Modernizing Grant Management for Federal Justice Program Office  

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Overview

An integrated grants management system, developed for the Federal Justice Program Office, serves as a key pillar in bridging informational gaps, streamlining communication, and facilitating seamless data exchange among diverse stakeholders, ranging from Program Office staff to grant recipients. The system’s interoperability enhances the quality of grants management by fostering informed decision-making, reducing processing errors, and promoting collaboration between all involved parties.

The digital experience offered by the grants management system has revolutionized the grant application, award, and management processes, benefiting both the Grant Administration Division staff and grant recipients.

There are three grant-making offices: the Public Safety Grants Division, the Justice Program Administration Office, and the Office for Women’s Safety Initiatives. While the Justice Program Administration Office and the Office for Women’s Safety Initiatives used the Grants Management System (GMS), the Public Safety Grants Division used the NexGen system.

Goal

Since all three offices share many of the same processes, the goal was to enhance the award recipient (external user) experience in managing grant awards by transitioning to a single grant management system for all three grant-making offices, while simultaneously improving the internal user experience.

Challenge

The context in which the Justice Program Administrative Office operated prior to the implementation of the integrated grants management system was fraught with challenges that demanded a transformative solution. 

  1. Unclear Vision for the System: The business struggled to define a clear vision for the system’s design and functionality, leading to delays and multiple iterations.
    Impact: Increased project timeline by 20%, with at least 3 to 4 prototypes created to align with stakeholder expectations. 
  2. Cross-Team Coordination: Integration required seamless collaboration among multiple development teams, each working on different components of the grant lifecycle.
    Impact: Potential risk of misalignment caused delays in integration. 
  3. Knowledge Gap in Grants-Making Processes: Developers lacked an understanding of the grants-making process, leading to inefficiencies and additional training needs.
    Impact: Added an estimated 120 hours of onboarding and training to bridge the knowledge gap. 
  4. Complex External System Integrations: Interfacing with external systems such as grants.gov, sam.gov, and financial systems (e.g., ASAP, UFMS) posed significant challenges due to data incompatibility and frequent system downtimes. 
    Impact: A substantial number of project delays were attributed to external system unavailability, accompanied by multiple incidents of data exchange errors.

Solution



Sky Solutions, in partnership with GDIT, has harnessed Pega’s cutting-edge digital workflows to drive the success of the Integrated Grants Management System. Our focus has been on modernizing and streamlining the grant application and award processes, unlocking the full potential of the solution for the modern grant management landscape. Key highlights of the solution include:

  • Designed interactive prototypes to help the business visualize the system and accommodate evolving requirements.
  • Promoted seamless collaboration among development teams to integrate components into a unified system.
  • Conducted training sessions to familiarize developers with the grants-making process and align technical efforts with business goals.
  • Built robust application programming interfaces (APIs) and interfaces to enable seamless data exchange with external systems such as grants.gov, sam.gov, ASAP, and UFMS.
  • Implemented error-handling, retry mechanisms, and monitoring tools to manage external system downtimes and ensure data integrity.
  • Leveraged the Pega platform to develop a cohesive system that streamlined the grant lifecycle, improved user experience, and enhanced transparency and reporting capabilities.

The project team adopted an agile development approach to ensure flexibility in addressing evolving requirements while adhering to rigorous security and compliance standards. The multi-phase implementation plan was executed with regular feedback and involvement from end-users to optimize the user experience.

Technologies/Methodologies

  • Pega platform
  • Agile

Outcome

The successful implementation of the integrated grants management system has brought transformative benefits to all stakeholders, driving efficiency and scalability across the organization. The new System:

  • Supported the development and implementation of SAFe for grants case management, serving over 1,500 internal users and 15,000 external users, handling 14,000+ applications annually.
  • Scaled operations from 8 to 12 Scrum teams within a month to address increased demand.
  • Successfully supported 15 Scrum teams at the peak of the project, deploying certified Agile resources, software test engineers, and business analysts.
  • Migrated 700,000 records and 30 million attachments from legacy applications to a modern platform, ensuring data integrity and seamless operations.
  • Achieved 90% automation testing coverage, a 96% application guardrail score, and improved team velocity by 50% within six months.
  • Program Impact: Grants are processed faster, reaching an additional 20% more beneficiaries annually. As of April 2022, 6,636 out of 6,690 entities (99%) and 41,724 external users were enrolled. The system managed $6.6 billion in award funding drawn down by grantees from the Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) system
  • Overall: 10% profitability increase in first year of implementation, 15% reduction in operating costs, or improved productivity/efficiency

Our technologies are designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing systems, minimizing disruption and maximizing productivity.

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