JustGrants: New system brings change to DOJ grants management

Bob Davis:

Patchwork is a podcast from the Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington. Patchwork brings you the voices of people on the frontlines combating domestic and sexual violence. Our efforts to serve victims and hold offenders accountable create stories that knit us together and propel us forward. Welcome to Patchwork.

Today, we're joined by Lauren Nassikas, of OVW, and Maria Swineford, of the Office of Justice Programs. Both these women have been deeply involved with planning, design and implementation of a new I.T. system called JustGrants. JustGrants is replacing our grants management system here at DOJ. They're going to share tips and information about the upcoming transition, which is just around the corner on October 15th.

I want to start today with the basics, really what is happening? Maria, let's start with you. What is JustGrants and why do we need to make this transition?

Maria Swineford:

First, thank you, Bob, for having me here. I am excited to share information on JustGrants. So, JustGrants is the new grants management system developed by the Department of Justice. JustGrants is going to replace the grants management system we call GMS, which is currently used by both the Office of Justice Programs, OJP, as well as OVW and it also replace what is used by the Community Oriented Policing Services Office, the COPS office, their NexGen system. So we're excited to create this joint platform so that all of our stakeholders are able to use one system to manage all of their DOJ awards. And why we're doing this is because just the technology advances over time and business evolves and processes evolve. We have to evolve, too. So JustGrants is enhancing our grant making by using state-of-the-art technology, building on best practices that we have learned across the federal government as well as private industry and addressing areas that have been identified through various stakeholder innovation sessions or feedback that we've gotten over the years to help design a solution that best meets our stakeholders’ needs. So the upcoming transition to JustGrants, that represents a lot; it's a significant I.T. modernization effort that is helping us design the single grants management system for all three DOJ grant-making components. But what it also allows us to do is look holistically at our grant programs that are being funded across the Department of Justice and across the United States. So we have long been wanting to use that data in a better way. We want to be able to take that data and tell our story, tell the public and our stakeholders where federal funding is going and what great work we're doing in our communities. So what we're hoping to get out of this effort in this transition to a single system is to be able to look at the work that's being done across DOJ, across all of our awards from COPS, OJP and OVW and really tell the story and the success stories and best practices of the different criminal justice and victim services that we have out in the communities. So it's an exciting time, but change and transition can be a little scary. So we hope that Lauren and I are here to help with some of the common questions that you're getting or that you may have and we want to make sure that you have all the support you need for the transition. So, again, thank you for having me here.

Bob Davis:

Thank you and, you know, one of the first questions I think people will have is how do they get their money and we use something called ASAP, right? Can you talk a little bit about what ASAP is?

Maria Swineford:

Yes, that's probably one of the number one questions that we get. So ASAP is the Automated Standard Application for Payment Solution. That is a shared service provided by the Department of Treasury. So some of our grantee may already be familiar with this because the ASAP solution is used across federal government with several of the federal grant-making agencies. So if your organization perhaps has awards with State, or Department of Agriculture, or some of those other federal agencies, you may already be using the ASAP system. And this is going to be replacing what DOJ currently uses, the Grants Payments Request System, the GPRS, for those of you who use it. So GPRS will be going away as well. And there's a lot of great benefits to using ASAP, not only the biggest one that I mentioned, if you're already using ASAP, then it also helps integrate and streamline your activities within your organization for grant-making. But they have faster process payment times, including same day, next day. It's very much like your personal banking service that you might use on your phone or your home computer. So we're really excited about that and a lot more electronic funds transfers rather than some of the time consuming paper processes we've been doing in the past.

Bob Davis:

I guess another question people have is, when is this happening?

Maria Swineford:

Soon. So the current systems of as I mentioned, GMS, the COPS’ NexGen system, GPRS, we are discontinuing the use of those systems, beginning on September 22^nd, 2020, which is right around the corner for us. So we will begin using JustGrants starting October 15^th, 2020. So in that time between September 23^rd and October 14^th, DOJ is going to be migrating over all of the existing awards from our legacy systems. So if you have concerns about your current awards and GMS or you have concerns about your current awards in the NexGen solution, if your award is currently active or if perhaps your end date has passed and you're still in the close-out process, all of those will be migrated over along with any attachments. And all of the related information to that award will be migrated over to JustGrants. If your award is already closed or you perhaps submitted an application that never got it funded but you want to maintain those records, then now's the time to go in there and start downloading that material and keeping it before September 22^nd. So we'll do all of our data migration between that time so we're ready to go live on October 15^th.

Bob Davis:

There’s a lot of work going on here at DOJ. Lauren, let me turn to you. If I'm a grantee and I've already received my grant funds, do I need to worry about this?

Lauren Nassikas:

Yes, and I want to thank you too, Bob, for having this podcast and giving us an opportunity to reach out to all the organizations that we work with to get them ready for the transition. So, yes, everyone does need to, all award recipients, do need to register their organizations in JustGrants. In fact, many of you may have already received e-mails about this. We started sending communication to our grantees, I think August 31^st, and the e-mails include information about how to register links and where to go to register. So everybody does need to register. You will also need to register for the ASAP program that Maria was mentioning. Current award recipients were also invited to register for ASAP and I think those e-mails started going out in July. If you didn't receive an e-mail or if the e-mail went to a spam folder or something, towards the end of this podcast, we're going to let you know where to go to find the information about registering. So if you missed the e-mail or didn't get one, don't worry, we will get you to the place where you need to find the information. Lastly, reward recipients also need to make sure that their SAM.gov profiles are up-to-date, including the organization's EBiz point of contact. So those are really kind of the first key steps to transitioning to JustGrants. You need to register in JustGrants, you need to register in ASAP and make sure that your SAM.gov profile is up-to-date.

Bob Davis:

So I hear you saying this is mandatory and if I'm a grantee, I have to have to do this. And that is gonna make me wonder, I suppose, what happens to the data that I already have in the existing system if I'm a grantee.

Lauren Nassikas:

Yeah, and Maria touched on this a little bit, so, yes, we'll keep reiterating the transition is mandatory to the new system. The old systems will be shut down. We don't want people to try to log on to their GMS account and panic that they can't get there. So, yes, the transition is mandatory. So all open and active awards, along with their associated attachments to the awards, are going to be transferred to JustGrants. So if you are a grantee, once JustGrants goes live, you should be able to go in and you would, in your profile, be able to see all of the active awards that you have from DOJ. This includes awards that have not reached their end date or if their end date has passed but the closeout process has not been completed. So one other thing we want to mention is a grant grantee wants to keep material from your closed awards in GMS or NexGen, you should take the time over the next week, I guess, to download any material and save it someplace else. Again, Maria had mentioned the cutoff date of September 22^nd for those systems to shut down. However, if a grantee finds in, maybe November, that they somehow need to for some reason need to access information from a closed award, they can just get in touch with their program manager, or the OVW JustGrants support line, and we will be able to go into the system and get what you need and send it to you. I guess I'll just take a second to mention, and I'm sure there'll be links to this with the podcast, but the OVW JustGrants user support is ovw.justgrantssupport@usdoj.gov and the phone number is (866) 655-4482.

Bob Davis:

Perfect. Thanks. While we're getting specific here, Maria, talk a little bit about where people go to create their account.

Maria Swineford:

Yes. So we will reach out to you. So what we have done is, again, the key portions and the key premise in the foundation for JustGrants is really to streamline our data, but also making sure that we're using the source of truth for our data and our information. So we are leveraging SAM.gov, we're integrating with SAM.gov, that is where all entities are required to keep their profile information in order to apply for all federal awards. So we want to make sure that we're connecting with that source as your valid entity information. It helps to keep the data clean and accurate in JustGrants moving forward. So what we've done is we've reached out already to whoever is listed as the EBiz point of contact for your organization in SAM.gov. So that person has received an email that says that their entity profile has been created for them and JustGrants and the email will be coming from our secure entity management authenticator. So this system is called DIAMD. So the email came from DIAMDnoreply@usdoj.gov, not from JustGrants. And this is an authenticator. If you think about any personal services that you use, banks or anything else where you put in some log in information and then it you a one-time code. So it's a multi factor authentication system that is in front of JustGrants to help keep JustGrants and your data, your information secure within JustGrants. So that email from DIAMD included a link to create your account in JustGrants and that serves as the gatekeeper to accessing and getting permission into JustGrants, From there that EBiz point of contact has already been designated as the entity administrator for your organization, so something to remember here is that entity, that EBiz point of contact from SAM might not be who you want the entity administrator to be for your DOJ award. Many large organizations, such as universities or maybe state administering agencies, they might have an EBiz point of contact that managing same information for their entire entity, which is rather large. But the people who will be managing DOJ awards in JustGrants would be different. However, since we needed to start somewhere with that point of contact and SAM, once you're EBiz point of contact is registered, they can then assigned the entity administrator roles to somebody else. So we've had questions in the past saying “I'm the financial manager for my organization and I manage all the grants, but I haven't received the email.” So you'll want to go into SAM.gov, you want to look and see who that EBiz point of contact is and reach out to them so that they can on board and then they can they can invite you to join JustGrants so they can reassign the role to you as the entity administrator. And then it's a little bit different for ASAP but similar. Your EBiz point of contact would have already received an invitation to enroll in ASAP as well. Around the end of August is when the invitations would have been received. So starting from July to August, as Lauren had mentioned. So there's going to be an email from the Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Service, so that's a reminder that this is a Treasury service. So it's not going to look like it's coming from JustGrants or DOJ. And it would have provided you a temporary password and a link to create your new password. And then once you are in ASAP, you can make the necessary changes to your profile or your accounts at that point, much like any other Internet service.

Bob Davis:

So, Lauren, if hopefully people have heard of this, as Maria said, emails have been going out. They've been hopefully they've been notified. If anyone is hearing about this for the first time, they might have a sinking feeling in their stomach because this funding is so important to their organization. What is available for them now? How are we helping them be prepared for the transition?

Lauren Nassikas:

Well, first of all, I don’t want anyone to have a sinking feeling in their stomach. We will get through this, we will do this. As Maria had mentioned, changes and transition can be difficult. But I can tell you, the number of people who are working at DOJ to ensure that everyone receives all of the resources they need and the training they need, it's been unbelievable. So we are here to help you. So, yes, be prepared. And I think the best way you can do that right now is to make sure you're reading any communication that comes from DOJ. And I think almost all of the e-mails that we send out include the link to the JustGrants website. And again, I'm the one who's always like reading off the web addresses, but it's justicegrants.usdoj.gov. That is the place that has all of the resources and materials and training that you need. Every anytime new training comes available, we put it up on the website. I think Maria is going to talk a little bit later about this specifically, what kinds of training we have available. OVW has also set up some checklists and action dates for OVW. You can find those, I think they are going to be linked with this podcast. So, again, I would utilize all the material that's being developed, not to panic, and if you are a grantee, if you are feeling stressed or confused at all, contact your program specialist, or the help line that I had mentioned before and somebody is here to help you get through this.

Bob Davis:

Good point, and I will ask Maria to talk about training in just a sec, but let's just acknowledge that this is happening at a fairly busy time of the year. There's a lot of funding going out right now. Talk a little bit about what's happening with you and your team and just that the challenge of this happening as grant funds are going out.

Lauren Nassikas:

Right. So this is, I know this is a busy time for our office because we're in the process of making awards. I know this is a busy time for organizations because you are trying to accept the awards. For our particular population, many of our grantees are getting ready to start participating in domestic violence awareness activities. So we understand that a lot is going on. Again, just reach out to us if you have any questions. As much as possible, read those emails, go to the website. We, again, don't want people to stress. We want OVW grantees to be able to focus on what they are doing, which is working to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking. We know that you need to understand these systems in order to do that and so we're just hoping it will be as painless as possible and we will help make that happen.

Bob Davis:

Maria, one way that we help is through training, talk a little bit about what kind of training is available.

Maria Swineford:

Sure. If there's been anything that's kind of thrown us for a loop here over at the JustGrants team, two years ago when we started this effort, we could have never anticipated being in the quarantine COVID environment that we're in right now. So our grand ideas of getting out into the communities and having more interaction with our stakeholders, all of that had to change at the flip of a switch when our current quarantine situation had come into play. So we have shifted our gears and we have done an incredible job. The team has an incredible job with creating many, many, many training videos and content and reference materials, everything we could possibly think of, infographics, FAQs, anything that we could think of to help you with this transition. We took some time to look out in and see what's going on in the publishing industry and we know that most adult learners capture their information or retain information in small snippets. So we've created these small, short videos. They're also broken up in a way where if, for example, you are an organization, you only have to manage submitting a financial report for your DOJ awards, you can go straight to those videos and watch just the trainings on that functionality of the system, if that's what's helpful for you. But also because they are short and sweet and to the point, if you needed to sit through all of them, it wouldn't take too much time to just watch one right after another if you needed to do that. We have JAVAs that take you through the solution step-by-step, as well. Lauren had mentioned some checklists, we also have checklists for getting your entity onboarded. So we have that out there right now because the onboarding effort is active and is going on even though we'll discontinue the use of the systems starting September 22^nd. We do have entities onboarding right now, reference materials, FAQs. So again, that website is justicegrants.usdoj.gov. And you can go straight to our training and resource page. So these are self-guided e-learning videos. And we'll continue to take feedback. One of the really cool parts about being on this team is seeing how software development and how systems development happens in today's world, in this modern world. So as soon as you get feedback, we're able to get it back into the development process at a more rapid pace. Then when GMS was built, it was a lot of hard coding into the system and it would take a lot of time to make certain changes. Well, now solutions and software, modern technology make this far easier for us to do. So with some of the Q&A sessions we've already had right now or some virtual conferences that I have presented at, we've received questions and feedback and we've been able to get that back into the development process and get those things either addressed, or fixed, or we make sure that we're including them in our trainings. So we want to hear from you. So as you're going through and reading the materials, if you have questions, please make sure that you're reaching out to us and you're submitting questions. We'll provide that those links in the email addresses and everything else again at the end. But it's critical that we hear from you because, again, our intent was to get out in-person, and to see you all and have more interaction with our stakeholders so that we can make sure that we are providing the best training and services that we could possibly provide and without the ability to do that as much as we had hoped to do, we're really counting on your feedback after October 15^th as you start to start to use the system. We also are going to hold several virtual question and answer sessions, so we'll start communicating that out. I think our emails go out pretty much every Thursday, if not more frequently at this point since we're nearing October 15^th. But you'll be able to sign up for these sessions on the training resource page so that you can come and ask us any questions you have around use of the system. Right now, since all we have available is onboarding and getting your entity logged into JustGrants. We've already had one Q&A session around that and we had some really valuable questions and a lot of great information shared. And you can attend more than one, there's nothing limiting you. Attendance is limited, but if you are using the system and you attend one Q&A but then you use the system further and you need to attend another one, you're more than welcome to do that. We record each of those so there's a lot of recordings and demonstrations that we’ll be hosting as we go live and as we capture that stuff in real time. So we're doing everything we can to be able to support you all in this transition. And as I mentioned earlier, and both Lauren and Bob have mentioned, transition is indeed scary, but nothing is happening to your funds. It will still be there, so if you don't need to know how to do everything on day one. So take it one day at a time. Become familiar. The most important thing is to get you logged on. And if you can get logged on, then the rest, we hope, is all there and at your fingertips and available for you to be able to hit the ground running on October 15^th.

Bob Davis:

Thank you. Lauren mentioned, I know we also, Maria talked about getting feedback and I know we've heard some feedback that people are getting some e-mails and they're not sure if they're they need to worry about them. Talk a little bit about the challenge of the transition here, people paying attention to the information that's coming out.

Lauren Nassikas:

Right. So that is one thing I don't think we had we had anticipated, but we got we received several messages from our grantees saying, you know, “we're getting these emails, what are they?” and then it made sense to us. You’re getting e-mails, it's talking about your grant funding and you need to log on to this to register for this. We know that people are very wary about doing things like that if they don't know for sure that it is an e-mail from a source that they can trust. So we have had several people say we're not really sure what to do with this. “Is this spam? We're just deleting them.” So don't delete the emails and I think we may have changed some of the language now that says “This is an official email from the Department of Justice”. So make sure you read the emails. I think we were able to see who's opened the emails. I think probably less than half of the people who have received that correspondence have actually opened the messages. So we're just trying to get the word out as much as possible. Again, with our constituents, if you are listening to this and if you're part of a listserv or any kind of professional group that includes other DOJ grantees, you know, help us spread the word, if you can. We had, I think, a sexual assault coalition ask us about it. We said, “no, please tell all of the other sexual assault coalitions they need to pay attention to these emails and register and follow all the instructions that they receive”.

Bob Davis:

Maria, anything to add to this?

Maria Swineford:

Yes. So similarly, some of the feedback that, a lot of the feedback that we've been getting is that perhaps your SAM information is not up to date or it has an outdated EBiz point of contact. And if you recall, that's where we started. We want to start with that source of truth about your entity information. So if you still haven't seen emails and you're checking your spam and your junk mail and you still just can't find anything about this, then we highly recommend that you go to SAM.gov. You can easily search on your entity, find your EBiz point of contact information, and if that person is incorrect, and then go through the steps in SAM so that you can update that person to the correct EBiz point of contact. And then once that person is updated, you would just reach out to our support staff and we'll re-send you a new invitation so that you can get onboarded as quickly as possible. But that's the other big issue that we've heard, is that their SAM profiles aren't up to dates so we've been sending e-mails to someone who has, perhaps, left the organization or the contact information is wrong.

Bob Davis:

Thank you. Before I close, I just want to ask each of you to tell me and Lauren, I'll start with you, what the one good thing about this is a lot of work. It's a lot of effort going into this. Let's end on a good note. What's the one thing that you're looking forward to with this new system?

Lauren Nassikas:

OK. Well, I will say there are a lot of good things that I will mention one. I have been at the Office on Violence Against Women for a very long time, and I remember helping to develop the Grants Management System back in 2000. So as we know, technology has advanced in the last 20 years, so we are very excited to have the updated system. But for one particular thing that I think grantees will really appreciate is the ability for organizations or entities, as we're calling them, to be able to manage their profiles and all of their DOJ awards. That would be a OVW, OJP and COPS in one place. So I think that is going to be a huge benefit to grantees. That would be my top thing that I mention.

Bob Davis:

Maria, what about you?

Maria Swineford:

Yeah. So in addition to that, Lauren touched on it, the modern technology is it has just been fascinating to see and to see it develop so rapidly. And I'm really excited about that and so while that might not feel like an immediate benefit to our external stakeholders, it really is, because, as Lauren mentioned, GMS is old. GMS was developed a long time ago. I, too, was around 20 years ago when it was being developed. And we've come a long way. And so I'm just really excited to be able to see how we can flourish as an organization ourselves, as the DOJ ourselves, to be able to better manage our grants with our stakeholders and not be limited by the technology. And with that is the access to data. So being able to have all of your DOJ awards in one location, and I mentioned it earlier, is having that comprehensive access to data. So we're excited about the opportunities we have to continue to build upon JustGrants and then enhance JustGrants so that we can start really sharing with the public and sharing with our stakeholders the good work that they're doing in their communities and what they're doing with taxpayer dollars by being able to show the data that we've been collecting over the years but has been really constrained by technology on how quick we can get that out or how quickly we can share that out or in what manners we can share that out. But with the easy access to data in and knowing that we have the modern technology to enhance upon that, we can get some of those things out to public websites and other mechanisms in a much quicker fashion. So I'm really excited to see how that starts to show up in the in the future.

Bob Davis:

Thank you and thank you both for taking the time. I know you're very busy and I really appreciate it.

We really just want to get the word out. So I would just ask our listeners, if you know of anyone who may benefit from hearing this conversation, please share it with them. Help us raise the awareness about this important transition. And we will put all kinds of links and phone numbers and places to get more information on our website with this. But we really we really could use everyone's help making sure that people who need to know this information get it and know that we're here to help reach out and give us a call. You can find more information at justice.gov/ovw/podcast. That's where we will have all these links and phone numbers. You can always give us a call at (866) 655-4482. Appreciate you tuning into this edition of Patchwork. If you think of something that you like for us to cover in the future, please let us know. Love to hear from you. Thanks again. Thank you both.