Federal Stimulus/Recovery Reporting Update

As Federal Funds flow to the State of Maine through the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) there are new reporting requirements attached to these Federal funding sources.

 

Whereas the Governor “signs for” all of the Recovery funds, he is responsible for the new “transparency” requirements. And so, to supplement traditional agency reporting from State to corresponding Federal agency, we, the State of Maine will be providing additional data for both the Governor’s (www.maine.gov/recovery) and the President’s (www.recovery.gov) web sites for public viewing and query. This is a requirement of receiving the “stimulus” funds.

 

CIO Dick Thompson is responsible to Commissioner Low (DAFS) and the Governor for coordinating Maine’s effort on data reporting.

 

Although agencies are visibly receiving funds and accomplishing their traditional accounting and oversight activities, what is generally less known is the requirement for agencies to report “spending data” on a continuous basis through the State of Maine and upward to the Federal Government. The “enterprise” role of OIT is to develop a statewide solution to support the data reporting requirements of ARRA. This involves working with each receiving agency to accumulate and transfer data in addition to or in lieu of direct reporting that already exists.

 

Our objective is to create a statewide system, with all State agencies receiving ARRA funding that will dynamically feed data from our disparate department systems to a central repository within the state. From that point, the data will feed to www.maine.gov/recovery site for a public-facing query-able presentation & where feasible to www.federalreporting.gov (under construction).

 

There is also a notion at the State’s administration level that “transparency” systems will live on beyond the ARRA years (2009/2010).

 

On April 9^th the Governor sponsored a “Recovery” meeting for the State business and finance staff with about 180 people in attendance. The DAFS Commissioner, State Budget Office, and Controllers Office are making an effort to bring clarity to the reporting requirements and to reach out the actual staff doing the work. Recovery Act Implementation Meeting notes.

 

Guidance is flowing continuously from the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the ARRA Recovery Board.

• On Friday April 3^rd the Federal OMB published a 175 page guidance document which included specifications for reporting. This was targeted mainly at federal agencies.  http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/ see M-09-15. Chapter 2 of that guidance provides a glimpse of what will be expected of Maine in the way of transparency reporting requirements.
   
• The most specific guidance regarding exactly what data the Federal government will be requiring is found in the Federal register page 14,824. This document specifies proposed data definitions/fields that Maine will need to provide for http://www.federalreporting.gov .  Paul Sandlin (OIT) has also created a data definition set that will fuel the public-facing web pages at www.maine.gov/recovery. We are currently reconciling the Federal definitions with our State definitions and expect to publish that soon. .
• Initial reporting to the Feds is July 10^th, which will be a pilot project to test www.federalreporting.gov
  
• By October 10^th  2009 we are expected to provide initial reports to the Federal government.