EDGAR Appendix D (Federal Register 2/10/05: Electronic Submission of Grant Apps)
National Archives And Records Administration
Federal Register
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Department of Education
Electronic Submission of Grant Applications Through Grants.gov and
e-Application
Pages 7088-7089
Appendix D
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Electronic Submission of Grant Applications Through Grants.Gov and
e-Application
AGENCY: Office of the Chief Financial Officer, Department of
Education.
ACTION: Notice of new policies and procedural requirements for the
electronic submission of grant applications.
SUMMARY: The Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Education
(Department) announces new policies and procedural requirements for
the electronic submission of grant applications through the
governmentwide grants application site, Grants.gov, and the
Department's grants application site, e-Application.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For information on Grants.gov, call
the Grants.gov Help Desk at 1-800-518-Grants. For information
regarding the Department's e-Application System, call the GAPS Help
Desk at 1-888-336-8936. For general questions about the new policies
and requirements announced in this notice, contact Blanca Rodriguez
or Charlesetta Griffin, U.S. Department of Education, 550 12th
Street, SW., room 7107, Potomac Center Plaza, Washington, DC 20202-
4250. Telephone: Blanca Rodriguez at 202-245-6121 or Charlesetta
Griffin at 202-245-6157 or by e-mail: blanca.rodriguez@ed.gov or
charlesetta.griffin@ed.gov.
If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), you
may call the Federal Relay Service at 1-800-877-8339.
Individuals with disabilities may obtain this document in an
alternative format (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, or
computer diskette) on request to the contact persons listed in this
section.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This notice informs potential applicants
for U.S. Department of Education grants of certain new policies and
procedural requirements for the electronic submission of grant
applications.
Transition to Grants.gov. For certain fiscal year (FY) 2005 grant
competitions, the Department will require applicants to submit their
applications electronically through Grants.gov instead of through
the Department's e-Application system. Grants.gov is a unified
Federal Web site that allows organizations (e.g., local educational
agencies, state educational agencies, institutions of higher
education, nonprofit entities) and individuals to electronically
find grant opportunities and apply for grants from all Federal
grant-making agencies.
As a partner agency working on the development of Grants.gov, the
Department is committed to using Grants.gov in helping potential
grantees find grant opportunities (http://www.grants.gov/Find) and
apply for grants (http://www.grants.gov/Apply). Currently, the
Department posts synopses of all its discretionary grant funding
opportunity announcements in the FIND section of Grants.gov. This
year, the Department will also provide for applicants to submit
electronic applications through the APPLY section of Grants.gov for
selected grant programs.
You can immediately start searching the FIND section of
Grants.gov, at the above Web address, for Federal grant
opportunities. You can also register at the Web site to receive
automatic e-mail notifications of new grant opportunities as they
are posted.
To prepare to use the APPLY function of Grants.gov, we strongly
recommend that you immediately initiate and complete the ''Get
Started'' steps to register with Grants.gov at
http://www.grants.gov/GetStarted. Although the steps can be
completed within a few days in many cases, we strongly advise
against waiting until a specific grant opportunity is announced
before initiating the Grants.gov registration process to avoid
facing unexpected delays that could result in the rejection of your
application.
The Department does not intend to use the Grants.gov system for
all of the Department's grant competitions. You must consult the
Department's official grant application notice to determine the
application procedures for each program. For those competitions
accepting electronic applications, the official grant application
notice will specify whether electronic applications are to be
submitted through Grants.gov or the Department's e-Application
system. The grant application notice is the final authority for this
determination. However, the Department's Forecast of Funding
Opportunities includes information on grant competitions that may
use the APPLY function of Grants.gov this year. The Forecast may be
accessed at http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite-forecast.html.
It is important to note that if a competition is using the APPLY
function of Grants.gov, it will not be using e-Application, and vice
versa. Over the next several years, the Department plans to use the
APPLY function of Grants.gov as the primary means for accepting
electronic grant applications.
Exceptions to Mandatory Electronic Filing Requirement. We also
announce a change in our policy and procedures for permitting
applicants to submit paper applications in those competitions where
the Department requires the electronic submission of applications
through Grants.gov or e-Application.
Under this new policy, when we require that applicants submit an
application electronically through Grants.gov or e-Application, we
will permit an exception to this requirement and will allow the
submission of an application in paper format by mail or hand
delivery only in two sets of circumstances. Specifically, an
applicant will be permitted to submit an application in paper format
by mail or hand delivery if the applicant--
(a) does not have access to the Internet; or
(b) does not have the capacity to upload large documents to the
Department's e-Application system or the Grants.gov application
system; and
(c) submits a written statement to the Department that the applicant
qualifies for an exception under one of these grounds.
The written statement must be mailed or faxed to the program
office (include the program name and CFDA number) no later than two
weeks before the application deadline date (14 calendar days, or if
the fourteenth calendar day falls on a Federal holiday, the next
business day following the Federal holiday). A fax must be received
by the Department on or before this date and an applicant should
ensure that it retains a receipt of the faxed transmission. A mailed
statement must be postmarked on or before this date and applicants
should refer to the grant application notice for acceptable forms of
proof of mailing. Unlike our prior policy, we will not accept
requests for waiver of the electronic submission requirement up
until the application deadline date.
If an applicant provides its statement on or before the two-week
deadline, the Department will accept the statement and paper
application and will not provide any response to the statement. If
an applicant submits a paper application but fails to submit a
statement or does not submit a statement in a timely manner, the
Department will not accept the applicant's paper application. The
Department will notify an applicant if it is not accepting the
applicant's paper application.
Electronic Access to This Document:
You may view this document, as well as all other Department of
Education documents published in the Federal Register, in text or
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the
following site: http://www.ed.gov/news/fedregister.
To use PDF, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is
available free at this site. If you have questions about using PDF,
call the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1-888-
293-6498; or in the Washington, DC area at (202) 512-1530.
Note: The official version of this document is the document
published in the Federal Register. Free Internet access to the
official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal
Regulations is available on GPO Access at:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/nara/index.html.
Dated: February 4, 2005.
Jack Martin,
Chief Financial Officer.
[FR Doc. 05-2600 Filed 2-9-05; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P
EDGAR version June 23, 2005
