1. Janet Rosenzweig, Based on work completed at Harvard’s Kennedy School Bill Levis, Urban Institute NGP Webcast, February 10, 2009 The Added Value of Activity Codes

2. FFATA Searchable database of grants, contracts and other types of federal contracts, assistance and other payments available at www.usaspending.gov Purpose of grant is identified by CFDA code, which does not describe the activities undertaken by the recipient.

3. Purpose of Initial Research Explore potential improvements in the utility of the FFATA database of grants made federal agencies by the adding a field to classify data by activity For Example….. a public administrator could identify all funds coming into a states for activities related to a multi-disciplinary services such as prevention of child abuse through family support services, or prevention of juvenile delinquency a public administrator could identify all funds coming into a specific city, county or state by location and category to support budgets planning

4. Example: CFDA Codes relevant to family support services – HHS only 93.551: Abandoned Infants 93.995: Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Projects 93.670: Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities 93.643: Children's Justice Grants to States 93.974: Family Planning Service Delivery Improvement Research Grants 93.974: Family Planning Service Delivery Improvement Research Grants 93.926: Healthy Start Initiative 93.136: Injury Prevention and Control Research and State and Community Based Programs 93.136: Injury Prevention and Control Research and State and Community Based Programs 93.556: Promoting Safe and Stable Families

5. Example, continued: Non HHS CFDA codes 10.573: Homeless Children’s Nutrition Program AG 10.573: Homeless Children’s Nutrition Program 84.335: Child Care Access Means Parents in School E D 84.335: Child Care Access Means Parents in School 84.360: Dropout Prevention Programs ED 84.360: Dropout Prevention Programs 84.310: Parental Assistance Centers ED 84.310: Parental Assistance Centers 16.730: Reduction and Prevention of Children's Exposure to Violence Justice 16.730: Reduction and Prevention of Children's Exposure to Violence 16.523: Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants 16.547: Victims of Child Abuse Justice 16.547: Victims of Child Abuse

6. What’s Missing? A description of WHAT activities the recipient is conducting! The addition of activity codes can make this database remarkably useful for state and local planning and coordination.

7. Opportunities The continued development of the FFATA database presents an opportunity to further the existing NGP objective of establishing uniform object expense categories and definitions for grant budgeting and reporting by adding uniform activity codes to federal CFDA program classification. Current interest by OMB in expanding the utility of the CFDA coding scheme presents a unique opportunity for collaboration

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

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

10. For More Information Bill Levis, Urban Institute qrlevis@aol.com Janet Rosenzweig MS, PhD, MPA jfrosenzweig@comcast.net Thank you!