Janet Rosenzweig,Based on work completed at

Harvard’s Kennedy School Bill Levis, Urban Institute

NGP Webcast, February 10, 2009

The Added Value of Activity Codes

FFATA

Searchable database of grants, contracts and other types of federal contracts, assistance and other payments available at www.usaspending.gov

Purpose of grant is identified by CFDA code, which does not describe the activities undertaken by the recipient.

Purpose of Initial ResearchExplore potential improvements in the utility of the FFATA

database of grants made federal agencies by the adding a field to classify data by activity For Example…..

a public administrator could identify all funds coming into a states for activities related to a multi-disciplinary services such as prevention of child abuse through family support services, or prevention of juvenile delinquency

a public administrator could identify all funds coming into a specific city, county or state by location and category to support budgets planning

Example: CFDA Codes relevant to family support services –HHS only93.551: Abandoned Infants93.995: Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Pr

ojects93.670: Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary A

ctivities93.643: Children's Justice Grants to States93.974: Family Planning Service Delivery Improv

ement Research Grants93.926: Healthy Start Initiative93.136: Injury Prevention and Control Research a

nd State and Community Based Programs93.556: Promoting Safe and Stable Families

Example, continued: Non HHS CFDA codes10.573: Homeless Children’s Nutrition Program AG84.335: Child Care Access Means Parents in School E D84.360: Dropout Prevention Programs ED84.310: Parental Assistance Centers ED16.730: Reduction and Prevention of Children's Exposure to Violence

Justice

16.523: Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants16.547: Victims of Child Abuse Justice

What’s Missing?A description of WHAT activities the recipient is

conducting!

The addition of activity codes can make this database remarkably useful for state and local planning and coordination.

Opportunities The continued development of the FFATA database

presents an opportunity to further the existing NGP objective of establishing uniform object expense categories and definitions for grant budgeting and reporting by adding uniform activity codes to federal CFDA program classification.

Current interest by OMB in expanding the utility of the CFDA coding scheme presents a unique opportunity for collaboration

For Background Information on NGP’s Uniform Guidelines Initiative

In November 2004, the Uniform Guidelines Coalition (co-sponsored by the NGP) released Uniform Data Elements and Definitions for Grant Budgeting and Financial Reporting, Version 1 (UDED) -- http://www.nasact.org/downloads/11_04-UDED_v1.pdf

Existing Taxonomies of Activity Codes National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities –

The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) system is used by the IRS and NCCS National Center for Charitable Statistics to classify nonprofit organizations. It is also used by the Foundation Center to classify both grants and grant recipients (typically nonprofits or governments). NCCS and the IRS use the NTEE-CC system …while the Foundation Center uses a slightly different version with more codes, as well as "population/beneficiary" codes to indicate the type of population served and "auspice" codes to indicate religious or governmental affiliation.

http://nccs.urban.org/classification/NTEE.cfm

For More Information

Bill Levis, Urban Instituteqrlevis@aol.com

Janet Rosenzweig MS, PhD, MPA jfrosenzweig@comcast.net

Thank you!