GREAT Act

The Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act, which was introduced to the House of Representatives is January 2018, is a bill to modernize the federal grants system in several ways. If passed into law, it would:

• Require recipients of federal grants and cooperative agreements to use new data standards in reporting on their use of federal funds
• Develop a comprehensive taxonomy of standard definitions for core data elements required for grants management
• Facilitate new technology solutions for data management to reduce the burden and cost of regulatory compliance for recipients of federal grants and cooperative agreements
• Publish this data as open data where possible to strengthen oversight and transparency of federal grants management

The Data Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group, has noted that, “By replacing outdated documents with open data, the GREAT Act will deliver transparency for grantmaking agencies and the public and allow grantees to automate their reporting processes, reducing compliance costs.” According to the Data Coalition, the GREAT Act will make it possible to create a single consolidated data set of grant applications across all agencies, in addition to the benefits described above.

The GREAT Act was ordered to be amended in February 2018 by a Voice Vote in the House of Representatives. You can follow the progress of the bill here.