2. Plan of Work Western Regional Conference – Oct 8, 2014
Bart Hewitt, Director, Planning Accountability & Reporting Staff, NIFA

3. Topics: FY15 Submission Requirements
Software Changes to Expect in FY15
AREERA Multi-State & Integrated Supplemental Forms
System Technical Issue Fixes
POW’s Connection with REEport
2015 Panel of Experts
Accessing POW Data
Q&A

4. FY15 Submission Requirements

5. Due Dates
April 1, 2015 is the due date for all three submissions done thru the POW software system:
Plans of Work
2014 Annual Reports of Accomplishments & Results
Multistate & Integrated Activities Supplemental Forms (NIFA-REPT, NIFA-PLAN, Brief Summaries)

6. Extensions
Extension requests for POWs or Annual Reports must be put in writing, ed to Katelyn Sellers at
Extension requests for Supplemental Forms must be ed to Brenda Barnett at

7. NIFA Approval Timeline
NPLs have 60 days to perform reviews of POWs and Annual Reports; the clock starts on April 1 or date of submission, whichever is later.
PARS office has 30 days to perform final acceptance in system; typically done within days of NPL submitting approval.

8. Software Changes to Expect in FY15

9. AREERA Supplemental Forms
Auto-calculation in software
Pre-population of 1088 allocation amounts
No forms for exempt states
Ability to submit interim and/or final reports
Create better management functions
Record of which Director has submitted
Change due dates in system
Modify auto- text

10. State-Level Integration of Annual Reports
Software will NOT automatically integrate 2014 Annual Reports for those states that just integrated their POW last year.
Integration will occur automatically for the 2015 Annual Reports.

11. National Outcomes & Indicators
Separate section for collecting data on “The Seven” that are part of NIFA’s budget documents.
Guidance:

12. What are “The Seven”?

13. System Technical Issues
POW compatibility issues with Internet Explorer (IE) 9, 10, 11 are being fixed.
Was preventing copying & pasting - text box grayed out.
Firefox or Chrome work properly.
Make sure to use the “paste from word” button when copying and pasting in the software, regardless of browser type.

14. POW’s Connection with REEport

15. POW Programs are the “Umbrellas” for Individual Capacity Projects in REEport
This is for Hatch/Hatch Multistate or Evans Allen Projects at Project Initiation, Classification page.
Programs are only listed if the start date of the project matches up with the fiscal year of an approved POW.
Be mindful that most projects should have a “home” under a Planned Program; “none of the above” should not be a catch-all option.

16. How to Calculate FTEs for Programs
First, a reminder on FTE Definition:
An FTE is defined by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as the number of total hours worked in a given year divided by the maximum number of compensable hours in a full-time schedule as defined by law. For most NIFA partners and places of employment, a full-time schedule as defined by law equates to 2,080 hours of work per year (52 weeks multiplied by 40 hours per week).

17. How to Calculate FTEs for Programs in the POW and Annual Report
An FTE calculation is a representation of time spent (hours) working on a program; it is NOT tied to an amount of money or a particular type of funds.
NIFA wants to collect the amount of total time spent working on a program regardless of how the faculty/agents/people were paid (volunteer time is captured separately in the software).

18. You report FTEs for each PROGRAM… …but programs are made up of PROJECTS (Research Projects - think “REEport”)
Example of calculating FTEs on a projects & programs:
Bob is the main PD on a project whose salary is 50% Hatch and spent 75% of his full time schedule on the project in the past year. = .75 FTE
Suzy is a Co-PD paid by state funds who spent 25% of her time on the project for the entire year. = .25 FTE
John is a Co-PD paid by a private grant who spends 100% of his time on the project over the course of 10 weeks in the summer (so, 400 hrs/2080 hrs). = .2 FTE (.19 should be rounded to nearest tenth)
1. Add them all up, and the total FTE for the project is 1.2
2. Then add up all projects within a program = total program FTEs.

19. 2015 Panel of Experts

20. What is the Panel of Experts?
The Farm Bill contains a provision which states that “The Secretary shall work with university partners in extension and research to review and identify measures to streamline the submission, reporting under, and implementation of plan of work requirements.
A Panel of Experts comprised of Research & Extension representatives from the regions as well as National Program Leaders from NIFA meets this provision.

21. What will we seek to do?
NIFA has priorities for what the agency needs to defend the budget line items (Hatch, Hatch Multistate, Evans Allen, Smith Lever 3b&c, and 1890 Extension).
We will present our ideas/needs.
Panel will consider these ideas/needs in concert with their regional/state needs.

22. Reporting Outcomes
Actual qualitative outcome statements from the Annual Reports are the most utilized element of the entire POW data collection system.
These come from the “issue, what was done, and results” boxes.
The process for collecting & analyzing these, however, is “messy.”

23. Let’s simplify!
Right now, a qualitative “story” can be entered for every single quantitative state-defined outcome measure.
But some qualitative stories are tied to multiple quantitative measures.
Which one do you choose? It’s not clear…
Meanwhile, no qualitative data are associated with the National Outcomes & Indicators.
What do we really want?
Ability for states to give NIFA succinct outcome success stories that contain both quantitative and qualitative data, are tied to particular programs, and are associated with particular KAs & funding lines.

24. What will be the result of the Panel?
List of recommended changes
Policy/Data driven
Software driven
NIFA response to changes
How changes will be executed
Estimated schedule of changes

25. Accessing POW Data

26. Reminder
Anyone can search and read approved Plans of Work and Annual Reports!
Go to:
Enter the state and year you want, then choose POW or Annual Report; remember, the year you choose aligns with the year of the report name, not the year in which is was submitted.

27. Leadership Management Dashboard
Accessed through the NIFA Reporting Portal:
Data analysis according to custom search parameters.
Export to Excel function.

28. Example of Custom Report

29. Information on POW POW Customer Service Email pow@nifa.usda.gov
POW Web Page
Reporting Web Conferences

30. REEport Western Regional Conference – Oct 8, 2014
Adam Preuter, Planning Accountability & Reporting Staff, NIFA

31. Adam Preuter Provides analysis and support for REEport
Manages Financial and Program of Research reporting

32. REEport Financial Module

33. Who has access?
Site Admin
Financial Admin

35. Who can submit to NIFA? Site Admin Financial Admin
But Site Admin sets the workflows

39. Project financial reports Due to NIFA
Heart of the module.
List of all projects that were active in the selected fiscal year – eligible for reporting.
Worktable where data is entered and displayed.
Note: Just because a project is listed here, it does not necessarily mean you are required to report on it.
Non-Formula
No expenditures

40. Project identifiers. You can sort on column headings.
Total Expenditures column displays funds entered on a project.
PDF view – line item entries on that specific project.
Show All

43. Tip: to see all options, type one character, then backspace.

44. How to enter data? Three ways:
Manually key in data on individual projects.
Use the provided .csv file for upload.
Create your own .csv file for upload.

45. Manually key in data.

47. Use the provided .csv file.

49. Important notes about Download function.
You are downloading the worktable.
.csv file will contain any data already entered.
Manually
Previous upload
.csv file will contain only the projects you have filtered on.
No filter=All projects

50. Upload

52. Important notes about Upload function.
No upload confirmation.
Data simply populates worktable.
Upload errors possible.
Incorrect file extension - .csv only!
Accession Number does not match on eligible projects.
Upload overwrites existing data in worktable.
Deleting project from upload does nothing.

53. Third Way: generate and upload your own .csv file.
Upload is exactly the same, but…
Format must match exactly!
Same number of columns, and in correct order.
Listed Accession Numbers in upload must be found in the worktable.
More detailed guidance for csv formatting will be provided later.

54. Review your data

57. Alerts Notify you of any errors with your data.
Must click into the project to see the alert message.

59. Important notes about Alerts.
Alerts folder is simply a filter.
Editing an alert is exactly the same as editing a project normally.

60. Important to clear all alerts before submitting to NIFA.
Alerts signify data that cannot be accepted.
If not corrected, they will be removed from your dataset.
REEport will allow you to submit with alerts, so be sure to get them all cleared.
Exceptions:
FTE value over 10 will flag an alert since this value is not typical. If you know it is accurate, OK to submit.
More details on other exceptions will follow later.

61. Submit to NIFA

63. CIP Codes Classification of Instructional Programs.
New field soon available in all Progress and Final Reports.
Used in conjunction with Student FTEs.

65. Questions?
Remember, a more comprehensive and detailed financial reporting guide will be coming out soon.
Thanks!