FY 2023 Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program Training and Technical Assistance (BWC-TTA) and Supporting Small, Rural, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agency Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program (SRT-BWC)

Transcript also available as a PDF

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, “Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program Training and Technical Assistance and Supporting Small, Rural, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agency Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program,” both hosted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce John Markovic, Senior Policy Advisor with the Bureau of Justice Assistance for some welcoming remarks and to begin the presentation. John?
JOHN MARKOVIC: Thanks, Daryl, and thanks to Tammy who's on the call with you moderating things. Good morning, or good afternoon as the case may be. My name is John Markovic. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor with the Bureau of Justice Assistance and I oversee the Body-Worn Camera Program, sometimes known as BWCPIP. I just want to make one clarification at the onset of this call. We're really having a webinar about two solicitations. These are not solicitations that provide direct funding to law enforcement agencies. I think there may be some confusion in the terminology. I want to say you're welcome to stay and listen, but these two programs are two organizations that will be providing TTA or will be running the small, rural, and tribal microgrant program and providing TTA to those recipients. So, it's not direct funding to law enforcement agencies of any size. Today, we're talking about training and technical assistance to those agencies, which has been an ongoing program that BJA has supported as part of its BWCPIP Program. And then we're also talking today about a closely related solicitation of a microgrant program that we started in 2020. So, for those of you who are law enforcement agencies, again, you're welcome to stay on. I'm going to post to the chat now where you can go to learn about our direct funding BWCPIP Grant Program as well as our small, rural, and tribal microgrant program. I will touch on those during this presentation. But that's not the solicitation we're talking about today. We're not talking about the direct funding solicitation which is known as the BWCPIP Program itself. So, I'll move on from there. Today, what we'll cover is—I'll give you a brief overview of OJP and BJA. I'll talk about these two related solicitations that I just alluded to. We'll talk about the funding level and awards for both of those, about the eligibility criteria, the objective of each of the programs, each of those two solicitations, the program descriptions, the required elements for all BJA grants and then the required elements specific to those two solicitations. I'll touch on the selection criteria, and we'll close talking about important dates. So that's generally what we're going to be covering today. Again, if you're a law enforcement agency, feel free to stay on. Or, if you want to use your time for something else, we certainly understand. And nobody will be offended if you get off. But please stay if you like.
Just a brief overview of what the Office of Justice Programs is. The Office of Justice Programs is the grant funding component, Department of Justice. We also provide training and research and statistics to the broader criminal justice community. If you look at the diagram to your left, you'll see the components of the Office of Justice Programs. Up on top is BJA. We're the largest grant-making agency. The Bureau of Justice Assistance provides grants, and we also compile many standard statistics for reflecting the criminal justice community. The National Institute of Justice is designed typically. The Office for Victims of Crime is also a grant-making agency. The name sort of implies what they focus on. And then OJJDP is the component that focuses on juvenile justice and delinquency prevention. The SMART office is the sex offender managing office. Not a grant-making agency but nonetheless, part of OJP. And then the second bullet points are just specified that there are two other grant-making agencies besides the agencies that fall under the OJP umbrella. There's the Office of Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services better known as COPS which is where I started my federal career.
This is just a little bit of a background on BJA's mission. We want to provide leadership and services for grant administration and policy development to the nation's state, local, and tribal justice agencies to develop justice strategies. We work closely with other government entities, nonprofit to reduce crime, reduce recidivism, reduce unnecessary confinement, and promote a safe and fair criminal justice system. So, I think these solicitations today, I think, touch on—most heavily on that last point, promoting a safe and fair criminal justice system and improving justice efficiency through the use of body-worn cameras.
This is just an overview of our director and how our office, the Bureau of Justice Assistance is organized. Director Karhlton Moore was appointed by President Biden just about a year ago. He oversees the entire operations of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and then works closely with the other component heads under the Office of Justice Programs. And we're divided into four units. The Policy Office, where I reside, we provide national leadership to criminal justice organizations and essentially push forward the [INDISTINCT] elements of the grant. We respond to appropriations language and define operationalized grant programs around those. The Programs Office provides direct line of communication to the states to locate the localities and the territories. They provide a lot of the administrative function. The Operations Office coordinates communication and works on budgetary issues, making sure that the funding is aligned with the purposes, working with the policy office and the programs office. And then there's the Public Safety Officer Benefits Office, which provides death and education benefits to survivors of first responders who have fallen. So, that's just a bit of the context of what our office is all about. These are the five major strategic focus areas. I won't dwell on those. Again, I think the Body-Worn Camera Program overlaps with all of these really. And so that's just a little bit of background there.
This is what we do. We fund obviously through grants. We educate. We help equip. We do have the Body-Worn Camera Program. It's not just an equipment program. It's all about implementing body-worn cameras in a robust and holistic way. But we do have programs that provide equipment. The Bulletproof Vest Program is another program that is more equipment-based, but equipment is part of our grants, and as we're doing, we partner through a sort of showcase [INDISTINCT] we can solve, connect, and convene. That's what these two solicitations are used to provide training and technical assistance and to administer a small, rural, and tribal microgrant program. So, what we're talking about today is very much in line with these four objectives.
So, here are the two related solicitations we're going to talk about today. The Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program, the Training and Technical Assistance component of that, so I may refer to that as more of this TTA. It was started in 2015 to support our BWCPIP Program which was site-based awards. The purpose of the TTA is to provide training and technical assistance for—initially focus heavily on body-worn camera policy development. Body-worn cameras were new. Agencies didn't have a lot of experience in developing body-worn camera policies before they were working to adapt policies for in-car cameras to body-worn cameras. So, we're doing a lot of handholding there. That's still the case today, but there's a lot of more of water under the bridge so to speak with body-worn cameras. So, agencies don't—generally, some agencies don't need as much assistance. But we've always provided a whole array of TTA to grantees. And if possible, if time allows and resources allow, we've provided funding to non-grantees who request that. As part of that training and technical assistance development since 2015, we with the TTA providers, I think have led in the development of knowledge products for body-worn cameras that are grantees and for other users. And we've grown and developed as the body-worn ecosystem evolved, as I said, we used to be focused on policy. We used to be focused chiefly on funding the acquisition of body-worn cameras.
Now we've shifted that BWCPIP Program to provide some other support as the field has evolved. The other side we'll be talking about supporting small, rural, and Tribal law enforcement agencies, Body-Camera Policy Implementation Program, that's a mouthful. But the Small, Rural, and Tribal Body-Worn Camera Grant Program, it's a microgrant program. It was started in 2020 to address unique needs of small, rural, and tribal agencies. We, with the TTA provider, designed and administered a competitive microgrant solicitation tailored to those agencies. So, this award is a re-compete of this award. Both of these awards have—or have been competed in the past. We've provided supplemental funding, but by the rules that we go by, they need to be competed every so often. And these both happened to need to be competed this year. So, to be re-competed this year. To continue the SRT program then, works with BJA to design that competitive microgrant program and then they manage the subawardees and distribute the funds similar to the other program. They provide TTA to subgrantees on BWC policy development and other needs. And they also develop knowledge products that complement the knowledge products that the TTA provide. So, just think of this is a Venn diagram. They're both providing TTA. The SRT Program is running the microgrant as well. And we'll see that reflected momentarily in the funding amount.
I think I covered this, but we started the BWC-TTA Program in 2015. It was part of the administration's commitment to criminal justice reform. And then in 2020, we developed the SRT Microgrant Program. We recognized that small, rural, and tribal agencies were often not as well resourced, didn't have the experience to compete against larger, more grant-savvy agencies. So, we developed the microgrant program for them. Both programs support the implementation of body-worn cameras in a full and wholesome way, the policy implementation part of the program. And we draw funds from the same appropriations budget. So, both focus on providing TTA and both strive really to meet the agencies where they are. We know there are 18,000 roughly law enforcement agencies across the country operating at the state, local, county, tribal, and special jurisdictional level. And some of those are fairly small. Some are large and sophisticated with a lot of resources. And we want to meet the needs of that whole swath of law enforcement agencies with these two programs.
And as probably as evident already, we try to run these programs in a way that they're coordinated and complementary. They both cover a breadth of topics. And the body-worn camera system is evolving. The technology is evolving. The policies are evolving. The legal dimensions are evolving. And we're seeing more states, for instance, step up. I think it's about eight now that provide funding either of their own for body-worn cameras as well as some states that are now mandating body-worn cameras, for instance Illinois is phasing it in in chunks based on the agency size. But all agencies in Illinois must have body-worn cameras by 2025. I believe it's January of that year. So, those are all things that affect these programs that we'd like that the respective applicants and the awardees to be aware of and track.
I think probably I've done said of this before already. It's possible that a single agency may apply for both awards. But they should demonstrate the capacity to take on both of these, have the resources and scope and level of expertise to manage both awards. As I said, regardless of whether we make the award to one, this is a competitive grant program that probably goes without saying, but regardless of whether or not we make the award to a single organization or several, we'd expect there to be a lot of coordination and consolidate, coordination and cross-fertilization.
Let's see. These are both and always have been cooperative agreements. I won't get into the details here, but a cooperative agreement is different than the grant in that it provides a lot more back and forth between BJA and the awardee in terms of shaping and doing mid-course corrections to the program. This is a three-year grant program, but there are opportunities dependent on funding to do supplements each award, any awardee can get up to two TTA supplements. And at the bottom, there's a little elaboration, a little of what I said about cooperative agreement and how it differs from a grant.
So, here's the primary differences in terms of funding. BWCPIP has historically been funded around this amount, between 2 million and 3 million dollars. We expect to make one award. And as I alluded to earlier, the core elements are providing training and technical assistance to BWCPIP funded sites to identify new resources and knowledge products to identify them and create them, develop them. And then a key element is to support our website, called the BWC Toolkit. Agencies, the current TTA provider runs their own website for TTA to grantee but we want that to be coordinated with the toolkit, so there's easy and seamless access to an abundance of resources on body-worn cameras. And as I said, the ecosystem is evolving, and there are always new sources of data coming about from a variety of agencies that also just new needs and gaps that need to be filled.
On the SRT side, there's 8 million dollars in awards. Again, one award is expected to be made. The elements are similar except that the SRT program is expected to develop and administer a competitive microgrant program, including distribution of funds to awardees, and they would work closely with BJA and in a coordinated manner with the TTA provider. And that should be BWC TTA there. I just realized the title. I apologize for that. The eligibility for both awards are the same. It's nonprofits with 501(c)(3) status. Nonprofits don't have that status. For-profit agencies other than small businesses, this is a large-scale program. And then public and state-controlled institutions of higher education are also eligible to apply.
Now, this is just a little bit of about our BWCPIP program. It's historically been used to fund the acquisition of body-worn cameras, as I said, in sort of a full and comprehensive manner. It generally translates to the purchaser lease of body-worn cameras. So that has been the core of the program since the onset in 2021. We wanted to start funding agencies that already had body-worn cameras, but were starting to develop promising practices or best practices in coming to terms with the tsunami of the digital evidence data that was being generated by cameras and other sources. So we're funding now since 2021. Demonstration projects that fall under three categories, so digital evidence management and integration, optimizing BWC footage used in prosecutor's offices, and then using body-worn camera footage for training as to promote constitutional policing. If you were to go to the BWCPIP solicitation, you can learn more about those. But that's what the TTA provider will be supporting is grantees across these five demonstration project areas. And I won't get—I keep from getting into detail about that.
So this is just a little synopsis of what our demonstration project is. Another way to think of this is that agencies have made some progress in capitalizing on leveraging or managing digital evidence data, their own body-worn camera footage, and they're willing to share those with others in exchange for getting some funding and some support through the TTA provider in further developing those elements. So it's really about sharing ideas, improving operations, and showcasing to others in the field what can be done. So that's the emphasis on the word demonstration there.
Okay. I'm going to take a breath and then I'm going to talk about the first program in some detail. The fiscal year 2023 Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program for Training and Technical Assistance. Here are the overall goals of the project: to provide high quality and comprehensive TTA to the site-based grantees. Meet them where they're at. Identify and compile existing resources, things like publications, webinars, podcasts, for the law enforcement community in general for our grantees, criminal justice stakeholders who are impacted by body-worn cameras. And develop those knowledge projects, keep up-to-date on the body-worn camera ecosystem, so to speak. How's the technology, the laws, the research, and other substantive issues changing? They're changing pretty rapidly and dynamically. So work, it's a cooperative agreement. You'd be expected to work, collaboratively with BJA. It's a lot of frequent meetings back and forth. And then, as I said, be attuned with and coordinate with the partner program or the complementary program for small, rural, and tribal microgrants.
These are the Core Objectives. So, we want you to, in your solicitation, inform us how you'll ensure that the site-based grantees will receive the training and technical assistance that they need, how it will help them complete their BWCPIP award successfully. Again, identify resources and develop those resources. Establish and maintain and refine the existing BWC Toolkit, which is a repository of knowledge projects, knowledge products. This is a little redundant, but work collaboratively with BJA, other OJP program offices. We do some interaction mainly with NIJ, the scientific wing and try to coordinate with them on what they're doing with body-worn cameras, and then just work with other stakeholders that you know or that are identified in BJA. So we work with the major law enforcement organizations. For instance, like IACP, Major Cities Chiefs, National Sheriffs' Association. We expect to partner with them and attend their conferences, so forth and so on. And then, the goal also is to provide customized TTA to non-grantees to the extent that resources allow. We want to reach the broader communities, but our number one priority is to grantees and helping them get through the grant process and make the best of their BWC programs.
Here are the Overarching Categories of Deliverables. The solicitation gets into much greater detail, but it's training and technical assistance service delivery. So, policy is important. Some agencies are already well underway or already have policies. They may be expanding their body-worn camera programs. And that can be done with onsite or offsite TTA as we're coming out of COVID, we hope that onsite engagements will increase. And one of the deliverables is to identify and advance promising practices. So keep abreast on what's happening in the field of body-worn cameras, the technology, what research is telling us. And, as I alluded to before, we have 18,000 law enforcement agencies operating in 50 states and four territories, I believe. And so there's a lot of variation in how body-worn cameras are being implemented and the laws. But as we move on and progress, we're looking for opportunities for standardization and for sort of codifying or regularizing, establishing promising practices.
The toolkit is important to us as the repository of information. So we want to foster the continuation of that. We'd like to foster collaborative programs. We're currently tracking state laws and funding opportunities because they affect BWCPIP. And then we want to look—we have been, but we want to look more closely at clusters of grantees and fostering regional collaborations. A single prosecutor may be dealing with a dozen or two dozen local law enforcement agencies that are feeding them body-worn camera data. We want that to be as seamless and smooth as possible. So we've been working with prosecutors more and more. And then part of the deliverables are just regular progress and update calls with BJA. We specify that at least biweekly in a formal way, but informally we'll be communicating with the grantees quite a bit. This is a large program and there's a lot involved in the program.
Here is what the kind of the meat of the matter here. Here's what you need to put in your project narrative, your solicitation, and with the relative weights of each of those. Description of the Issue, problem statement, sometimes this is referred to, should address what the underlying issues, challenges, and opportunities are that give rise to the need for TTA for body-worn cameras. How are you going to go about that? You should address how your organization and any of its partners will go about providing that TTA in a way that's consistent and serves the body-worn camera program. You should spend considerable amount of time. I'm talking about your Capabilities and Competencies of how you can meet these challenges, what similar work you've done. You should develop a Plan for Collecting Performance Measures. All grants have performance measures included. This should address how these will be tracked, ideally, who's going to be reporting them to BJA. And there is a link to the metrics when you go to the solicitation. And then, should present a Budget that's reasonable, cost-effective. And I'm not going to be able to say this word well, but eligible, meaning that, it should be applied to and relevant to the scope of the work that you're doing. Again, I'm just giving the surface here. There's much more detail in the Body-Worn Camera TTA solicitation.
So, just some overarching points of the Budget. There is no match required. The body-worn camera grantees themselves, the sites do have to put up a match. We want some skin in the game. But here, you're not getting funding necessarily to sustain yourself as organizations, but to serve the broader community. So, there's no match here. But nonetheless, you should consider the most cost-effective and cost-efficient ways to provide this TTA. Indirect costs are allowable as any type of grant, any grant like this usually includes that those should be reasonable. And then, we're looking to have conferences, be they in-person or virtual. And so the applicant should be familiar with the rules for conference course approval and reporting that all Office of Justice Programs grantees and cooperative agreement awardees need to follow. And again, that's spelled out in the solicitation as well as the grant's financial guidance that's referenced in the links that are provided too in the solicitation.
And then just finally, for those of you who are on the call who are familiar with grant programs, we shifted to JustGrants a few years ago. So this is just the link to the Budget Detail Form. A little different than what we had done before 2021, I believe it was. There was—the budget was an attachment, now it's part of the JustGrants system and the relatively new grant system.
I'm going to take another breath and then we’ll skip to our second solicitation, the Supporting Small, Rural, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agency Program. And I'll provide a little overview of that. The goals are to develop and administer a microgrant program, so that's how it's primarily distinguished from our other program that we talked about today, the TTA program. But basically, on top of that microgrant program, the goal is to provide high quality and comprehensive TTA that responds to the micrograntee's need, so focused on small, rural, and tribal agencies' unique needs. Again, to compile resources and knowledge management projects, products that serve this group. And then again to remain up-to-date on what's happening in the BWC ecosystem. And then to work collaboratively with BJA and to coordinate with the Body-Worn Camera TTA provider, which is the complementary program to this.
I think I skipped over a couple slides. Let me make sure I'm getting the right sequence. Okay. So the Core Objectives are very similar to design and administer competitive selection process for providing funding in some rational way to micrograntees. So, we may—in the past, for instance, we had about a thousand applications and then we funded several hundred agencies in one iteration of the microgrant. And then we repeated that several times during the course of the grant. Also the responsibility of the awardee in this case will be to assure that all micrograntees are held to the program requirements that are reflected in the BWC-PIP so the subgrantees do have to provide a match. They can request funds up to $2,000 per Body-Worn Camera. Again, check the BWC-PIP solicitation for details about that. They'll work collaboratively with BJA, produce publications, and generally knowledge products, again, focused to small, rural, and tribal agencies, and then provide the training and technical assistance to those agencies. And then, at the end of the grant period, which is three years, we just want some sort of compilation of how that was done, what were the successes and challenges that were unique to small, rural, and tribal agencies and providing them to these microgrants and the training and technical assistance. So basically, lessons learned at the end of the project.
Major Deliverables are the application process that would be done in close consultation with BJA. We want it to be comparable to our general BWC-PIP program, the direct funding program, but, again, streamlined to meet those small, rural, and tribal agencies where they are. The applicant here would be expected to track those micrograntees in an interactive way to monitor their progress and report back to BJA. We would want a webinar much like this to be held for those small, rural, and tribal micrograntees. We'd like a user-friendly website where agencies can come to learn about the SRT program, apply for microgrants, and learn about the resources that are related to small, rural, and tribal agencies. As with the other program, regular progress and update calls with BJA, formerly at least biweekly, but there will be, no doubt, more frequent communication that given the size and the complexity of this project and development of knowledge projects.
Here's the Standard Application Information. Same layout as with the TTA, describe the issue, why do small, rural, and tribal agencies need assistance with microgrant or with body-worn camera microgrants, and what are some of the unique considerations of BWCs in that setting. They should describe the issue, demonstrate basic knowledge of the challenges to small, rural, and tribal agencies, and what are the opportunities to serve them. Project Design and Implementation is the plurality of your score, if I can use that term, at 40%. So, how is your agency and its partners going to go about designing this Competitive Body-Worn Camera Program and provide TTA. Almost equal to that is the description of your Capabilities and Competencies as an organization in conjunction with your partners. We think for both of these projects that these are very large and complex, so you need a wide array of subject matter experts, different people doing different sort of roles. So whether you bring those in under your organization or partner with other organizations, we want to see sort of that full complement in a diverse cross-section of skills, and knowledge, and attributes that your folks will bring to this project. Plan for Collecting Performance Measures, similarly, it's 5%. And then the Budget is 10% of your score, the weight is 10% of your score. And, again, it should be reasonable and cost-effective. As I said, with the TTA award, all this detail—I'm just scratching the surface. All this detail is spelled out more in the solicitations themselves.
So, just to give you a sense, because this is a big part of this SRT award, the current eligibility criteria for small, rural, and tribal microgrant applicants are essentially small—any law enforcement agency or law enforcement department with 50 or fewer full-time sworn personnel, which is probably, covers a large cross-section of agencies. Those could be in rural settings, urban settings. They can be special jurisdictional agencies, but 50 or fewer full-time sworn. And then we do have some allowance for rural agencies. Most rural agencies are probably smaller than 50 full-time sworn, but there may be some larger agencies that serve non-urban, non-metro counties. And so we'd expect you to sort of help define that and make sure that when they apply, they meet those eligibility. And then all federally recognized tribal law enforcement agencies are eligible to apply. The darker green note at the bottom just states what I stated earlier that we may, as we move forward, refine this definition to better meet the needs and—of those agencies out there to better understand who's being funded and who's not getting funded.
Budget Considerations are pretty much the same, there's no match. The awardee here is required to administer a microgrant program. Indirect costs are allowable, but we want to expect—we expect to see the majority of funds be provided to small, rural, and tribal agencies as pass-through, so as competitive program, but once we establish what the funding levels are for those micrograntees, we want a large bulk of that $8,000,000 to go to the agencies, that's what the appropriations language wants us to do, is to get body-worn cameras embedded in law enforcement agencies, and full or comprehensive and holistic programs. So that said, we think TTA is important, but we think a good balance is about 85% of funds to go to the microgrant awards and the administration, and about 15% going to support TTA, so it should be scaled according to that.
Again, with the new JustGrants system in the same slide, this is the TTA, a lot of people applying probably are familiar with the federal grant process. But if you're new, this is the place where you go to figure out how to do to a budget form.
With that, I'll sort of bring it home, talk about the application submission details and these basically are parallel, identical for both of these solicitations. So there are really two components, there's the Grants.gov component and the JustGrants component that you need to achieve before you finalize and submit your final application. And that's spelled out in the solicitation. I'll talk about that in a few slides more. There's a lot of detail in the solicitation itself, but here are some of the—for both awards, for both solicitations, this is what every application must include.
There's the Application for Federal Assistance, which is the Standard Form-424. There is the Disclosure of Lobbying Activities, which is the Standard Form-LLL. Those are submitted in in Grants.gov, at an earlier date, I'll talk about that. Then when you submit in JustGrants, every application must have a Project Abstract that's built into JustGrants. So it's pretty hard to miss it, but obviously if you don't put anything in there, if you put it in a sentence, it may not qualify for a Proposal Abstract. So follow the parameters there. The Proposal Narrative is key. If there's no Proposal Narrative, this won't move forward—your application won't move forward to peer review. There's some specific instructions that I'll talk about and it's best to adhere to those for the Proposal Narrative. The Budget Detail Worksheet and Budget Narrative are both combined in JustGrants. So, there's a standard form to put in your dollar amounts per task or equipment, or things that you need and to put it in a Budget Narrative. If you want to include a separate Budget Narrative, there's attachment that's allowable, but it's not required. You will complete a Financial Management System of Internal Controls Questionnaire. You should disclose as an attachment any disclosure of pending applications for similar work. These are fairly what I call unicorn programs. I don't think anybody else is funding anything similar to this, but you may be applying, let's say, for a grant with the state that's administrating awards, so to be on the safe side, you would include that. And what's required, we encourage partnerships, so if you're partnering with agencies, if you're going to have somebody come on to help you do this work as a contractor, or as just a partner at like a university, you should, definitely list those partner agencies upfront rather than—it's better to do that than say that they will be determined at some future point.
So these are attachments that should be included when applicable if you're doing indirect cost rate, you should submit an Indirect Cost Rate Agreement with some federal agency that's up to date and current. You should provide Research Partner Letter of Participation, either a letter of support or an MOU, actually not just for research, but for anybody who's going to be doing substantive work with you as a partner. If you're—there's a tribal entity that's applying to provide the Tribal Authorizing Resolution. If you're doing substantial research and evaluation as part of your proposal, you should provide a Research and Evaluation Independence and Integrity form. And then you should always provide sort of key resumes for key personnel who will be doing major substantive elements of the work or—that you're proposing to do, major substantive elements.
Here's the key part or the project narrative, which is what the peer reviewers will focus on. We're allowing you 20 numbered pages to describe what you want to do, that's double-spaced. Use a 12-point font, if possible, Times New Roman. That's what we prefer. You should use. one-inch margins. Use—I refer to the criteria for scoring. So you should use that as an outline copy, add more detail to that outline and use sections and subtitles. It makes it much more easy for peer reviewers to follow what's going on and then after that, BJA will review these and make their funding decisions. You can imagine anything you're reading is divided into—in an organized manner and has subtitles that give a clue to your organization. It'll probably be much more well-received and understood by peer reviewers, so do pay close heed to doing that. Attachment do not come against page limits. So, if you want to provide examples of similar work for knowledge projects that might be— that you propose would come out of this, you can do that, the resumes and all other things. Organizational charts can be provided as attachments. They don't come against your project narrative.
So use the provided budget form in JustGrants. I don't think there's any way you can get around that. Something has to be submitted there. For you to submit your application, provide a budget narrative for all the budget items. We need to know the context of how you're spending the money. And as I said before, a separate budget narrative document is not necessary. There is space within the JustGrants form to input textual data about how you're going to use those funds. But if you want to do a separate attachment, there will be no harm in doing so. Again, performance management is important. So, provide a plan for collecting this data. That's a requirement and you'll be required to comply with the reporting requirements in the award period as is specified in the solicitation. There's lots of detail there. I won't get into that.
This is just a recap of what I talked about for both. Solicitation statement of the problem is 10%. It's a problem statement. They're a bit of the background of why, basically the reasons why you're pursuing the grant. How you're going to pursue the grant project design and implementation. And the organizational capabilities and competencies together comprise the bulk of your score, 75%. How you're going to collect the performance measurement data. And the budget is, that's not necessarily part of the project narrative, it's the separate budget form, but they should coincide. And in your narrative, you might make some reference to the total budget amount just so I think as people are reading a narrative, they're clear about that. And they can tie that better to the budget forms that they will be reviewing—the peer reviewers will be reviewing. Okay.
I'm going to leave some time for Q&A here. We do have another 40 minutes here, but I'm getting close to closing up here. So what you should do next, if you already haven't—if you already have not done—if you have not already done it is register with Grants.gov. You'll need a unique—need to acquire a Unique Entity Identifier. If you've applied for grants recently, you've probably already done this for other grants. Or you may have already started your BWC related grants for TTA or SRT. You should register or renew your SAM, you System of Award Management, number and registration. And you should basically register with Grants.gov. Again, the SF-424 and the SF-LLL, the Disclosure of Lobbying Activities need to be submitted through Grants.gov. That's across government grant system, not just confined to DOJ. Those are things that you need to do and attend to by April 4th. And then that will enable you to complete your BWC-TTA or SRT application in DOJ's grant management system called JustGrants. These are—the first link is to general funding currently available, so that's always changing and updating. Here are the two solicitations I talked about today. And actually, if you were to put in the number ending in 6-2 instead of 6-1, 6-3, that's actually the Body-Worn Camera and Policy, or the BWCPIP program direct funding to law enforcement agencies. So that number ending in 62 would be the link to that grant if you want to reference that.
And here's the general sign on to JustGrants. This is a sensitive forward button, so I just want to make sure we're not skipping over. Again, two-step application process that was started in 2021, the second year we're doing that. Submit the SF-424, and the SF-LLL, which is the Disclosure of Lobbying Activities through Grants.gov. And then everything else is done through JustGrants system. Okay.
This is a quick checklist you can reference that helps you go through. This is all—the link is also provided in the solicitation itself. A sensitive forward button, I'm sorry about that. Here are some resources you go to. A lot of folks adjusted to JustGrants. But the administrators in OJP recognized, when we're changing the program, that we needed some handholding. So, here are some resources, some videos that gets you through the process. So, I'll leave it up there momentarily.
And here's how you can stay connected to learn about OJP. What we're doing, how we're proceeding, what are our grant funds when grant funds become available, what are the resources we're doing, what are we doing out in the field? How are we reaching out to the community? The criminal justice community and working with them. What meetings and convenings we're having. So, tune us in on social media. And then for general grant funding opportunities, publications, initiatives, visit our general website. I think I'm about done here.
There's some information on Grants.gov and JustGrants. So these are—basically your helplines and help desk information. If you have questions about programmatic requirements, go to the OJP Response Center. But for the issues with navigating either JustGrants or Grants.gov, go to those sources here. These are also in the solicitation. That's the contact information for the response center. There's my contact information right here. I frankly don't have the bandwidth to respond to calls, particularly if they're about JustGrants or technical issues in using the system. The folks at the response center will reach out to me and relay questions that they have about the substantive elements of the program. So, that's the best pathway to go. But I think with this grant program, as opposed to the direct funding program, I'll be more available. So you probably can reach out to me if it's a critical and complex issue. But just be mindful of my bandwidth, please.
Okay. Now we'll move to the Q&A portion. And that's it. Thanks, Daryl. You want to—I have been talking and focused on the slide. So I didn't see the questions that they were coming in. But if you want to guide me through them, we'll try to address as many of them as we can in the—roughly the half hour we have reserved.
DARYL FOX: Yes, most certainly. Thanks for that, John. Get a glass of water, that was a lot of information, very useful. And just a reminder for everybody on today's webinar, the PowerPoint recording and transcript will be posted to the BJA website. So when those are posted, we're going to send an email to the registration list for today. And you'll be noted to where those reside on the site. You can go back, access the PowerPoint recording for today. If you do have a question, go ahead and enter it in the Q&A box bottom right side of your screen, three dots. And then send to all panelists. Go ahead and go through those today. We have quite a bit of time left for today. John, there was one just regarding—go ahead.
JOHN MARKOVIC: I think I'm seeing that. Go ahead.
DARYL FOX: Just regarding the lobbying form, I suppose. “If there's no federal lobbyist, what's required for that form? Is it just not applicable you submit?”
JOHN MARKOVIC: I don't fill out grant applications. But I think there's a form that needs to be filled. And I think it's basically you indicate in whatever way, shape, or form [INDISTINCT] that you're not engaged in any lobbying activities. I'd see—I'd have looked at that in the past. I've had similar questions. And I think— it's basically answering ‘not applicable’ there would work.
DARYL FOX: And that's correct. We actually just verified with the response center live here that the instructions are in the resource guide. But, yeah, you can put N/A and number 10A/B for that if that applies to you that way. Perfect.
JOHN MARKOVIC: Thanks, Daryl, that’s great.
DARYL FOX: There's really nothing in the queue as of yet. But what we have some moments here, just sit tight. And if you do have a question, please go ahead and enter that in. While we're waiting as well, I'll put this slide up. As John mentioned, the three different entities, if you do have any additional questions, once we conclude today, the Grants.gov, JustGrants, or the OJP Response Center, you can contact them here. For the next question that came in, they were wondering where that resource guide is. We'll go ahead and put a link in to that resource guide in the chat for you to be able to access, just a bit momentarily.
JOHN MARKOVIC: Okay. Well, I guess hopefully no questions are a sign that things were clear. There are opportunities as you dive further into the solicitation and move forward to reach out to—if you're having technical difficulties with JustGrants or Grants.gov, or if you have programmatic questions, there are the numbers that Daryl put up. I'm seeing a question come up from Suzanne Dugas— So this small, rural, and tribal administration program is not for—the question is I understand that this—that this SRT is not for law enforcement agencies, but it's the one for direct funding for law enforcement agencies. Similar purpose—to the purpose of that grant and I—at the beginning, I put in the link there. It's —really for agencies getting direct funding for body-worn cameras. So, they would basically competitively apply for a Body-Worn Camera Program often to establish a Body-Worn Camera Program. But it could also be to expand an existing program, less often for pilot programs. In the early stages of our history of this program, we had significantly more agencies basically applied to do a pilot program to test out whether or not body-worn cameras are working for them. We've gotten fewer of those. So that's the direct funding. And then the SRT Administration Award is what we talked about today. And the other link that I provided is www.srtbwc.com is the site to go where agencies would apply for indirect funding, so to speak, as a subgrantee to the administrator of that award and wherever you're competing that administrative award. So those are the two places that local agencies can go, law enforcement agencies. Anybody can apply for BWCPIP and SRT. Those are the criteria that we talked about for small, rural, and tribal. That solicitation is run periodically. We've gotten some more flexibility. We can do that sort of as needed as the funds become available as opposed to most of the direct funds from BJA, which we do yearly with the grant cycle. We only generally administer one BWCPIP award per year, but SRT, we have some flexibility. We just closed that on February 17th. Thanks, Tammy for putting that information up there. And Daryl, give it a few more minutes to see if any more questions arise.
Okay. I think we'll—oh, okay, great. I think we'll leave it at that. And I hope that many of you are considering applying for this award. Good luck. And as stated, if you need more assistance, the information is in the solicitation, but here it is for one last glance before we sign off. Thanks to Daryl and Tammy for guiding us through and setting up this webinar. I hope it was informative to you all. Thanks. For that, I'm going to sign off.
DARYL FOX: Thanks so much, John. So on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and our panelist, we want to thank you for joining today's webinar. This will end today's presentation.
JOHN MARKOVIC: Perfect