February Modernizing Grant Funding & Contracting Task Force Regular Meeting

morning everybody good morning looks like we've got a good list going  wait a little bit longer for a few more folks okay still see people coming in another minute or so folks to get logged on okay we're up to 24 it's looking good oh thank you you for turning on  cameras I can see folks nice to see you all it was kind of weird I I had a  message pop up saying your camera's been disabled you cannot share video so  I was like oh okay that's what mine said too mine said that same thing that's  so w

eird okay I tried it and it works so maybe teams is just trying to keep us on our toes all right well we're at 9:03 so I think  we'll go ahead and get started I do have a a little roll call question for us Maran I  was wondering if you would be able to call name so I can take some notes on folks's  answers to our welcome roll call question I would be happy to I just tried to paste my  question to chat and it looks huge I don't know why okay there we go thank you very much Marianne  so in the cha

t we have a little roll call question so when your name is called just say here  and respond to our question which is since today's presentation is about uniform application  procedures I would like folks to try to share at least one example of an inefficiency or redundancy  that you hope could be cured with a recommendation from this group on a uniform application process  I'm sure folks have many examples but you only have to share one and if you can think about in  the state context because I

know a lot of us work in multiple jurisdictions and so you may have  experience some of those kind of inefficiencies in maybe other government jurisdictions but  let's try to think of what's kind of relevant at least for at the state level so Maran I'll  kick it off to to you to call names and I'll remember to mute myself this time because people  heard me typing last time thank you good morning Bettina here the main thing that I  would like to change is just that our organizational information

like the  form 990 Insurance certificates would be available for all applications and we  wouldn't have to submit them several times Danes yeah I was actually thinking somewhat  similar the timely information like a 990 or W9 that sort of thing if there's  ways that that could automatically be updated Bic good morning here the first thing that  comes to mind much like the 990 is to me ideally if something is answered in the 990  it wouldn't be asked somewhere else so there wouldn't be that repe

tition because that  information is has already been received and is accurate thanks Heather oh man I this  is a tough one to start the day off with I think that there is a lack of communication  within departments to communicate those same pieces of information like you're pointing out  and we get random staff get contacted around these different opportunities and it doesn't  seem like there's a consistent way that entire agencies or departments are communicating so  it would be helpful if like

the the application process if there could be like share information  with each other around who to contact within organizations Katrina Holland I didn't see her on the list we  just let her in she just arrived okay maybe we can come back to her  since she just popped in okay Leah Sevey good morning I was thinking it would  be nice if there was a repository where all these basic informational pieces could go so that  for all of the things that are asked for your proof of insurance your 990 your

whatever  whatever if there was one repository for everything Tamara Henderson good morning I think people  have kind of hit on them for me it's the differing I think similar to Danesh differing  Financial documents it be awesome if we gets in the same one every time instead of each  one's asking for something slightly different Mercedes here and I would say it would be great  to have a standard way that budgets are collected so that like every state department uses a single  budget platform ju

st like any organization would have each of its departments using a single  budget platform like it would drive our finance departments nuts right if we had like you know the  housing department had a different budget than the healthcare department or the you know education  department like so we we all have to use the same one and so it' be great if state agencies all  use the same one so whether we were submitting for a new application or an update we're all just  using the one budget Tool so

Katrina Holland came in but I don't think she might have heard this  question that you asked no I did not I did not I will repaste it into the chat and I'll also read  it back out again just in case we have anyone else who came on so since today's presentation is  about uniform application procedures what is one example of an inefficiency or a redundancy that  you hope could be cured with a recommendation from this body on a uniform application process  oh that's a big question I think probably

the method by which we calculate administrative  costs though I don't necessarily agree with the joint office's methodology they recently made a  change in mola County that's based off of the cost from the previous year and each organization that  is contracted in that space sort of knows what to expect and therefore can reasonably assume what  their indirect rate will be as a result of their Contracting and as a result of that I believe  that they also took away some of some arbitrary rules aro

und limitations so while it doesn't  necessarily allow us to forecast effectively because obviously needs change it does allow us a  little bit more flexibility and predictability and so some method that we that or that organizations  can rely on to reliably cover our administrative and indirect cost would be really helpful in a  uniform process and the last one to call roll is for me Maryann and for me in Lane County  they have a management Qualifications form that we fill out that has all the

information  it it might not have up-to-date insurance for multi-year but it has all of your information  that's on a 990 W9 it is the repository of all your nonprofit information or any anybody  responding to a contract or a grant and I agree with the budget template that's across the  board and then on the subject that Katrina brought up about the calculation of admin and limitations  it seems like pretty early in this process if we just said that Statewide we were going to accept  and ask tha

t all the state agencies were able to accept the OMD guidelines for Dom Minimus and  nicker negotiated direct cost indirect cost in the rate negotiated indirect cost rate and  that would be a huge step up to the full cost recovery thank you Marianne and I did see a  little note from the chat looks like Helen is here I am here I'm going to share what I  hope is lower hanging fruit is just the same word count on similar questions so even if I  am applying to four different agencies if I know like

you know a general question like  give us an organizational background has the same word count then I could copy and  paste and not you know try to figure out okay well this time is 250 words and this  time I have 500 so now how do I make that work oh I didn't even think about that that is so simple I'm have to have like six  different versions of your tell us your mission and vision exactly thank  you for that Helen anybody else that we missed I'm not sure if the state members  were called upon

the the task force members that are the agency reps like our DOJ  member myself governor's office it did feel we were we hadn't quite gotten to  everybody so let let's seewhere is now I'm looking for my agenda agenda Marianne  do you have the copy of the agenda with the full list of the participants on top  yes let me keep going so we have Debbie Dennis oh hi I'm here I I guess the main  thing that came to mind for me was things that are already mentioned so I guess I'll offer  something from t

he state agency perspective and that perhaps it would be more efficient  if employees who are the collectors and reviewers of Grant Applications had a common  application to look at so that training would be easier or if employees moved from agency to  agency that they wouldn't be learning something new Christina Gallano present sorry to be joining late if I don't  know if there's a question or anything else to follow up on but let me know there is  a question and the question is what is an exam

ple of an inefficiency or redundancy  that you would hope could be cured with a recommendation for a uniform application  process such a good question as a data nerd I think I would probably think about reporting  requirements being pretty redundant across multiple agencies and contracts and program so  I think to the best that we can standardize that process and get folks in the same page in terms  of expectations the more efficient the process can be state Representative Charlie Conrad State S

enator WInsvey Campos do you want  me to go down the list of all the other agency people that are on the list nope because we're  gonna hear from all of them in a minute okay so I think if we if anybody else didn't  come in late or didn't catch you kind of one last opportunity to make sure we get your  attendance on the roll call and your checkin question okay before okay before we jump into  public comment I just wanted to remind folks that you should have seen in the email that you  got from A

my we had used our chat last time to collect follow-up questions and the agencies have  now responded to those follow-up questions and they posted on the website we'll try to do that  same thing here again today so we'll try to use the chat primarily for any follow-up questions  state which agency you want the question to go to and the answer that way it's easy to just  kind of copy and paste those questions at the end of the meeting so we can do any follow-up  needed there and we are going to g

o through the state department in their presentations  everyone will have about 15 minutes and then we'll do a little bit of a look ahead and we'll  we'll look at the agenda again before we wrap up here but before we get too much further  do we have anybody who is here for public comment if you are you can raise your  hand I think that's how we find you in our audience not seeing any hands raised for public  comment there was a comment submitted so again when you're going back to the  website to

look at those January followup questions also make sure you're taking  a look at the public comments that came in okay we're just breezing right through so we're  going to go through our department presentations and then we're going to take a break and then  after the break we're going to come back and DAS is going to do a risk management presentation  we've been actually talking a lot about insurance and one of the things that we learned in our  agenda planning meeting is that DAS actually has

a tool and a guideline that they use to help  kind of assess when different levels of insurance might be needed and how some of those pieces  are kind of done in the background and so this is an opportunity for us to kind of peel back the  curtain a little bit learn a little bit more about that practice and then we'll at the end take a  look at our topic for March the questions that we have set up for March and collect any last minute  feedback on that before we're ready for to send that off to

the agencies to prepare for our March  presentation I do want to acknowledge I've heard from well I haven't heard from some folks who are  not allowed to talk to each other I've heard in a roundabout way that some people are feeling we're  getting a lot of information and it's kind of complicated to keep stuff straight and I want to  acknowledge that this is a long period of us just listening so I totally acknowledge that and that's  very difficult we're going to try to incorporate a couple of

different tools and we'll talk about  that a little bit in our look ahead but I also definitely want to encourage folks that if you  have a way of kind of organizing information that you think will be helpful to please communicate  that with with Amy Amy's out right now but she will be back because I think she's kind of our  repository of information right now we're we're really utilizing her to help us kind of continue  to collect information from all the task force members questions from all t

he Departments as  we move forward so I want to make sure that we are making good tools that help people feel like  they are learning and understanding given that we are collecting so much information and listening  to so much information and I want to try to keep encouraging that I only know how I learn and so  I don't want to assume that everyone learns the way that I do and and there may not be one single  tool that we can all use to to move this forward but we can have multiple and I want to

make sure  that we do so that when we get further into our recommendation phase where we're really kind  of saying so what did we hear and what do we want to turn that into that folks feel like  they've understood enough of the information that's come in and they've gotten their questions  answered sufficiently to feel confident making recommendations and so we'll continue to work  on that together so with that let's go ahead and jump in we're going to do 15 about 15 minutes  per presentation I

will kind of keep a little bit of a clock but hopefully again we'll be able  to may not be able to have a lot of dialogue with the presentations but please utilize the  chat for any followup questions that you have and so we're going to go ahead and invite DAS  up first for the uniform application procedures again later they'll be coming back for our risk  management presentation but D to you okay sounds good thank you Summer would you mind displaying  the presentation and while she's pulling t

hat up I will just say D's presentation today will be  quite brief because we don't we don't collect applications so we didn't have a lot to share on  this process so um anyway I'll run through our slides and if you have any questions please let  me know all all right next slide Summer Okay so just as a reminder the grants that Das um puts  in place are all legislatively designated so at the end of legislative session we basically  have a list um that says here are the different funding um strea

ms and here are the recipients of  the grants that D is responsible responsible for issuing and so we don't have really a a reason or  methodology for collecting applications because we're we're just directly instructed on on who  would be getting the grants um we did put down here our workflow just for informational purposes  so like I said the funding is designated by the legislature as is the recipient um we are  notified of that we generate our template agreement the agreement gets reviewed

by the  Department of Justice and then we send out the Grant agreement for review and signature next  slide we do not have a grants management tracking system at DAS we just have a this these are all  done by one Department out of our CF our chief financial office and they use Smart sheets and  Excel and Excel to organize and track their Grant data like I said all of our grant agreements  do get approved reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice the the only other sort  of little wrinkl

e here is that for the grants that are tied to Lottery revenue bonds we  have those also reviewed by Bond Council and from time to time a situation arises  where a decision might be made to delay or cancel the the issue issuance of a bond of a  of a grant that's tied to a lottery Bond and that has to do it's a little bit complicated  but it has to do with the time frames the money has to be spent within a certain time  frame related to those Lottery bonds and so if the entity isn't prepared to r

eceive and  execute within the time frame by the lottery Bond then we may have to delay it so that  we can we can extend the time frame for them okay next slide so I'm sorry it's just a little  repetitive but our our grants are just directed to us from the legislature and we get the  list of recipients we don't have a grant pre-approval process or a Grant application  for those reasons next slide that's all ours was pretty simple I know other agencies are going  to be a lot more detailed than in

this particular category that was very quick thank you  very much you're I suppose we do have a moment for questions if anyone  does have a followup question for D I had no idea you only did those specific  three funding streams so I think that's super helpful to understand so it's DAS and DOJ  still always has to approve or review before the agreement goes out is that the process  you said well we are we are DAS and so we generate for those that we get directed  by the legislature to to create

we create them and then yes we do send them over to our  department of justice to review but they're all pretty straightforward we have a template  and so ours are ours happen to be pretty straightforward are all the grant funds released at the  same time or are they reimbursement they are primarily reimbursed at the same time  well we execute the grant agreement and then we issue payment we don't do  very much that is reimbursement at D so does it also mean that any general fund  and any all l

ottery dollars go through DAS or is there some that don't go through DAS because  they're procured through an agency or Department you know I don't know the answer to that question  if possible could we capture that and get back to the task force with the answer to that question I  think that D is the only one who issues them under Lottery bonds but I want to double check that  I had a quick question about your most recent comment that you don't do reimbursements you just  issue a grant payment

from das's perspective for the agencies that do do reimbursement only is  it for what's the reasoning behind it is it cash flow cost or excuse me is it cash flow issues  and just trying to Tamper that is it a matter of accountability from Dash's perspective  why are some agencies doing reimbursements only that's a hard question for us to answer  because we really aren't involved in the processes I would I could I could make a an  educated guess and I would say it has to do mostly with accountabi

lity but I think that's  actually a question for the agencies that that are setting up the grants in that way it could  also have to do with the the funding streams that are coming in so there may be some sort of  federal regulations or things like that sort of restrict the types of payment methodologies they  can use thank you yeah I just wanted to know if there was some administrative restrictions inhouse  that were sort of for lack of terms hamstringing agencies sure sure understood understoo

d a  different methodology I appreciate you thank you okay maybe that's all yeah silence hang just  for a minute okay thank you so much if a question does pop up for you yeah if a question does pop  up for you again feel free to use the chat just say you know toas this is my question and we'll  collect those as followup responses and then so number two on our list is going to be the  department of early learning and care and I don't think that we are going to have a huge  presentation I try to k

eep things pretty high level so I'm going to be hopeful that while we  will have some more than D because obviously we do have grants that we can keep this keep this from  going over time I'm working on multiple screens so I'm G to try and address you directly and Lori  Nordlien is also here to answer any questions you might have that I can't because we do different  roles within our agency so to start with your first question was around the agreement process  and this is a fairly detailed flow

of of what we do we submit procurement requests we develop the  Grant application and then I think what you're most interested in is the timeline to get it ready  so we get it to DOJ we've been we have a really good relationship with DOJ our turnaround time is  usually roughly about five days for a review then we take it back to our our program and in-house  folks and revise that application we try to turn it around within 10 days and get it back to DOJ  for another review that can be some back

and forth so those timelines those time amounts in this are  estimated it really depends on the complexity of the application then we post the opportunity and  application and usually have it up for between 30 and 45 days to give folks an opportunity to really  determine whether this is an opportunity they want to to be part of then we close the applications  and go through a review for application completeness and then we move on to scoring  review and scoring I do have 10 days listed for fundi

ng determination that is also somewhat  variable depending on where we're at and knowing the total amount of funding we have available but  typically within 10 business days we can get that laid out we allow for a protest period on our  grants before we issue final Awards knowing that for some of our grants there are a lot of people  applying and they may have questions or want to know why they weren't able to receive the grant  award we recently put up our Awards management system currently it

is being used for payment of  Grant claims so we also use Smart sheets Excel Word documents other submissions all for tracking  our ability to share information from this system is limited because we currently receive the over  the data in a data warehouse format and there are a few reports we can run from this system the  Cloud solution has some flexibility but again we are still working to roll out the rest of the  system eventually we will be taking these things that are in smart sheets in Ex

cel and building  that reporting and programmatic work into the awards management system we're also planning  to use it to post the opportunities for our grants so Grant decisions at DELC we  draft our project activities we draft our applications our agreements and we  make funding decisions DOJ reviews our agreements for legal sufficiency as well  as our applications to make sure that they align with the agreements we're trying to put  out so that we're not having people apply for something and

then create an agreement that  doesn't really fit what people thought they were applying for for Grants we primarily  rely on Das for guidance for insurance and then if there are any it elements in  our agreements for any of those elements so our grant pre-approval process in order to  be able to and I was trying to really wrap my mind around what was meant by this question for  an application to be preapproved by Das so that we could really have some consistency we'd need  a core template with

flexible sections for each program if we're talking about pre-approving  grantees we would need to have an eligibility screening process including business documentation  and insurance now our award management system will be collecting organization information and have  core information on organizations that we are planning to utilize so that information doesn't  have to be reentered every time for existing grantees or previous applicants that are already  in the system they would however be ab

le to edit if they needed to in order to share applications  you know you could go big and say we'd need a grant management system for all the information  but really you'd need data agreed upon data for all information and then organizational role  development which organization is actually going to oversee a lot of the functions  of this kind of of work currently in our agency in order to do this we are working on r  and responsibilities what does procurement do what do our program folks do wh

at does our  grant fiscal team do within the system and within the application information most of it is  our procurement folks but our program and Grant folks help develop the are helping to develop the  core data elements for those applications across agencies we think you'd need standardized data  and I think we've all talked about this already some sort of template for data transfer and  sharing across those those standardized core elements another option would be to have all  all of the org

anization information centralized in an agency in in one place where they could  then feed into other application processes our Authority currently we have the authority needed  to to manage our grant applications and processes we don't have not identified any changes would  need at the moment however if there was a shared system we would definitely have to go back  to statute and determine if there were any changes that would be needed fully dependent upon  what it is we're sharing so it's real

ly hard to really project out what a future State like that  could look like without understanding fully the details a system in order to share a grand  application process we' need to develop a system and identify the supports needed for that  system in terms of Staffing and training ongoing technical needs the needs of each agency would  need to be analyzed because we all do different work even though we work with similar populations  there are details in our work that do need to be kept and n

uanced and addressed but standardized  templates could be managed to help facilitate this work and make it easier we'd also have to  learn how to have some shared language because words don't always mean the same agency  to agency and a lot of that's because we work in different for one of want of a better  term industries that have that use the same word differently and then program information  would have to be clarified for for the public for potential grantees the differences between  why yo

u would apply for this particular Early Learning Grant versus this DHS Grant and what  is your what is the difference between those two grants what are the expectations so that  grantees could potentially make those diff differentiations also where do they overlap and  potentially where could we partner to do more holistic Grant work would be another area  we would need to explore and that's what I have thank you okay so we have about six minutes  and I see that we do have one question I also ha

d a couple so let's start with Bettina's question  can you also comment on your process for a uniform date for continuing reoccurring grants  I had a spelling so uniform data for continuing recurring grants because a lot of Grants like  healthy families and and start you know they're ongoing and but there is a new contract each  by Anum so just really the the process for that okay if I'm understanding the question  correctly you're talking about organizational data Bettina yes yeah organizationa

l data yeah  so we're current currently we're building that process into the awards management system our  current Awards management system it only is GA has gathered the business data but as we build  applications we will we will be collecting insurance documents we will be collecting other  documents in the system so that it's all housed in one centralized location so that if you have  an insurance document in your organization profile it will be it will be verifiable across all  the different

Grant programs you might have and procurement can look at one spot and  see your insurance corre so that's a good example then I had a couple of questions one  on the first slide you said we request make a procurement request who are you making a  procurement request too okay that's a really good piece of clarification so we initiate a  procurement request we initiate the process with our procurement office frequently  the program that that over sees a the folks that oversee a program and the g

rant  folks are making determinations or decisions about what it is we're going to do in the  coming year or if it's a new Grant trying to put that together so that they can make a  procurement request to initiate the procurement process okay so it's more like creating your  list of like these are the things that we were charged to do this year kind of trying to make  your calendar when those are okay thank you you you said that there was like 35 30 to 45  days why don't you have a single applic

ation window in part because of timing when are  we launching the application which at this point we get different applications we get  different requests from the legislature to do different projects and so there are times  when the application window is at a time and for an AUD a that is more likely to have the  tools to respond to that application but for example preschool promise we have such a range  of providers that often we will we will try to extend that date out to give folks who  aren

't used to going through the Grant application process more time to navigate that  process and and get support for that process yeah and then and then the last one from me was  you mentioned the awards management system am is that a specific vendor tool or was that something  that was created just for Delk no it is not I mean we call it AMS it is an off-the-shelf product  that's being configured to the things we need but it is actually DOJ uses the S a similar  version of the system that's been

configured for them other agencies across the country use  use this system our vendor agot is working works with this igx system so it is being modified  to our specifications but the core functions of it are are set so AMS right now I was kind  something bu oh sorry go ahead Maran so Teresa AMS replaced what you was used for putting  in the reimbursement draws as DELC became an agency we were not able to access the system you  that we were using at education the EGMS system so we had to find a

system ourselves to be able  to navigate that claiming and payment process and during that we decided to go beyond that and  really look at what we could do to manage grants across our agency so I know you do preschool  promise what other types of Grants do you do we have Oregon pre kindergarten relief nurseries  Healthy Families baby promise we Grant to cc&rs childcare resource and referral offices the  money that goes to Early Learning hubs goes out in the form of a grant and then we're also 

currently working on granting for suspension expulsion prevention program work there's more  but that's kind of the really fast what I could think of off the top of my head thank you you're  welcome and then dones it looks like maybe you've gotten your questions answered in real time  in the chat anything any other clarification you need there no I'm good thank you this  is why it's great to have a partner in in this all right anybody else 50 more  seconds on this 15 minutes okay thank you that

was very informative really  appreciate I loved your your workflow grid too it was really helpful thank  you look forward to hearing everyone else and next up we have Department of  Human Services good morning my name is Kirk Rhoads and I'm the administrator for  the shared services office of contracts at peur and bear with me a moment as I share my screen can everyone see that so in looking at the business of granting  we have got well we'll go through the the different components of what we wo

uld  consider impactful on the granting process generally speaking procurement IE contracts  or granting follow follow a similar process and it's really broken down into what comes  from the DAS Procurement Manual and that's plan procure administer and close out this  very helpful in general terms the specifics of this may change a bit depending on what  the need is and uh the program need and what needs to be done in that process so  basically this is you know from identify the need all the way

to you know close out  and Lessons Learned these are General steps the way that we approach granting is is really  kind of laid out in this logic model we've got in the upper leftand corner program processes the  contract office processes Grant Administration and the consideration activities that go on  in between and from the start of the process typically a grant comes in as if the agency  receives a Federal grant of sorts or casc Foundation or whatever the granting the grantor is  whoever th

ey are this is discussed in the program the funding requirements reporting requirements  and notice of Grant Awards all considered you on the we do very little general fund granting very  little but when that comes in typically there'll be some sort of budgetary note associated with  that has to be considered if there's any sort of reporting requirement within our agencies  reporting I.E you know distribution source of funds that kind of thing if there's any sort of  guidance there that would be

considered this for formative stage here the application once the  timing and the overall needs and markets are assessed the application will be requested through  the contracts and procurement office and that will come in on what we call 118 there's as as everyone  knows here there are specific requirements with Grant reporting that need to be taken into  consideration all of that is is whatever needs to be rolled into the agreement itself will be  considered at this at this stage and you know

one of the one of the most important things I think  that the procurement folks do is to ensure that the relevant terms and conditions from the the  federal award notice of award are Incorporated in the document so that we have a working artifact  of how that Grant would be administered the grant Administration part of of this process is really  done by our programs so we have between ODHS and OHA over 200 programs and so the administration  of that very much decentralized reporting is very muc

h decentralized although the Office of  Financial Services who has a grant accounting office within Department within the office itself  are involved in in in some of these activities really that is pretty much so in timelines they're going to vary quite a  bit because depending on the deadlines associated with with the monies coming in federal monies  coming in depending on the complexity of of the grant itself or or the urgency it can vary the  from the program side it can vary as much from 1

to six months and it really is it would not be  an average this would be a median because it' be a non-normal distribution as we look at this  once the Contracting Office gets the request we really look at about 45 days to get that out the  door and execute it so if there's a solicitation for inst one of the things we want to consider  is is the market and and and going out doing Outreach at the Leading Edge is can be very much  can add to the time but we found we've heard from many of our partn

ers in the nonprofit world that  some of the smaller nonprofits have struggle with you know proposing and more time is something we  believe can Aid to that process and attenuate that process for small nonprofits we do that also with  our our contracts as well so and this is something that we we're very excited about standing up  we've just stood up an Outreach well more of a a centralized Outreach whereas you know there are  there is some Outreach going on in our district and branches but we ha

ve more of a centralized we  have folks that have been hired and designated to do this so this makes it easier for the agencies  to be able to work with rural areas historically disadvantaged businesses in throughout Oregon the  Outreach part is really what ties things together anyway so that can point is that can add to the  process proc depending on what is what's the need Grant Management System we really  don't have a grant management system there are some uh some program Centric  systems uh

we use uh we have a course with Oregon buys we have we use  it as the other major agencies do but we've asked for a customized column where  some of the grant information can be tracked however we believe that a centralized system  with regards to the interest of of this task force are are much more advantageous and  would lend thems a centralized system would lend itself to much more of what we're asking  to accomplish and and believe in these to be accomplished so what decisions are made real

ly  there there's a myriad of decisions beginning you know from when the notice of award hits  the office financial services and the program has began discussing with amongst himself on how  and the in the private sector on how this would need to be set up DOJ has perview for for legal  sufficiency at 250k just raised the agency itself would decide on the language needed that which is  is not covered in in the notice of Grant award as required T's and C's the agency would also in a  grant some g

rants will say defer to your state procur code and so it can be issued as a contract  and really what the agency has to decide at that juncture is is there going to be would there be  a need to be substantial involvement Because by the agency because if the agency was needed in  that in that capacity it's probably a contract by virtue of the basic use of of a grant Vice a  a contract so so the agency will look at the need for substantial involvement or not ownership  if there's any sort of of pr

oduct that is as a result of this relationship then the agency  would need to consider a contract Vice a grant and review of funding source documentation to  determine to determine Contracting implications so some federal grants there's great latitude  as to how the state can treat it others not so much what would it take to have a grant  pre-approval process some of the things that have been mentioned this morning are very  I think spoton I think that man managing the pre-approval the grant fin

ancing all of  if it could be managed centrally would be an extraordinary lead for the state the the  idea of our vendors nonprofits not having to go through this through different Hoops so to  speak in applying with different agencies and almost all agencies have different processes  so centralized pre approval process would have to be discussed and and vetted but I think  it would reduce cycle times I think it would reduce confusion and and everyone wins in  in in a scenario where you have thi

s set up centrally what would it take to share I mean  again we're talking about centralized data source and and workflow management system this is  big advantages I mean in the in the same way that contracts being centrally managed in Oregon buys  is is advantageous to the state be for accounting although you know there are some things that  aren't in Oregon buys currently such as spots purchases which is an enormous expenditure but  the idea of being able to understand spend you know from a so

urcing standpoint and some  of the accounting advantages are just you you just can't you can't argue it there's  there's no downside there's no cont to it at all differentiate between your agency's  authority over Grant applications policies practices administrative Rule and changes  it would need to be again the centralized well I would just say this I don't know of  any two agencies that have similar policies about grants I mean there's very little in the  code there there's some in the code a

nd there's best practices and I think what agencies have  done is out of necessity have you know sought systems that that were synchronizing well with  their market and their and their stakeholders however a centralized system with specific  business sectors so to speak compartmentalized and preet would be would be fantastic I think it  eliminated a lot of rework from both the field and our stakeholders and the agencies and as  mentioned earlier as Grant managers or or grant writers specifically

and procurement folks who in  many agencies handle the grants the procurement the PCS series handle grants would have you  know they could easily enculturate and learn the system that's being used in you know around  States so they're not having to learn a brand new system again the application process could be centralized  it could be monitored it could be controlled that is efficiencies again when one agency achieves  an efficiency in some sort of procedural process that is that's fine it's i

t's fine for that  agency however if we're able to leverage that to state we H there there's much much more of a  of a benefit to everyone in the community and and in government I think I think that efficiencies  that are are centralized are just they're much easier to manage and much easier to to measure so  we're talking about cycle times that kind of stuff can all be looked at as a glance I mean you know  there that's as good as it gets right questions unfortunately we don't have a ton of tim

e for  questions on this one I'm not seeing anything in the chat right away but if you do have a  question or a question comes up for you on this presentation please do add that question to  the chat and thank you so much for that really really appreciating you calling out where there  are different benefits and opportunities for a more centralized system most welcome thank  you so the next one is going to be the orgon health authority Maran did you have a question for  Department of Human Servi

ces no I had a comment so in my chat it says chat is only available  during the meeting and I'm not allowed to put anything in there I'm wondering if anybody else is  having that problem that happened to me the last two meetings sometimes it helps to sign out and  clear your catch and try to sign back in in but this time I had no issues and I don't know why so  I'm sorry about that it's frustrating I will try that okay so if you are having trouble if you  do have follow-up questions and you're h

aving trouble adding them to the chat Debbie do you have  a recommendation on maybe who who folks can maybe send an email to because I know Amy's out yeah  why don't they go ahead and send it to Summer Warner she's on the line here here in Summer  would you mind dropping your email into the chat thank you so much Summer for helping us to  catch some of those so if you're having trouble using the chat for your Fallout questions please  reach out to Summer and send her your follow-up questions so

we can capture those all right  so let's go ahead and move on to Oregon Health Authority you're muted it looks like I'm having some issues sharing  my screen it says it's presenting but it's not showing up in teams we actually can see it can  you okay it's not showing up in my teams for some reason okay excellent thank you so much okay  starting over hi everyone good morning Melissa Hanks Oregon Health Authority she her pronouns I  work in the director's office for Chris the deputy director I'm

here today presenting on behalf  of the Fantastic experts at the Oregon Health Authority who are doing grants work I've collected  the responses from them and made this this presentation so if you have any questions about  like really specific things I do have some folks who are on the call today who can help answer  those questions the first thing I will say is that we o OHA and DHS share ocmp and so everything  that Kirk just talked about also applies to OA so I'm not going to repeat the same

information what  I'm going to try to do for you is really focus on the awesome work going on not only across our  agency in programs but really specifically in public health and our community engagement team  that is kind of The Cutting Edge of where Public Health modernization has been happening in this  respect and so I know that Dolly England and her team have done some fantastic work in this area  and we'll talk about that as we go ahead all right so as Kirk mentioned OA has more than  proc

ess for Grant applications and management it really depends on the program to about how  they're going to do that we have standard Grant processes throughout through the office of  contracts procurement we try to use those and they do a great job in training us about  how we should be doing those we do have unique processes in the divisions and programs it  really depends on the funding source the type of organizations we're working with and the  types of Grant activities again it really it real

ly does vary by the program we follow the  Das procurement life cycle you've seen this before I'm sure you're all familiar with it that  is pretty much how we do this and we try to get this done within a certain time frame to make  sure that those funds do get out on time so let me just get right to the general highlevel  timeline for our community engagement team grants in PhD it takes in general about 8 to 10  months for a full start to finish workflow that starts with the 118 solicitation req

uests that  Kirk mentioned previously and the end point is the distribution of awards so you can see most  of this work takes place in the planning and development phase releasing it takes about six  to eight weeks a month to review applications and make selections um about a month to a  month and a half to develop the Contracting package another month to month and a half to  do the contract routing and then a month for the payment process so longest possible 10 months  to distribute that paymen

t from um doing the 118 form all right um most grants at OA are managed  independently by the program staff um they just use basic office software like Excel access smart  sheeet or SharePoint they also use software like Survey Monkey and group site to do customer  relations management with their grantees um the public health division notably uses the  net system that was man created inous to manage grants for the local public health authorities  and the tribes um it is generally going to be eas

ier to modify or share the information in  those basic office software it may be a little more challenging to modify or export information  coming out of these systems um that the individual programs are using to manage their grants so a  little bit more about the net system and um this really is something that the agency is is quite  proud of and the employees are quite proud of the net system is a way for um Public Health to  manage Awards by public by program element and it is a web-based sys

tem that they can all access um  the system capabilities include built-in workflows from initiation to approval um it tracks the  program element contract Awards it tracks the award amendments um the program element payments  helps manage the grantees administratively it generates contract reports and generates  payment reports um the limitations mainly that it doesn't track the actual expenditures  of the grant it generally tracks payouts and it doesn't allow for an analysis of those program  e

lement areas or by fund sources um so it's really for managing them there's not a lot of  analytical capability on the back end of that system Grant decisions that we have to have  reviewed by DAS or DOJ so OA falls under administrative rule of procurement and legal  sufficiency review by DOJ we refer to DOJ for decisions like Grant templates they pertain to  the rfg and the process in which they're done both of these Agreements are subject to DOJ review  for legal sufficiency under ORS 29147 it

's up to the program director to approve and confirm the  funds and other decisions are really up to the parameters of the funding source and Das gets  involved if the funding source comes from State legislation what would it take to have  a grant pre-approval process really the feedback that we got here was about opin  having funding opportunities that include an option for eligible organizations to opt in  to receive funding announcements so that they can support future and emergent Public Hea

lth  priorities kind of developing this this base of community- based organizations that we  would have ongoing Grant preapproval with and so they would opt in to participate in  that process it would require resources that could support things like a Statewide  Enterprise level system standardized pre-qualification requirements and a flexible  Grant agreement template um they would have to be standardized but we would have to Define  where we could Flex that to meet the needs of the organizatio

n what would it take to be able  to share Grant application information between programs within our agency and with other  agencies we would need a shared Central repository and database I know you've heard that before  this morning we would need technology that's available across the agencies we need it to be  paid for by the state and it would need a staff of its own to manage that technology and then  teach all the other state agencies how to use it we would also and this is really important

to  call out we would need to have shared values and a commitment to the community about how we were  going to engage that through a shared program or a shared system um our agencies Center equity and  community in really different ways based on the priorities and the services of those agencies and  so we' want to make sure that we were identifying what those shared values were and that we got byy  in and commitment from the community to make this possible we really think that this could be  acc

omplished with an existing Central repository something like Oregon bu that was modified with  some additional considerations we would need the complete end to-end process and to be standardized  across end users it would be to include Planning Development solicitation managing all those  grants and contracts the funding the finances and the risk management which we're going to  hear from D about a little bit later really we this is about finding areas that we have in  common with other agencies

that that we can have in a central system The Authority that we have  over policies and practices versus legislative changes really we need the legislature to decide  on things like improvements to the acquisition of project resources to make these grants happen  things like position authority to allow for more timely building of resource capacity it's really  people that are driving this on the back end and so we need people that are consistent across this  program to keep this moving forward

we need to address the barrier also of funding end dates by  building Bridge periods across Biennia when the biemmium ends so does our funding for Grants and  we need a way to commit to funding cycles for the community that Outlast legislative sessions this  also creates a tremendous amount of administrative burden when we have to redo everything when the  funding ends and if we could have longer term funding plans that would help reduce our workload  quite a bit to have a shared Grant applicati

on process it's only going to work for some  overlapping programs and funding sources across agencies it's going to help align the funding  and connect the Grant application to a single funding source so if we for example had a shared  um a shared Federal grant source that had similar requirements um we could build things around that  um something that um was a really great idea we could identify and allocate a social determinance  of Health general fund that we could use on community specific w

ork regardless of agency  that would help address um any kind of social determinative health and make a shared process  around a funding stream for everybody to apply for we also really want to recognize that it  each agency and really each program has a really specific need and their Grant system is really  based on their deliverables and their funding and so it may be really hard to achieve that  that shared Grant application for all agencies we would all have to work together quite a bit to 

make that shared process we can definitely gather best practices But ultimately there are certain  kinds of funding and types of deliverables that require very separate unique processes specific  to management and tracking of funds all right any questions so we have about five minutes and we  do have a few questions so I posted a couple one was for that list of elements that  DOJ has to review that you had do they do that all at once like do you send them all  of your templates and they do that

before you kind of open up to applications or do they  do it piece by piece kind of following the timeline that is a question I'm going to refer  to dolly dolly could you please talk about that hi good morning Dolly England here she her queen  I'm the community engagement program manager for the public health division I'm going to tell you  what I know and I think the answer is for us it's really about that boilerplate contract language  and we might go back and forth to make sure that that is c

orrect between ocmp and DOJ but it is  also why why it's written pretty broadly so that we can go back and make amendments as necessary  but I don't honestly know if there are other parts that DOJ is reviewing outside of that or  in a different timeline I'm really the contract boilerplate is the very big thing that tends to  go back and forth between all of the agencies so I'm sorry I don't have more information I don't  know if anyone from DOJ is on the line and might have more information abou

t that this is Kirk  I would add to what Dolly has said and that's a little of both uh along the way it's it's always  best practice to consult with and work with DOJ and development of a of of a u an agreement of  any kind however legal sufficiency reviews an event that kind of culminates at the end of the  process C and you know our our aspiration is to is to be as close to the mark moving to that  point having done the engagement along the way and and successfully passed through at the end  s

o yeah it's a little of both thank you and when you say the end is that is that when you already  have an awarde that's been notified or is the end before you put it out for application no that  is even before the the award is Grant this is just putting together the rfg or the the agreement  itself it's reviewed and and approved ultimately in that event called Legal sufficiency review at  the end of the process so before the RGA is is awarded that would be approved and reviewed by DOJ  and then

subsequent awards that you know exceed threshold as well so it's really our DOJ has been  and the folks we work with business transactions have been fantastic on on on getting things  turned around and collaborating up to that that point thank you one more question  and then we'll see what else we've got here same sort of question from  DELC you had a range of time for when the applications are open why  don't you use a standard open Period this is Dolly I'm happy to help answer  that question I

think it this is very hard and it again varies from organization to organization  within OHA for the public health Division and the community engag M team we we leave the grant  open for a solid 6 weeks and we do that because our Community Partners told us that we needed to  keep it open so I agree that having a standard amount of time would be great and we've heard  from community that it needs to be more time rather than less time yeah so I saw the on the  PowerPoint it actually said six to e

ight weeks so when do you decide to do more than six has been  our bottom if you will like at minimum we're going to do six but I think it's also important to note  that as part of that six- week time period we're doing at least two technical assistance sessions  where Community can come into a zoom space and ask questions about their application so that  they're getting the technical assistants to submit feeling confident about their application  so that we've created that as part of our grant

process as well and I again I can only speak  to Public Health division yeah and I think that that's totally fine I mean some of this is also  just understanding what the agencies are capable of we know it's varying across the the agencies  themselves so it's good to kind of get that sense and I just want to make sure I understand that  so the technical assistance happens during the time at which organizations are so are putting  their applications together so it's not like they get that technic

al assistance and then the  time and then the clock starts the clock starts before they've gotten any technical assistance  and then includes the technical assistance time is that right correct and it partially because  we realized that folks needed to like fill out the application and and be in it and know  what their questions were and what technical assistance they needed awesome thank you okay  so that's time and it looks like we do have a followup question in the chat so we'll capture  that

for for followup in and writing thank you very much for the presentation thank you everyone  and then thank you next up the Higher Education Coordinating Commission hi my name is Derek and  let me I'm to hit present in teams and hope this works see ah think think it's working can  everyone can anyone see my screen it's almost loaded yes okay excellent okay so thank  you for giving us time today I am Derek Dizney the procurement manager from Department from  The Higher Education Coordinating com

mission and and you know responding to those followup  questions that you all had oh it's not late here we go okay so for our agency workflow I  just want to First acknowledge that you know I procurement is one part of the full spectrum  of the life cycle there's so much work that our programs do on the front end before I even see it  or my team sees it including you know gathering information for how best to put requirements  into requests for Grant applications how are they going to best manif

est the intent of the  legislation for the funding that we get how are we going to best utilize the federal funds that we  get for the intended purposes and I I just want to acknowledge that and sit on that for a second  because that is so much work that they do and they do such a good job of you know surveying  the the L landscape of the industry sometimes seeking feedback from industry consortium and and  really lean into that well before it even hits my desk so thank you programs for doing th

at then  once it comes to me what happens is a a program director deputy director will submit what we  call procument request and basically hey we have this money we need to do either a direct Grant  award which is very rare for us because in our process we borrow the concepts from the public  procurement code so anything that is $10,000 or below we could direct award but that is very  rare because a lot of the legislation that we get or federal funds that we get are well above that  threshold a

nd so we do a competitive process for transparency and fairness so usually when I get  that procurement request form it's for drafting in the document requesting Grant applications for  us to evaluate our our team and the procurement team to make award decisions and then for the  procurement team to actually write the grant agreements Mercedes I was do you me to answer  that question now or wait okay I'll wait I'll wait towards the end so the the rules for DOJ  legal sufficiency review I'm just

touching it because it's on the slide used to be you  didn't necessarily have to submit a request for applications document to Department of Justice  for a legal sufficiency review that changed as of January 1st now we now we have to but heck was  already doing it before for many many years so we were you know already we were ahead of others  in doing that so we we do have to submit those when the the cumulative opportuni is over  $250,000 now it used to be 150,000 and then that got temporarily

bumped up to 250,000 and  then made permanent as of January 1st so once the opportunity is open and that that time period  can vary just like my predecessors that presented stated we really make that variable dependent  on the complexity especially the complexity of the application you know some of our funding goes  to only is only eligible for community colleges or universities to to submit applications for  and within that if it's a uniform amount that they're eligible for like it's not variab

le and  actually like a true competitive process we just need information from them because the legislation  requires that then we keep it very simple it's almost like we call it letter of intent it's  basically they're just responding to very kind of basic surface level responses and if they do  that they get the money that the legislation says they can they can have but in other areas in most  often the case it is competitive so it can vary like Awards can range from you know $20,000 up  to mi

llion dollars or more and so we we do think about that very intentionally about how much time  does the applicant need to put this together and so kind of our our bare minimum for when it's  a a variable potential reward amount is usually 30 days and we often do longer than that just to  buy applicants more time it's a it's a process to respond to these questions and provide substantive  answers to us what they intend to do with these funds if awarded and so we we try to give them  as much time

as we can as we can tolerate right and I think my my colleagues address kind of you  know the same process of what happened once we once we receive Grant applications our evaluation  committee which can be you know dozens of people or small subset sometimes representative from  the community as well if they didn't submit an app appliation makes they score based on the  criteria that were set in the in the request for applications make suggestions forward decisions  the program director for that

respective program you know signs off on those recommendations  or adjust them and then we issue a notice of conditional award we do not unlike other agencies  which I I was kind of surprised to hear that others offer opportunity to protest we do not do  that as far as I as I know we've never done that for grant opportunities one because it would delay  the process secondly we are very communicative with those are successful and unsuccessful for you  know how they could improve for next time and

some of our programs have recently implemented the  use of contracted technical assistance provider so those that are can facilitate someone to  help write a grant application they provide feedback they coach them on their answers like  here's what the document says you didn't really respond to question two really you know flush that  out and get get better at that and we've also paid those third party contractors to for especially  for those that are unsuccessful to really coach them using fee

dback from our evaluation committee  to you know help them for next time and that's kind of a new thing for us something that hiring  thirdparty contractors to provide that technical assistance it's great because it removes us  from you know giving you know helping them for an application that we're then reviewing right so  it it removes us from that process but also helps them get a better application to submit once  so we we don't do an award protest once we've issued the notice of conditional

award we will  reach out to those awardees and say hey we're we're working on the grant agreement now give  us you know a week or two to get a draft to you and then we use a grant template depending on if  it's a Community College University or Community Based organization and that's pretty standardized  boilerplate language the thing that changes very often is is the project activities and that that  varies you know even within the same request for applications document or response wide spectr

um  of project activities so that's where we have to really get into the meat of is this is this  adequate if it's above the $250,000 threshold is it legally sufficient we work with Department  of Justice on that and then we send over to the to the AY the the the intended agreement to  be signed and executed so I'll get to those questions at the at the end I want to keep keep  trudging along don't let them distract you yeah we're just trying to remember them sure sure yeah  no that that makes se

nse so as far as a a system for managing grants the programs use a variety of  tools I don't want to say it's the wild wild west but it's kind of the Wild Wild West they use a  variety of tools that work best for them and I I wish we had a more uniform system but I can't  necessarily require that so our more sophisticated programs like our future ready team uses you  know much more sophisticated tools than their counterpart programs they use for the application  for applicants to submit an appli

cation they began using a program called Survey Monkey apply so it's  a web- based application program the rest of the programs well I shouldn't say the rest there  are two others that utilize that as well but the others we rely on the kind of archaic method  of email so they they have to submit a completed application to a particular email whether that's  the procure someone from the procurement team or just a centralized email inbox for for procurement  I think the web-based application is the

way of the future and I I really like what we've done  with that it helps our team too know how much interest is there because they can see how many  people have started an application they can see who's completed those applications because they've  hit submit and it allows applicants to save their work as they go as well they can pause come  back to it later you know days later and they can also see how many people start an application  but never submitted it in time and so that that I think p

rovides a lot more information to our team  than the the old standard of email application so that's a really wonderful tool that they utilize  they also use Base Cam which is a you know web- based program to communicate with applicants  well I shouldn't say applicants with awarded grantees get those Communications otherwise  the other programs generally use just email you know Outlook as far as procurements part we we  just use a glorified Excel sheet I wish we had a more sophisticated program

particularly to find  efficiencies in how we can do our process in in preparing for this presentation I looked I I I  dove deep into our data in our Excel sheet and and had to utilize some subject matter experts to  kind of te some data out of it and I found that our well bear in mind we only started tracking  duration of procurements work from the request the procurement request to executor agreement  we only start started tracking that as of July 1st so bearing in mind I only have 6 months  yo

u know 7 months of data for the request for applications that we've issued including contract  opportunities so request for proposals our general timeline for that is on average 45 days and then  on the other side the you know what comes out of that either a contract or Grant opportunity that  also coincidentally takes an average of 4 5 days those are not the ideal timelines that I want  I want to shorten that but it's good to know where we're starting from so you know I can help  kind of manage

our programs expectations and and do better you know losing you know cumulatively  90 days is is not where we want to be we want to we want to do better our financial sign it's it's  interesting that you know DELC is has a program by which they can they can issue payment I find that  really intriguing I think we we presently are in the position of for a contract opportunity if a  vendor is not willing to State take the state's procurement card we call it a spots card AC cross  the board is call

ed spots card if they can't take a spots card payment then for a contract we  have to put it into the state's procurement system called Oregon buys and our our fiscal team  has to go in there and Trigger payment through the sfma which is the fiscal system and if the  vendor is set up for Direct Deposit they would it would initiate that direct deposit transfer  if they're not it would trigger a snail mail check now as far as grants go we do not put any  grant opportunities or executed Grant agree

ment M ments into Oregon buys it was made pretty clear  to us and I think a lot of other agencies that Oregon buys is not it wasn't intended for  Grants contracts yes not grants so on the grant side we still process uh invoices and kind  of the approval process for that back and forth with our fiscal team and and program over over  email and and our our team will initiate payment through sfma they'll just trigger it you know  whatever set up for direct deposit or getting a check we have pretty w

ide latitude for decision  Authority for our grant agreements we developed overtime the grant agreement templates with  department of justice but those are you know those boilerplate Provisions are always kind of  subject to negotiation for example intellectual property is one that comes up from time to time  insurance requirements D risk management has total discretion over us for contracts but for Grants  we and you know truth be told we we didn't require insurance for grantees for a long time

and we  discover that our counterpart agencies were so we're like oh well we should probably fall in  line with that so we started implementing that probably about a year ago maybe a little bit  longer and while we have more discretion now to wave or modify insurance requirements we have  work very closely with d risk management to really know what's acceptable risk and what's what's  not but ultimately that decision rests with with heck and more specifically our programs at the  direction of o

ur executive leadership one cool thing that we've started doing is tracking those  DEC decisions that we made regarding Insurance Provisions waivers or modifications and so that  we don't have to hit our heads against the wall when that question comes up again or you know  search for hours through email or or whatnot so that's a Hy tool that we've started to develop do  note that anything over $250,000 in value whether it's a contract or Grant opportunity if we're  we well we do have to seek leg

al sufficiency approval if in negotiations with the the grantee  they want to modify Provisions from what DOJ approved for legal sufficiency we do have to  go back to them and say hey this changed are you okay with that or not if not tell us  the RIS and and we'll we'll work on that that and then I was a little confused about this  question I wasn't sure if you meant pre-approval for grantees without the competitive process  that we do or you meant grantee or applicants would be preapproved for

insurance requirements  already in the system award management system for federal funds I wasn't sure what that was so I I  try to answer both we I don't see a scenario in which case we would not do a competitive process  for funds over accumulative funds over $10,000 just because of the transparency and fairness  I think it would be kind of ripe for abuse otherwise but as far as the preapproval process  for an applicant being registered with Secretary of State and in the federal system if there

are  federal dollars involved that that is something we could do and I think we're we internally are  trying to address that so we've created Central repository Central files for programs to access  that accumulate certificates of insurance the the sam.gov registry that we check on every year now  and secretary of state registry so that we don't have to ask our applicants for that when when  it gets time to drafting the grant agreement so we've started that it would be nice to be able  to share

that with other other agencies as well and my colleagues talked about that in their  respective presentations so I won't be a dead horse so we you know as the others stated  we need a shared file location I would the only additional information that my other  colleagues didn't really get into is that if there is sensitive data within that like  financial documents or financial information about our potential application applicants we  would definitely want it to be very secure right so that tha

t is pretty instrumental and then  regarding a centralized Grant Management System I await the day that happens I would really  want to support that as my colleagues before me have done one thing that they didn't mention  is that first of all D procurement has oversight over many state agencies but not all agencies and  so any legislation or legislative directive that would fund and require a grant management system  just be careful in that you're getting everybody because you you don't want you

know a couple  stragglers that have independent procurement authority to not be using that system so find  a way to either car or stick to to make that a requirement for everybody not just not just the  those under D Authority secondly with that the funding source matters a lot because for example  we had funds that we were we that were tied to State funds and we had a very limited period of  time to purchase a Grant Management system and we're trying to purchase that but the the process  espec

ially with an IT solution it investment takes longer than you think so if you are going to  give let's say d funds to purchase a grant management system on behalf of all agencies and  then require the others that aren't under their authority to utilize it using State funds to  do that is from the for the initial purchase is I I fear it wouldn't happen in time because  there's so many hurdles to get through for that process and to find a good solution right  you don't want to be in a pinch where

you're in a time crunch and just go with the like the the  easy one that actually doesn't do what you want it to do so federal funds I think can open that  door for a longer period of Time for That initial purchase and then flip it over to State funding  to continue to support that system that's just my suggestion so we're at about time but I I can  see you have maybe another slide or two if you could wrap up yeah I think I've covered this or  my colleagues have covered this so I don't need to a

ddress our authority over that and I think my  my colleagues and what I just stated address this so happy to answer those questions that came up so  let's see I'll look through we actually don't have don't have a ton of time for questions on this one  but any questions that we do have in the chat will definitely be sent to you for an opportunity  for some written followup really appreciate the presentation I gotta say we're we're we're  almost I think we have three more folks left but just seein

g the range of tools that folks  are working with this is really informative so thank you everybody for for taking the time to put  these together next up we have the Department of Education hi good morning I don't believe  my colleague Ian has the opportunity to share the slide deck if someone can give  him the rights to share that would be helpful I should be able to share  now something you're able to do great thank you so much also I want to know  I can't see anything in the chat so if quest

ions come up in the chat I'm I don't see them so please  just let me know I'm not ignoring you I just don't see him so just to let you know my name is Kai  Turner I'm the assistant superintendent of the office of finance and information technology  at the Oregon Department of Education next slide Ian so I wanted to just give you a very  high level overview in four steps of what our Grant application workflow looks like we have a  more detailed summary as a part of the slide that you can go to bu

t I just didn't want to create  multiple slides around every little intricacy related to our Grant application workflow so you  know the first step is identifying those funding streams especially if it's a new program and any  of the additional Ru making that might likely come along with any new money from the legislature  as well as any consultation with Community or our tribal Partners when we receive that notice  our teams are very good at the program level of going out and working with diffe

rent Community  level Partners to start talking about what's going to come through with this level of granting  and then they start drafting a plan around how they're going to distribute those funds and  creating the RFA based on some of the community feedback the the second step in that is more of  the internal process around How We Do grants so when I speak about setting up the grants in the  system we are speaking to our grant management system aply known as egum electronic Grant  Management

System we have to set up the indexes create those profiles in that system so when we do  create the executable contracts our grant can go in and start asking for the reimbursement based  on the program activities within that agreement the next step in that process is the release and  review of those particular items so we're talking about preparation of the agreements determining  the evaluation stage crafting the RFA for release and then planning around that including a ward  right and then ste

p four is that submission in the E approvals process with us internally as we  start doing that that's that form B process its internal jargon around the particular form that  our program staff submit to then make it all the way through our approval process so then it can  be posted and we accept our competitive RFAs next slide Ian so this is a breakdown of our timelines  you've seen my colleagues that have gone before us it typically takes us about three weeks to  draft the RFA with the program

we recommend that we keep the solicitation or RFA open for 30 days  it can remain open longer but our standard is 30 days typically that's one to three weeks for the  evaluation and then two weeks for the intent to award and then up to 30 days for the back and  forth conversations and negotiation around the contract in the agreement and then we go through  the process with DOJ for approval on any changes to the contract agreement and then we go to the  signature process so in total it can take

us somewhere between 40 weeks to 25 weeks depending  on the type of funding now I I want to share this and I believe I shared it the last time I did a  presentation we have upwards of 10,000 contracts in a biennia in od so that is quite a bit of  work so that leads into sometimes having longer lead times or completion times around getting any  one body of work or grant program closed out and executed next slide Ian so I believe I shared  in our last conversation and presentation that we have a g

rant management system egum it is 20  years old we are in the throw of awarding a new system for awards management this current system  that we have is not an application system it is simply our financial system to draw down the  funds there are no uploads to it there is no interconnectivity between whatever procurement  system we're using be that OregonBuys as the posting spot Survey Monkey apply or any of the  district not District sites I apologize any of the program sites that also notify fo

lks how to  apply the the funding mechanisms in egum and all the reports are are downloaded or extracted by  way of Excel and the reporting is hardcoded into the system we are working towards replacing  the egum system as I stated earlier with an implementation in 2025 but we we are still in the  process of negotiating that contract next slide I so I won't go over what many of my colleagues  already shared but Das doesn't have any involvement in our grants that is outside of  their purview DOJ d

oes require us to go through legal sufficiency I would say that because of  the complexity of our agreements sometimes our agreements have braided funds in them be that from  federal and state it can often make it harder for our agreements to get through the DOJ process  so we look at three to six months because of the number of agreements we have I would also say  that we try to our best ability to craft templated documents to make this more efficient when we are  working with different grantee

s we also understand that we do have a large volume of contracts that  go through and we have a large volume of grants so our partners at DOJ might not have the full  capacity at any one given moment to take on all the agreements that we could be sending over to  them at any given moment but we do recognize that DOJ is actively looking for additional support  in capacity for OD because of the volume 10,000 contracts is is excessive next slide Ian so  pre-approvals I would say I'm just going to j

ump down to to bullet point three or number three  there could be opportunities in which there is an preapproval in air quotes I think some of those  things are definitely around making sure that our CBO partners are seeking that are seeking funding  have the right assurances and insurance upfront there's certain things as I stated before in my  last presentation that we have to have including the right Insurance because of the population  that we work with kids so that is often what we need and

we defer to das risk management on the  appropriate level given the populations that we work with but I think that is one of those key  areas I think my colleagues pointed out other spaces and in which there could be a pre-approval  process and I could agree with many of them the tough part for us is that largely OD funnels money  to districts so when we think of pre-approval I think of spaces in which I can get dollars to  the districts in easier ways because that is the largest book of busine

ss we have when it comes  to getting dollars out the door in service of families and kids next slide Ian shared Grant  application I think a couple of my colleagues touched on this earlier there's just so much  difference between what all of us do on this call from HEC to OD to OHA to DHS and typically I don't  think what was shared here is if something was to happen in one of our in in one of our wheelhouses  we do create agreements in which we transfer the money and the grant over to that agen

cy and then  they distribute the money because it feels like it aligns better within their wheelhouse there  there are agreements that happen inter agency for dispersement of grants in those ways I think  a modern Grant system could be achieved if it was clearly outlined I also agree with I believe it  was Derek at he that said OregonBuys is likely not the right system to take grants and was not  necessarily designed for that but something similar to that could work and could present an  opportu

nity to pull reports there it's just that we all ask different questions pursuant to the  dollars that we're funneling out and it means something different to each of us and I don't know  that a common Grant application in itself would be the best way to do that but I think there are  spaces in which we can share information like W9 Etc between between agencies next slide Ian this  is just one example of how it could be tedious to create a shared Grant application process largely  I point back t

o districts because that's who we work with the most but these things can become  insurmountable mle with the amount of questions that we would have to ask to create that common  Grant application process so if OHA had a set of questions for their funding pot and then OD had a  set of questions and it was a single application it it would likely create its own barriers for  cbos and Partners to understand which application they're applying to and how much information they  need to give in that sp

ace so with that I Ian next slide I believe it is questions OD Authority and  changes there we have it I apologize so we have the authority to expend money as appropriated  to OD it is within our statutes based on the line items and programs designated to us there  has been an effort from the legislature for us to get a new Grant Management System as well as  aligning our grants through Grant consolidation at the district level so we have come up with  something called integrated guidance that i

s aligning six to seven state and federal grants  together to make it easy from an administrative burden standpoint for our district Partners  we consistently try to find different ways to align some of those grants I think there is  opportunity at DOJ to pursue additional capacity and some process Improvement changes around legal  sufficiency that can make this process a little more Nimble but but largely the the thing is  is that we have the authority to Grant the dollars and DOJ after a certa

in threshold has the  authority to tell us if we're meeting a legally sufficient and binding contract so I believe the  next one is questions right Ian thank you and questions thank you so we only have about a minute  left on this one I didn't see anything specific to OD in the chat more I think kind of some general  questions about that we may want to see if we want to share more broadly than just OD on this one at  least as far as I can tell thought I saw hand go up and then went down so I thi

nk we'll say we're  okay for now on OD thank you so much for that if we do get any additional questions we'll send  those to you in writing thank you very much for the presentation I do see a question directed at  me around like defining pre-approval I actually really enjoyed the way the Departments have  responded to this question in kind of a range and so I think what we're we're seeing is like  is it pre-approval of the individual organization pre-approval of a body of work pre-approval of a 

template and I think that all of those things are encompassed in a process where we're just trying  to say is there any work we can do up front that we stop having so much work at the end to the  point where you have been awarded funds and it's still two three six months out before work  has begun I think that's what we're all trying to figure out is how to move some pieces further  ahead so that Community isn't waiting so long for the services that they're trying to access all  right next up w

e have Oregon Housing and Community Services hi there I would like to introduce myself  I'm Laura Alani I'm the assistant procurement and business services manager for Oregon Housing  and Community Services I have only been with the agency for six weeks and I've been involved  in this project largely because our procurement manager has Gone on to another agency so there's  been a little bit of upheaval here this particular presentation is largely a compilation of my  communications between progr

am procurement and other bodies within our agency including  accounting and budget as to how the grants work I don't have I'm going to do my best to  address any questions as they come up but I would really really encourage anyone who has  questions to put them in the chat so that I can have those addressed by some of the folks  in the agency who are much better position to answer them with current and complete accuracy  because I am afraid I might miss a thing or two so that being said let me g

o ahead and present  this I will say that I am really interested in the fact that this what we're about to what I'm  about to show you here it really aligns so much with what the other smaller agencies will be  experiencing and I want to make that different so our our big questions being the start to  finish process what the current systems used are what's our discretion over Grant making  what would it take to have a pre-approval process what would it take to share Grant  application informatio

n and differentiating between Authority and what it would take to have  a shared Grant process all across agencies I'm going to start with our current flow and I'm not  sure why I can't make this why I can't make this bigger it looks like it's full screen to me  there we go okay I'm just seeing something kind of strange on my end and I'm not sure why  that is so this is a framework of sort of how our process has been going over the last biennium  and into this biennium I put a legend on here thi

s was given to me by our project management group  that begins with program submitting requests the requests getting assigned within procurement  Services creation of docs which includes any vetting by the Department of Justice and then  that's where we go to assigning the attorney and then providing approvals to release requests  for applications and by this time we are at about we're at about two and a half months and then  soliciting the applications another 30 days evaluate them for another

30 days issue intents to  award and then negotiating so we're talking about if there is actually a request for application  it's taking just about three months and a lot of I'm sorry there's I'm sorry the it's the ones  with a request for application are taking about 3 months the ones that do are taking much longer  than that and I really appreciate the comment that just popped up in the in the chat so again  with the length of time all of the things that we have to go through really diverse pro

grams some  of which have overlap most of which do not have direct overlap that's one of the things that adds  to the length of time there have been a lot of emergency orders over the last couple of Biennia  that required that required instant standing up of a certain new process within a program to get the  grant money spent before before statute required that we be done with that particular program we  also didn't have a lot of Staff two three years ago we've really grown exponentially largely

to  facilitate taking care of these grants that are coming through our office now we've gotten really  large the the very next slide I have is all of our systems and you're going to look at this list and  you're going to be going wow because that's a lot of that's a lot of really different items and  the primary ones that we're using are Opus for Grant Management that is also something that the  stakeholders and the grantees can get into it's something that we can get into and some grants are 

done that way there are all well just about every Grant we're doing is now being placed into Oregon  buys but as a couple of the other other folks have mentioned Oregon buys wasn't necessarily set  up to receive grants in a in a a neat way and doesn't account for some of the requirements for  reporting that grants have so they're going in there so they're being they're being memorialized  but there's still tracking that needs to be done that can't be done within Oregon bues and then  that's wher

e you wind up a little lower down with some things like smart sheets and different types  of spreadsheets that the individual programs have the procurement staff on that team it specifically  has several smart sheets that actually track all of the projects that come across their desks but  then within the programs they each have sort of individual ones in some cases they're aligned  with the smart sheet that procurement has in some cases they're not we're actually in the middle of  beginning we'

re in the middle of the beginning of getting a an organizational assessment done on  several areas of program and on procurement in this office to see if there's some procedures  that we can go ahead and streamline internally and then as part of that probably looking at all  of these different systems that we use in our Grant management process and seeing what can be  eliminated where the redundancies are and moving forward with that I kind of agree with the other  the other presenters that also

mentioned that a system much like Oregon buys that is specifically  designed for Grants would be great but short of that if there can be some modifications made to  Oregon buys to sort of have a branch of it that is Grant specific that would that would mean that we  wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel with another Statewide system but have a Statewide system  with a section that can actually accommodate this kind of different body of work let's see  next we have our Authority and discretion we

have by Statute and by Oregon administrative  rule discretion most of our own discretion we do have a a lot of things that we send through  DOJ all of the grants that exceed or expected to see $250,000 if it has an IT element we also  make sure that any procurement documents that we put out like requests for applications that  are above a certain amount that they review that we also really air on the site of caution and DOJ  reviews almost anything that we that we want them to and we that's our

practices too if we're in any  doubt we have DOJ review it the only reasons that Dash review are required because we are outside  of das's scope and we have our own authority is if the grants include any it elements and if  there is a risk that we need to have addressed because there needs to be Insurance around all  of these and having dask risk management consult with us on those things make sure that we  are including the appropriate amount of insurance so for what would it take for a grant 

preapproval process and that would go along the lines of what others have said as well which  is BAS a basic Universal set of requirements that all grantees must meet and then see  how we can spread those across all of the grant types and sources that's easier said than  done but I'm trying to remember the I'm trying to remember the exact the exact terminology  someone else someone else used earlier but it really really described it well there is there's  a base a base type of a of there are a b

unch of questions that you would ask everybody at  the beginning of any sort of process like this and those are the things where it should  start as a basic Universal set of requirements for some of our cases it would simplify matters  if there was a minimum amount that an applicant would be guaranteed as a pre-approval just  certain kinds of things that have to do more with one-time grants emergency grants and  this little section here was provided to me by by one of our program staff and that

that  is that approval could be obtained for up to $250,000 based on eligibility but but it would  be possible to receive a higher amount based on any competitiveness and funds availability but  the only issue with that that we could see right out of the gate was too many people applying  for those and not being able to meet those obligations as far as application information  sharing we want a framework in which to share and collect the information as I said before similar  to the use of organ

buys but specifically designed around the specific needs and constraints of  Grant Administration which as we've been told by virtually everyone differ widely between  the grants the funding and the programs we'd need the ability to address those requirements  and it would be necessary to create some kind of an information release system because of the  privacy rules around those different things and what what would require Freedom of Information  Act or other things around that so our agency Au

thority against legislative action is most of  our we don't have to have too much legislative action to conduct our business we have so many  programs that have specific rules with kind of limiting language and this occasionally  occurring statute but there's it's really mostly our rules that create bottlenecks  with administering grants there really has not been any overarching legislation that  has created issues with grants most of that tended to come from Rule and this particular  change is

with regard to that that's mentioned in RS 458 650 has more to do with some of the  emergency requests from the governor's office and let's see a shared Grant application  process would be agreed to and accessible by all participants meeting the business needs  for all the federal grants and state funds must be robust and dynamic enough to provide for  curated agency specific information gathering establishes the appropriate Authority for  that information sharing uniform agreement on the basic

elements and that would be a  profile that any grantee would just kind of go into any of these systems having that  profile and they wouldn't have to recreate the wheel ability to UniFi un sorry utilize  this as the basis for all Grant applications they would just need to once they had their  profile entered and were identified in the system then anything subsequent to that would be  specific to whatever opportunity was being applied for and that was all I had and I will  see if there's any of t

hese I'm sorry Maran I really meant I really  meant Roi is what I meant to say there so I I think there might have been a couple  of follow-up questions but we'll send those to you in writing and we're gonna that would be that  would be fantastic yeah and thank you so much for that really appreciate you coming to this space  is such a new person and taking on a lot of big questions so appreciation to you for being here  thank you so much and thank you for everyone's patience and then last up the

Oregon Youth Authority okay thank you everyone can everyone  see my slides hear me seeing my face isn't super important so if we're good to go I'll get  us started so my name is Katie Hudson I'm the Chief Financial Officer for the Oregon Youth  Authority and I'm going to tell you a little bit about our application procedures for our grant  agreements I will say that we are all general fund so that makes it a little bit less complex  in comparison to some of the agencies that have already presen

ted so right here we've outlined  sort of what our workflow looks like in our application to execute executed Grant agreement  process so we have what I like to call like a rolling application our applications for Grants  are available until our funding budget is out so we ask folks to request funds based on our funding  Authority all throughout the year we do shut down the application process at the end of the biennium  just so we can process everything and get through that sort of biennium to

biennium jump but our  applications are open pretty consistently our application is available online and we just  recently this week moved from a complete and email application to an electronic application  that's automatically deposited into the system we look we utilize for Grant Management I did put  on here kind of the average number of days that an applicant can expect to be in each step of  the process to kind of see an overview of where we might get some longer wait times and what  part o

f the process that happens in so we have a pretty streamlined process as the application  goes to the grant committee we do have a lot of back and forth if the application's not complete  or we want to get more information as the grant committee we'll do a little bit of back and forth  because it's really important for us in terms of the specifics of our Authority that we understand  completely the request and it meets the elil El eligibility requirements we do want to work with  all of our appl

icants on meeting that eligibility so there is a lot of like personal meetings  calls to to get them to a place that they're understanding the application and the eligibility  requirements once we send the committee approval for Grants it gets sent to our agency director for  final approval we do notify approval or denial to applicants as well as the rationale behind the  denial if if necessary approved Grant packets are then sent to procurement and the contract  administrator and our procuremen

t does review all of our grant agreements even though it's it's  not required to be a part of the procurement process they are our area experts on our grant  Authority legal sufficiency and then we rely on them to let us know as a committee when those  applications need to be sent to DOJ even if it's not meeting the the threshold requirements we've  got a really excellent procurement team that does a great job with that and then at the end of  it an executed agreement is sent to both the contrac

t administrator and the grantee and the  contract administrator takes over sort of the administra administrative process in connection  with the grantee over the period of the grant so we see a range anywhere between 31 days from  application to executed agreement to 68 days and I did create a little graphic that articulates  what could potentially be the factors of those timeline extensions how how do we have 31 days  and then 68 days most of our work does come from incomplete applications the

back and forth and  sort of the meetings and getting the information we need is the number one reason why our timelines  get extended second would be the legal sufficiency DOJ review I think a few of my colleagues did  articulate that I think DOJ gets overwhelmed with review requests and so it's not necessarily  related to the complexity of the requests it's the bandwidth that they have to review things  within you know the the 30 days that we're we're looking to get this turned around response 

time to outreach so we do we do see delays when the grantee were not able to get a hold of the  grantee for additional information or the grantee hasn't set up processes to be able to provide the  information so we walk them through that process a good example of that is like for Grants over  a certain dollar amount we ask that they provide audited financial statements or for nonprofits  that haven't been able to establish professional audited financial statements we asked them to give  us a pr

ofit and loss and we've had some folks that have said what's a profit and loss so you know  we take some time and say Here's what a profit and loss is and we do some like basic nonprofit  accounting kind of what resources they could like QuickBooks right like hey there's this system that  helps with this and so we do a lot of training as well as just in gathering of information we  are relatively new in our Authority so we do have these hiccups where we recognize the need  for process Improvemen

t so if we with a certain application find that something's not working we  do spend some time to address that in the moment and improve our process and sometimes that does  add to the timeline for certain grants additional reviews we always want to make sure that we're  following the legal sufficiency requirements and sometimes we refer things out for additional  review we do occasionally have committee non-consensus and I didn't want to ignore the fact  that that does add to timelines because

if our grant committee isn't on the same page we have to  have consensus to move it forward so we do spend time to like work through what's needed to get  us all to approval or get us all to denial and we will spend extra time to make sure that we're all  understanding each application correctly and then we do if we do have committee absence to where  we're not able to get everyone's consensus for approval it will potentially move the grants out  an additional week so for systems and information

sharing so this touches on a couple topics  we don't use a Grant Management System that's clearly defined as such we use a database system  called smart sheet we started utilizing this system for workflow and Grant tracking but now  we're starting to utilize it in different ways with the electronic application as a good example  so the electronic application is a form and smart sheet that automatically deposits into a database  that we're able to track the grant through its workflow and track a

t different aspects of  the Grant from start to fish start to finish which has been really exciting we we have found  that this is sharable with others in our agency based on our licensing not sure if this would be  sharable across the Enterprise data dashboards can be generated from this database really easily  we can take a spreadsheet and make it a really digestible data dashboard which has been really  great for us in tracking the other metrics we have around Grant agreements there are autom

ations  and workflows within smart sheets so it can do a lot of the work for you and I know workload has  been a really hard thing for our procurement team so we're building in automations where the system  is doing that kind of work for us and identifying things for us it'll send out reminders for  documents that are required it's actually a pretty great system to use the cons to the system  we've had some conversations with our agency Chief Information officer about utilizing the system  too m

uch and that it potentially cannot be a system of record which I'm told is more around  holding that data for a long periods of time you know potentially across the Enterprise and then we  do make a really solid effort in not putting any confidential information into the system because  we don't have access to the system on the backend in a way that a lot of our other software systems  across the state do so if something goes wrong or you know a third party has access to that  information that w

e don't have a lot of control over so we've been advised by our CIO around  those types of things and we've been given some you know best practices from our CIO around what  information can go into that system and What needs to stay out because it's not accessible in the  back end and this is an example I shared from our previous presentation around the dashboards that  can be created from Smart sheeet just depending on what you're putting into the application which  has been really great for us

when we're talking about reporting around which areas we're funding  how many applications are getting approved and denied what types of applicants are we approving  most of the application so it's been really great it's a visualization versus you know giving folks  a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers so when thinking about what it would take to have a shared  Grant application process we definitely need to identify an appropriate system in partnership  with information Services just so we ca

n navigate that system of Rec record issue and make sure  that we're not creating an issue for the State I know a lot of folks have said there's a lot of  nuance and specificity for the various agencies around their processes and Grant authorities oia's  Grant Authority is so specific it was hard for me to identify how our specific Authority could be  captured in a pre-approval process designing and selecting a system that all can use is I think  more complicated than it sounds we definitely nee

d to consider systematic barriers that are  common in these types of systems that really disadvantage marginalized communities Enterprise  systems have shown the procurement system itself has shown to create a lot of barriers for folks  with State Contracting so I'd like to plug that maybe we don't have the same approach to Grant  Contracting or agreements providing support resources for building navigating and helping  with the system so not just building the system but making sure at the same

time we're creating  resources around navigating it and how to utilize it effectively establishing dedicated Personnel at  each agency for Grant Administration and grantee support I know at our agency we're a agency of  many hats and we don't currently have a designated Grant administrator we add it to folks's plate  that are already doing other things and so to really understand the system and provide the best  support I think at least one person focused on that work would be apprpriate utilize

a system for  resources outside of applications and awards so if the system is uh built can we create you know a  dashboard for nonprofit marginalized communities for resources around common issues kind of like  what I spoke to about nonprofit accounting helpful organizational tools You Know sample business  models all of the things that we're seeing when we're talking to our our grantees about what's  you know Difficult about navigating these types of processes and it's a great opportunity to

build  a community forum and build collaboration around state grants and maybe have a Q&A chat space that  sort of thing our grant decisions I kind of just divided them really simply our grant committee and  our agency director we have oversight about over most of our our granting agreements and Authority  grants that are clearly covered under our Authority grants under 250,000 and grants that are  clear with legal sufficiency those are those basic we can move them forward get them processed tho

se  are typically our 31 day turnaround time grants when we have to get D or DOJ involved it's grants  that are not clearly covered under Authority if we're questioning is this eligible is it not  we'll send it for further review grants that are over 250,000 and Grant agreements that require  Extra Care to meet legal sufficiency we do serve a vulnerable population so we really take extra  care and making sure that you know everything is legal sufficient legally sufficient and that  we're creatin

g an agreement that solid and I mentioned earlier we do rely on the expertise of  our procurement team when when to recommend grants and we have an understanding with our procurement  team that grants are not procurement contracts and we ask them to kind of switch lenses and apply and  that's been a working partnership with the grant committee and procurement because we never want  to put them in a situation where they feel they're not doing their due diligence but we also want  to create an und

erstanding that grants are not contracts pre-approvals I spoke to this a little  bit earlier pre-approvals for us would be a little bit challenging we think it would likely result in  a similar time commitment a pre-approval process as our full Grant request process we've opted for  an expedited Grant process over pre-approval just based on the type of re request because we do  have health and safety issues and I did put our Authority in there as well it's really specific to  treatment and care

needs of adjudicated youth in oia custody and we have all of our conversations  with DOJ that have been really lengthy are around the specifics of that Authority and the care needs  of oia adjudicated youth I'm gonna kind of give an example of that just so folks kind of know like  what does that mean so we do have grants that so say OYA Youth and uh odhs youth often are in the  same type of Provider facility so this provider requests a grant for program startup costs AA  can fund only the cost r

elated to the OYA Youth and this is based on how specific our grant  Authority is this is challenging for both the agency and the program to navigate because with  items like like we've had before like they want a new fire system we've had DOJ uh talk about  well that serves all the youth there not just OYA youth so maybe you only fund a percentage of  the fire system and we say that's not actually a thing we can't fund a portion of a fire system  so we we've had to have some really interesting

conversations around our specific Grant Authority  and it it makes pre-approval in that regard just really really hard because we have to do a lot  of like back office work to make these grants solid under our eligibility and I'm not sure how  a pre-approval process would give us that option these are just link links to our I'm sorry we  we've reach the 15 minutes for for this one I'm done they're just reference link was this your  last page yep yep just reference links yep okay okay great well

thank you so much if we have any  follow-up questions we'll we'll send those to you in writing thank you very much for for this  presentation so team we're gonna take a five minute break although Debbie if you could stay  on for just a minute so if everyone could come back at 11:30 for the last portion of our of our  meeting today and then Debbie so I know you would originally wanted 40 minutes I think to do the  risk management portion it looks like even 30 is going to run us to because we won'

t have time to  look at the questions and things for March so I'm wondering do you feel comfortable with a 20 minute  or should we try to reschedule the Risk Management portion so that you have at least a full 30  minutes if not actually try to find a way to to make the 40 minutes happen yeah you know Bonnie  is the one presenting and I don't know if she hung on here my sense is that people are going to very  you're here Bonnie okay good did you did you hear the question I did I'll come on camer

a so well I  could just go right to our website if you want to Mercedes I I I developed the the content just to  give a little bit of background about insurance and why we ask some things but we could just go  to our Das risk management website and go to the risk assessment toolkit and show everybody how  that actually works because there's a lot behind that and then if we needed to I could show the  PowerPoint and we could talk about insurance types and amounts I mean I tried to make it as shor

t as  I could it was like it's like it's like you know 16 slides but very high level on its content so  it's really up to you Debbie and Mercedes how you would like to proceed but if it's about trying  to make this process faster I mean that that process is there it's it's there for a purpose  on contracts and grants and then we have worked with some of the agencies on some of these larger  grants to actually put a a template together for them so they can move things through even faster  so I do

n't know how you'd like to proceed I could just scratch the PowerPoint we could go right to  the website and look at the toolkit and if there's questions about the insurance we can we can have  a conversation about that but that's too yeah I think I'm kind of leaning towards us trying to fit  this into a later presentation just because this this is not an area I think we would necessarily  make too many recommendations in but this is a space that feels like the black box a lot of times  and the

number of conversations I'm in where it's like I don't know they changed something about  the insurance requirement and no one can seem to explain to me why and they said that they're told  that they have to and like there's just like all of that like not sure where it's coming from and I  think that's what we really want is to understand where these processes come from so we can develop  a better like shared foundation so yeah so I think I I think putting it on another agenda Debbie  and Merced

es would be helpful because some of the content that I was going to provide around  insurance and why you need some of these things would be helpful because contractual liability  is actually brought in under commercial general liability and people forget that part so anyway  yeah if you want to postpone it another date I just need to know what date and and that's fine we  could do that okay yeah because I just started to see the clock ticking down and we already squished  you and we were GNA sq

uish it again and I I just have a feeling this is one of the ones where  we're going to get questions and I don't want to have to limit the engagement too much because  I think this is a really important thing for for all of us to understand and how how it's working  and especially because all the department well not all of them but most of them did reference  the risk management tool so that's I think it's important for us to know so yeah so when we come  back I think we'll we'll focus on our l

ook ahead do a preview of the questions that we're wanting  submit to the agencies any additional things folks want to hear and then we'll we'll make sure that  when we look at our next agenda planning meeting that we schedule a good chunk of time and that we  try to stay maybe we even let you all go first and then get into some of the presentations whether  that's in March or maybe April but we'll follow up with you as soon as we make that determination  that's good so I'll just get off of this

one if that's okay with you I'll go talk to my boss  boss about a Senate bill that's going on and if that's okay with you and then we'll come I'll  come back in in March and Shelly might be able to actually be here too which would be good that  would be great yeah okay thank you so much Bonnie you're welcome bye bye I'm sorry I didn't give  you a break daddie it's okay it's no problem no problem at all and I do think it's going to be  a very meaty presentation where we need the time agreed okay

so we're coming back to  about 11:30 if folks are back from the very short break I apologize  for being so short I just get some thumbs up maybe so I can see if folks  are back at their back at their desks yet maybe not yet I saw one hand if  you could throw up a little hand or maybe turn your camera on just  so I can get a sense of who's back okay there we go now I'm starting to see some  hands thank you folks okay so what I have so what we've decided if you actually did take your  break which

I hope you did what we've decided is for the last part of our agenda is we're going  to take our risk management presentation we were going to do with Das and we're going to move  it to other day initially the department had asked for 40 minutes we kind of squished that  to 30 if we do that that's basically the entire time and then we don't have time for any kind  of debrief here or to look ahead to the March meeting which means that we're squishing them  down to 20 minutes but I think it's imp

ortant for all of us to have a good understanding of  the risk management tool and the insurance work because it has been something that I think has  been just people are becoming more aware of it it's becoming more of a thing that we're all  talking about especially as insurance get more and more expensive for organizations and so really  understanding how the state agencies utilize that system how they make those requirements I think  is going to be really good foundation information for us Jo

nathan do you want to add something  no we're good I definitely saw some random questions come regarding DOJ involvement  so I think Kirk answered uh perhaps the most substantive one but some of them dealt  more with process anything you could think of as far as more questions for DOJ yes I  think we will definitely continue to have more questions for DOJ I think we had a couple in  the chat here and then we've also been discussing a standalone memo that we were going to request  from DOJ the mo

re we understand from the agenc I think the better we're able to articulate what our  questions are and so we'll definitely be getting back to you on that okay okay so on the yeah  so on the screen you're going to see the six questions that we currently have for the state  agencies on wages so our presentation in March is going to be about how do we create processes  that get us to achieve more livable wages in the contracts and GR agreement that we're partnering  on so you can see the questions

there you know when making the first one is really about when  a department is deciding we're trying to serve 100 households and we're going to award you know  grants or contracts of up to $100,000 how how did they determine that $100,000 was going to pay for  100 households right like that's what we're trying to get at is what calculations are being used  to pair those requirements with the amount of funds that are going to be allowable in the grant  or the contract when it comes to ongoing gr

ants and contracts again that same calculation for  like this is how much service I want this is how much money I'm going to allow to accomplish that  service when it's ongoing is inflation and cola included in that calculation as for the agencies  when you're requesting money from the state are you including that at that moment when does that  get included does it not again just trying to understand how we get to the point where we have  an amount of service and an amount of money how who did t

he math to decide those those match up or  what math is being done better what math is being done what methodology is being used to determine  that those things match if the state if the state of Oregon were to adopt the federal laws including  the uniform guidance and Grant making what o RS or o would allow or disallow the use these guidelines  I did ask when Amy sends out these questions to include a link to the uniform guidance so if  anyone's unfamiliar with it they can take a look this has

come up I think a couple of times in  discussion about om and the uniform guidance this is try to us get a sense of what are agency's in  engagement with this Federal guidance when is it used or not used where is capable being used or  not used then we're going to ask you if agencies are inviting grantees to co-create rfps so this  I think goes into that planning phase like folks who are sharing that workflow that very first  planning like identifying that need I think we want to understand how

much of that work is being  done like really kind of insular to the department versus how much of that work is a partnership with  communities most impacted this might include like your if your department has advisory councils or  like formal bodies like that like I think thinking about where is it that you're Gathering feedback  you know are grantee potential grantees current grantees allowed to even sit on your advisory  bodies or do you exclude them right so like thinking about where you're g

athering information  probably in that that first line that planning workflow portion this is going to kind of help us  connect back to that first question which is like if you're co-creating some of that does that help  us get closer to matching service expectations and dollars does it not that at all is it about  something different that kind of partnership so just understanding where those external voices  can impact the decisions that your agency is making does your agency request funding ba

sed  on outcomes to be achieved or is funding based on some other calculation so this this again is  thinking about current service level what are the pieces that go into requesting that is it about  what's kind of just budgetarily available or is it like we've been serving 50 households and we  want to serve a 100 so we're going to ask for a scaled up amount also want to make sure folks  are aware that like a 50% increase in outcomes doesn't always equate to a 50% increase in funding  so like h

ow again how are you kind of calculating when you want what kind of outcomes you want and  how much money is being associated with those outcomes I think it's a little bit different from  like we want to spend a certain amount of money on like a thing like we're going to buy a thing  right when it comes to a lot of the nonprofit Partnerships we're not we're we may be buying  things but we're also looking at other kinds of intangible outcomes for what reason would your  agency reject a nonprofit

submitted budget this is kind of thinking going a little bit deeper into  some of those procurement processes that phase of work where you put out an application you've  accepted an application maybe you've even said we want to award you funds but we're not going to  award you the amount of funds you requested or in the way in which you requested them we're going to  augment your budget so we're rejecting the budget you submitted and we're asking for a change either  telling you what to change o

r asking you to just submit a new one with some revisions what are the  reasons why that why that might happen and then number six does your agency have recommendations  on increasing wages through your partnership so all throughout this process I think we've heard  little bits that folks are doing some Innovative stuff and doing some great partnership work so  you may already have some recommendations that you have for like ways in which you've seen wages be  more stable in your Partnerships ma

ybe that's to a different payment model we saw less complaints  about that and and more engagement around that or when thinking about the way you've put out an  application resulted in some better wages do you know do you not know right like thinking about  just any recommendations you might have for all of us one of the other things that we had been  talking about and I kind of mentioned this at the top of the meeting which was that we want to  maybe think a little bit differently about how we'

re organizing information based on different  folks's requests for organizing information one of the recommendations that we got from some folks  on our project planning subcommittee and then in our agenda planning committee is to have something  where we're actually comparing agencies to each other in more of a spreadsheet format where we can  see between them what things they're doing or not doing it does mean we kind of have to bring our  questions down to like simple answers to be able to se

e that so in our agenda planning meeting  what we did is we tried to to look at some of these same questions some similar different  questions and turn them into like yes no or short answer questions that could be put in a  survey platform so I'm going to show you what the survey looks like right now oh gosh and then  it got small didn't it sorry about that let's try to make it bigger again no we can see it it's  okay oh okay it's it just looked like it turned tiny on my screen so here this is p

retty short  there's only a few questions here some of these are repetitive again just to put it in that kind  of comparative format so does your agency have a formula for determining amounts of service or  outcomes you expect to get per dollar so just are do you have a methodology yes or no are you using  the uniform guidance do you have the authority to use the uniform guidance does your agency invite  you know granes to do that RFP does your agency have standard templates for Grant applicatio

ns and  does your agency stipulate how much is allowed to be spent on wages in a contract or agreement or  an approved budget or contract agreement right so it's either in the actual application you say  you can only spend so much on on wages is it in the grant agreement where you say you can only  spend so much on wages is it when they submit that budget and you're negotiating what's allowed  in the budget where you might say you know only x amount or X percentage is allowed for wages like  jus

t are you stipulating to some degree what is allowed and where is allowed so these are all  questions that were based on that on going back to our Jam board activity from way far ago now  it feels like and so that's where these questions came from but before we wrap up we've given these  to the agency so far so it's kind of like they've already been told to answer these questions so my  question for all of you here is is there anything that's missing of information that you think you  need that'

s either kind of a comparative yes no kind of up or down question that we put in the  survey or something where you'd like to hear a little bit more narrative about how processes  are working or decisions are being made around wages that you don't see currently up here so I'm  going to go back to this here just to see that again these are the six questions the questions  in the survey do reflect these in more of that yes no format the presentations we're hoping to see  more explanation more more

narrative about these answers to these questions and so from task force  members is there anything that's missing Marianne so when we had the preschool promise  with DELC they actually had minimums for teachers wages so that was very helpful  but I don't know how many other contracts have that okay we can make that I think a add  that to the survey question as a yes as a yes no for now and then maybe added as a sub  question to number six do you have wage minimums Bettina yeah I already put it

in the chat  but my question was around those other costs like health insurance PTO you know paid family leave  those are real costs in terms of what employers can pay so if we might under one just maybe ask  how they consider those costs because that's capacity so we're asking how how  they consider General benefits you know competitive benefits like  health insurance PTO sick Lea into those calculations for what is an  adequate wage budget to provide service okay so maybe we'll actually just 

change the wording here to say wherever it says wages we're asking for wages and benefits I think that will be help is that  okay that will be then we don't have to ask a brand new question but just stipulate we  want to know wages and benefits allowance y anything else on that one okay well great so not too much had  to change Summer I'll email you after this with some assistance in kind of getting  that updated list out to all of the agencies for those questions and then with our last few  min

utes here any I'm G wait I should stop sharing sorry I don't need to do that right now so our  last few minutes I would love to hear if anyone has any just Reflections on the presentations  from today that you want to share as like a checkout I think it's really surprising how different  agencies really manage things and how some have no systems you know like no online systems  but are like still doing spreadsheets and stuff that's just pretty fascinating and  it kind of seems like the procureme

nt folks would also like support around Solutions  which I think is really promising and I'm hopeful Lis first of all Mercedes thank you for  guiding us through three hours of presentations you are a saint you are appreciated very much  what Heather was saying it's sort of fascinating to me because I I'm thinking about how we do our  internal practices and I mean if I understood DHS they have 200 programs and no internal grants  system and that seems cruel to do to staff like like and so and I'm

thinking about some of  the like low hanging fruit and some of the recommendations we might make and what are the  costs associated with that and how government really appreciates efficiency and expected of the  nonprofits so let's make sure the government can do it as well so those are the things coming up  for me and just much appreciation to everyone who presented I thought it was very informative  thanks agreed I did appreciate how much like although we got I think notes of caution around 

some kind of pre-approval thing I think somebody said it really well like an organizational  profile like even just some sort of system to manage an organizational profile for those  things that people ask for all the time kind of almost an early vetting sounds like there are  ways to support that which is really exciting and yeah definitely heard people kind of hungry  for some support uh Dones yeah I also want to express appreciation to Mercedes and and all  the eight agencies that presented I

sure these presentations took time and energy to prepare so  really very useful I guess you know one I have a flare for the obvious and one one point that's  coming up for me is that logic doesn't always win the day and so it's interesting I think it  was Kirk who was saying from odhs that you know modifications have been made out of necessity  right uh agencies have tried to figure out how to make it work and that in order to shift from  that there's an acculturation process that needs to happ

en so it's not as simple as just sort  of saying let's do it one way and so a little the fic's loow hanging fruit Point knowing that  there's some acculturation that has to happen and I was starting to think about you know whether or  not there's some natural groupings here like those that receive General funds for example that came  up with Oregon Youth Authority all General funds presumably there's different a lower level of  complexity there perhaps there's a way to think about how agencies w

ould more flexibility can  operate and agencies with less flexibility can operate and maybe that offers us some starting  points for thinking about the acculturation process and how to move towards something that is  not so disperate at this point uh similarly with DOJ you know knowing that a lot of roads lead  back to DOJ hearing that capacity may be a real issue at DOJ it'd be good to probe that area as  well to figure out if that's a starting point so those are a few thoughts that that popped

to mind  lots of good information and again appreciate it folks I'll say for me I really liked the idea  of some consolidation around that kind of organizational profile idea like there is going  to and I I did put that as a follow-up question for the agencies like if we could actually just  collect what those standard questions are that you ask every single time and if there's a way for  even that to just be all right how do we how do we unify that right understanding that specific  funding so

urces and specific program goals are going to need maybe some separate process but  if everyone is asking for a certain number for a certain group of things that we can clearly see  across departments that's I think where we can start with that question of a unified process and  I think that's also that's what kind of speaks to a little bit of pre-approval right is how do you  know you can work with with a nonprofit how do you know that nonprofit is like has their 990 has  their Secretary of Sta

te staff has their insurance staff where you you're you're more vetting their  capabilities on a skill strengths level because we've already pre-approved and prev vetted the  the bare minimum right I think that's that's an exciting thing for me I do wonder if we can get  to a standard open Period I think it would be really really helpful for organizations to know  that every time an RFP is out you've got 45 days regardless of what department regardless of how  big or small that one sounded like

a potential to me I saw a range of about 30 to 50 days I think  in the presentations I definitely wouldn't want to go short of where somebody's standard practice  is but that's one that's kind of swirling for me Bettina yeah the other thing I was wondering  about you know what's the difference between ongoing contracts and new legislative you know  monies or changing ones there's so many things that those departments do biennium to biennium and  why this process is still so complicated you know

why is there what could be done to make those  rollovers more easily because it appears that there's a lot of work still on what is actually  ongoing work the state won't stop doing it maybe there is a funding change you know that's the  other part you know does funding go down and up but there the contracts with school district  or with you know Health departments how could that be made easier for for those departments  versus the ones where there's new contracts because there's a new allocatio

n of money you  know and we have to go through a new process of establishing but I didn't hear much about  that in terms of what could make it easier for those ongoing contracts where there stop and  go but the Stop and Go seems to be very time intensive for departments absolutely I think we  heard that in the last time and I think I think somebody said something about you know needing  to figure out how to get beyond the legislative session like how is in the legislative session and  essentiall

y the budgeting authority of individual grants and contracts be a little bit separate  I do think that that sounds really interesting and exciting and especially right now thinking a  you know it's legislative session so also want to appreciate all of the agencies for being able  to show up here while we know you were all in session and one of the things coming up there is  a summer learning investment right that's a builda session and and that one's really hard because  every no matter what it

seems that decision is made in like the 11th hour plus 50 minutes because  of the timeline of the session right and like even if that is something we want to do how do we  realign those timelines so it's really helpful it's really helpful to to get a sense of where you  know agencies have recommendations where they have experience where you feel things are going really  well so I also really appreciated folks coming with their kind of strongest foot forward of like  here's our our bleeding edge

of our Innovation that's really helpful to know and understand so  thank you for doing that I think I'm going to go ahead and and call the meeting there I don't see  any other hands up so we're going to kind of just take that last six minutes I hope we have time  for a little bit of break I hope everyone gets lunch after this before you have to immediately  go into your next meeting uh but thank you all so much for the time today the thinking and working  together summer as I said I'll send you

a little bit of a follow-up about how we get the agencies  those just slightly modified questions for our March presentation and I hope everybody has a  great rest of your day thank you so much thank you