other program stakeholders to determine the program's value and success we are accountable for taxpayer dollars that are being spent with this program so keep that in mind therefore it's important that all performance reports provide a clear snapshot of work information that is easy to follow and understand and provide just the right amount of information not too little and not too much providing good information is a must and is very helpful this report should not be labor intensive we think we've designed it and hopefully not designed it so that it can be uh quickly done and and doesn't take up a whole lot of time it should be able to be quickly read in just a few minutes when it's complete entries that are brief and direct are much easier to digest by congress and others that we share the report with providing careful thoughtful information will help ensure the longevity of our program we often get data calls and requests for information with very short turnarounds so providing information in this format allows us to quickly highlight activities and include high impact information when requested it also allows us to take advantage of opportunities to boast about the great work that you're doing out there so before you submit the report you should ask yourself did i use the template are entries clear and concise with only major achievements included are entries easy to follow and understand do activities align with the work plan objectives are dates and objective numbers included with each entry the answer to all of these questions should be yes before you provide the report to your program manager for review so this slide demonstrates um or illustrates steps the performance report will go through for approval this is an over or this is an overarching um an overarching business process basically for the performance report you fill out the quarterly the quarterly performance report using the template provided then ask your program manager to review it before submitting easyped grants doing this will prevent additional steps if changes are required program managers review the report for accuracy completeness and work plan alignment and then provide feedback back to you feedback back to you you address any for any feedback that was provided by the program manager and then you uploaded an ezbed grant the report then goes through the approval steps in these effect grants and then next quarter you'll take through the report that was submitted the previous quarter and make updates and then you'll loop back around to step number two um by providing it to your program manager for review this cycle was maintained while the project is active so this slide is the the easy fed grant approval cycle in the system so and the chart the chart will will show you demonstrate how um how the approvals are completed and what you know what order they're completed in easy fed grams each step triggers the next the next step in easy fed grants this process order is maintained by default in the system after your program manager reviews your your report your performance report and provides feedback you finalize the report and upload it into easy fed grant your the recipient grant processor approves an easy fed grant then your certifying official provide approves an easy fed grant then the project vs program manager approved an easy fed grants so note as previously previously said several times we recommend that the program manager reviews the performance report and provides feedback feedback prior to uploading it into the system since the program manager is the last to approve and easy fed grants changes at that point will require the pro the process to start all over again starting with re-uploading the the report in the system and then going through each one of the approval steps so you it can be it could be quite lengthy to have to go through that process again so just kind of headed off by having them take a look up front is our recommendation so this slide is on file naming convention so we asked that um we asked that you use this this naming convention for all performance reports that you upload into the system and and what this tells us is um like flo 1.20 that's the project id and we actually create those project ids and provide them to you um it tells us that this this particular project was funded against a 2020 funding opportunity and this this is a performance report to the pe is for performance report and it's being submitted for calendar year quarter two on june 10 2021. the file name the file naming is not associated with the with the number of reports that you submit but it does quickly let us know that you've met the obligation of your obligation for that that calendar year quarter so you might ask us um you might be asking yourself why why is this so important so keep in mind that we pull roughly 82 performance reports from easy fed grants each quarter as of right now some recipients have several projects active projects over two years over a two-year period for multiple funding opportunities uh we've noticed sometimes reports are attached under the wrong quarter in easyfeb grants so using this file naming convention helps us identify those quickly and may help overall with report upload in the correct location in easy fed grants so this concludes my section of the presentation i thank you very much for your time today next i'll turn things back over to our grant specialist laura who's going to talk to you about financial reports great thanks melinda the financial report the federal financial report or the sf-425 they're required each quarter and are due on the same date as the performance reports they are completed and submitted in eg fed grant the ss425s are meant to report consecutively one quarter building on one another so that at the end the ss425 will show the full performance periods numbers and there's more details on that in the recipients guide as well but since we've already covered a lot we won't go into great detail on that and same with amendments budget shifts and extensions there's a lot of good information in the recipient guide on this as well but it's mostly important to note that recipients are are required to report in writing any deviations from the budget project scope or the objective so you could always reach out to the netprep the farm bill staff with any questions that you might have and in conclusion we have a target date of getting all of these agreements executed by march 31st and with that i'll turn it back over to julie um to wrap it up and talk about a few more items so thank you all very much okay all right well thanks for hanging in there with us for this um presentation at this time we want to open it up for questions and while you think about your questions um i'm going to give you just a little more information melinda has emailed to all of you yesterday's recipient guidebook so most of this is in there we've also emailed you these powerpoint slides and we will be posting this the recording of the webinar on youtube and we'll send you all the links to that so if you wanted if there's other colleagues associated with your project whom you think would benefit from this you can send this information to them either the guidebook or the recording or both um so this time we just like to take any questions that you have as i said at the outset you know we're here to help you we know that you're just at the beginning stage right now standing up your cooperative agreement and we also went into a lot of detail of post-award management things like reporting and claims processing we want to take any questions that you have but you know and we realize that down the road you might have questions later on about your reports or claims submission or budget amendments or things like that um feel free to reach out to us the very best way to contact us is the email that's shown here cs.nadprep usda.gov but you're also welcome to reach out to us individually and they're shown on the slides so um [Music] okay so i see a question in the chat box can you restate who should be contacted if there has been a change in the signatory official within a recipient agency very well stated i would send that to the vf.navprep usda.gov email address so any other questions you can enter them into the chat box or um our event producer is going to open the phone line so that you can um ask a question verbally and we've got to take it that as well all right ladies and gentlemen as we enter q a if you would like to ask a question via phone please press pound 2 on your telephone keypad to enter the question queue once again pressing pound two will enter you into the question queue okay i see one more question in the chat line that i'll take and the question is um if your grant starts on march 15th will you need to do a reporter report for the first quarter um no you don't um when you get your award stood up and your grant starts you'll receive an award face sheet and if your award were to start on march 15th your first quarter of reporting would be from the april through july or april through june time period and your first report would be due at the end of july i do not see any phone questions currently but once again ladies and gentlemen if you would like to ask a question via phone please press pound 2 on your telephone keypad oh i do see another question that i think we didn't answer if there is some need to re-budget for example a salary from a phd student to be used for attempts is this double gustavo i'm not sure about that question if you have to make a budget adjustment you can again um talk about that with your vs program manager you can also send your question to vs nad prep i'm going to assume um gustavo that your award has not been established yet so there won't be a need for an amendment we just do that in the initial establishment of the cooperative agreement donna or laura do you see that question in the chat box and do you have anything else to add this is donna and i do see it and i don't have anything else to add all right we do have a question on the phone okay go ahead please caller your line is unmuted you may ask a question hi this is julie in vermont i was just wondering if you could repeat the questions to ask yourself when composing the report entries to just check that they're going to work well for all the different purposes that you described yeah yeah and i'll fill that slide again julie thank you so i mean the quarterly reports um we go into it into a lot of details we don't they don't always come in exactly how we'd really like them but um we basically want to hear um in each report you know what you did in the last quarter and what's going to happen in the next quarter and then what the major accomplishments are and it needs to be fairly concise if we get a data call from say the secretary of agriculture and he's visiting vermont for example he might want to need to know or his staff need to know on a very short notice what's going on with that project that we funded in vermont so we will pull up your quarterly report and um we just don't um it should be fairly tight you know straightforward it should also inform your program manager your project your program manager from vs what you're doing on the project so it's not only written for that high level audience has to sort of hit that balance does that answer a question actually earlier you had presented like four questions to ask like was this worded concisely and those were just really helpful to me i don't know if you can repeat those julie can i answer that question yeah julie okay yeah so um those questions are actually listed in the notes section of the presentation so if you uh take a look at that you should be able to find them there super thanks all right so reminder ladies and gentlemen if you do want to ask a question via phone press pound two on your telephone keypad to answer the question view there's another question um and i'm embarrassed that i don't know the answer to it but um it says verify that you you know we do instruct you to verify that you have access to easy fed grants and easy fed brands is tied to our federal fmi system or what we call femi and i don't remember what that stands for but i'm sure that donna schultz knows thanks julie yeah it's uh um and i should know this off the top of my head and i've completely just um and i already uh yeah i just put it in the chat financial management modernization initiative and really all that folks would see when they access the portal is the grantor management which is also known as our easy fed grant system module which is a module within the financial management system femi all right well we're going to hang on here for a few more minutes um if anybody has questions that they want to answer asked please feel free also um you know we know that this is a download of a lot of information today and if you have questions after you hang up or after you get off our webinar um please feel free to um call us or send your questions via email again the best way to reach all of us all at once is to send it to vs.nadprep usda.gov okay well i don't see any more questions coming in so i think we'll wrap it up for today michelle thank you very much um thanks very much for helping moderate through our webinar today and again um let us know if you have questions if you had any stumbling blocks with standing up your award or if you have questions down the road of course reach out to your vs program manager but feel free to reach out to us as well