Grantee Webinar: Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence Program

ANDREA BORCHARDT: Hello, my name is Andrea Borchardt, and I would like to welcome the grantees of the Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence Program. Before we begin, I want to reiterate information from the original email, that this webinar is for current grantees and relevant subgrantees, such as [INDISTINCT] project for this program. If you have not yet done so, you're welcome to forward the email invite to any of the relevant subgrantees for your project, to ensure they're receiving this pertinent information about JustGrants. I will now turn it over to one of your JustGrants trainer, Ms. Jennifer Jeffries, to discuss webinar ground rules. Jennifer?
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thank you so much. So for this webinar, we are using WebEx features. We do ask that you provide and answer--provide any questions that you have, and add into the Q&A chat box located on the right hand side of your screen. If you do have a specific technical issue towards the webinar--webinar's video and audio, we do ask that you use the chat to notify the host of any issues that you're having. Video is currently disabled for all participants, and attendees are muted to limit any background noise for this session. Next screen. As I mentioned, if you need technical assistance, please utilize the chat to alert the host of your technical issues for WebEx. If you cannot hear, click the arrow next to the mute or unmute icon to change the audio on your speakers. If you still cannot hear, please phone in using the meeting invitation details. Next slide. If you are submitting any questions that you may have during the session, we ask that you use the WebEx Q&A functionality. Please address these questions to all panelists. As I mentioned earlier, if you need technical assistance, please let us know via chat, in the WebEx. And there are two icons on the screen to show you where that is located. Great. I'll turn it back over to Andrea to walk us through a few DOJ-specific notes.
ANDREA BORCHARDT: Thank you, Jennifer. Before we get into the meat of our training today, I need to provide you guys with the DOJ disclaimer, essentially stating that any opinion stated there, those are the presenter, and not necessarily those of DOJ. And next slide, please. This is the brief agenda, the bulk of today's session will be focused on the JustGrants training for you, but we'll provide about five or ten minutes of background information, including a welcome, what is BJA, introduction for the staff working at your funds, a little bit about the program, and then, again, we're going to get into the bulk of what Jennifer will teach you for JustGrants. Next slide, please. And this is a big warm welcome to all of you, who are new at BJA and administering this program, and we're very excited to have you here for this training. We want to let you guys know who we are, and make sure that you know you can contact us if you need any help with any portions of your project. Next slide, please. As you all likely know, this program and other forensic capacity problems are recently transferred from the National Institute of Justice to the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Since I think it's helpful to orient oneself to the menagerie of government acronyms and agencies, this is an org chart of the Office of Justice Programs, or also known as OJP. OJP is one component of the Department of Justice, and our mission is to increase public safety, and improve the fair administration of justice in America. Within OJP, there are six main offices. BJA, which I highlighted with a blue little arrow, so you can find us in the org chart of OJP. We also have Bureau of Justice Statistics, a National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, Office of Victim--for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking, also known as the SMART Office. Next slide, please. Specifically at BJA, we strive to help make American communities safer by strengthening the nation's criminal justice system, with the transfer of the forensic capacity grants to BJA, we now had a forensics unit staff with subject matter experts like myself. Next slide, please. When an award is made within BJA, the Administration of Funds and Monitoring of Performance is managed by three main units. The Programs Office, the Policy Office, and the Performance Metrics team. Kathy Manning, the top right in red, is in the Programs Office, where she works to administer your funds, and ensure compliance with applicable law. You're like--all likely familiar with her through interactions in JustGrants. One very important thing I do want to mention about the Programs Office is if you have a submission of a GAM, or any change in your project scope, it's important to note that while Kathy is super awesome, she's not the be-all and end-all layer of approval for changes to modifications of your project. So please remember when you submit any change requests, that you will need to build in some lee time because there are multiple layers of approval for these changes. Vanessa Castellanos and Andrea Borchardt, myself, we're in the left, and top to bottom. We're in the Policy Office, but we are forensic subject matter experts, helping to advise Kathy when she has a question about the solicitation, anything about forensic, the postconviction specific issues. Michael Adams, you can see him on the right, oversees the performance spot checks, and helps to ensure we have proper and measurable data with which to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Next slide, please. And here's our contact information, so you can reach out to us. I know you likely have Kathy's information, but if you want to take a picture right now of the screen so you can capture our phone numbers and email addresses, you can reach out to myself, Vanessa, Michael, and Kathy at any point to help with your project, any questions you have. We're here to give you support, and help make sure your project is a success. And we'll just pause here for a couple more seconds so you guys can get your phones out, and take pictures as you need. Okay. You can go forward to the next slide, please. All right. So about this program, the Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence. This is in response to the Justice for All Act of FY2005, which is also reauthorized in FY17. And directs the Attorney General to establish the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Grant Program to award grants of States and help defray the cost of post-conviction DNA testing. Specifically, the program helps defray costs associated with case review, evidence location, and DNA testing in violent felony cases, where the results of such testing might show actual innocence. So, pretty much about the steps that lead up to the DNA testing are able to be funded under this program, as well as the DNA testing, of course. Next slide, please. For those of you who don't know, the Justice for All Reauthorization of 2016 has actually occurred in FY17, that's not--a little bit confusing. It's actually set to expire in 2021, it's what we base our solicitation off of, so I do want to bring your attention to this. And a section that I heard is perhaps unpopular with some folks, which is the state legal officers signing off about the evidence preservation loss. When we write our solicitations, again, we have to follow the legislation that authorizes them, so this is where that language comes from within the program, so if you have questions about how we are enforcing that, a lot of times, it can be helpful to go back to the original legislation that authorized it, which is, again, the Justice for All Reauthorization of 2016. Next slide, please. All right. And here's a tiny bit
of background on the program. It was first competed in FY2007, and after a small hiccup, which is not uncommon for any program, the funds were finally awarded in FY08. And to date, 94 awards have been made, totaling over $64,000,000, which is, I think, pretty awesome. Of note is that in FY20, we did add some language about the DOJ interim policy for forensic genetic genealogy and searching. And while we have--this supply have limited impact on most of you, I strongly recommend that you reach out to me prior to using funds for this purpose, so we can talk through the policy, the interim DOJ policy, and how you'll be confined with it, and the associated metrics reporting. Any conversations about that will also be held in conjunction with Kathy, since she is the one--the main person who administers your projects and your grants. But I'll help give you some ideas about the policy, and help make sure I'm pointing you in the right direction. We do plan to offer this program in FY21, we do not have a date as to when the solicitation will be released, we are hopeful it will be soon. But we are--we plan to offer it again with very minor changes, to essentially streamline our review process, and to increase some allowable activities with the funding. Please advance the slide. And this slide is just a shoutout for our FY20 grantees, we're so happy to have you and wish you well on your project. If you need any help, I am a forensic DNA analyst, I've worked with numerous post-conviction cases in Florida, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, California, a number of places in my previous life as a DNA scientist, and I want you to know that we are all here to help make your project a success. So if there's anything we can do for you, please don't hesitate to reach out. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Jennifer for your JustGrants training session.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks so much, Andrea, that was really great. So welcome again everyone, to our JustGrants portion of the webinar. My name again is Jennifer Jeffries, and I'm a training specialist with the Department of Justice. Today on the call, I have Lisa Hartman, a colleague of mine, who's been supporting JustGrants as well, so we'll walk you through a few demos, and answer your questions, related to the new system. I'll go ahead to the next slide, Lisa. So let's take a look at a brief overview of the steps that have been taken before accepting your award. There are a few roles that you should have already completed, and looked at for authorized users in JustGrants. With these roles, you want to think about who will be working on your grants currently, as well as in the future. Here's a list of the roles that are now available to assign to your users. Keep in mind that the users can be assigned multiple roles when you're assigning them. Once you have a list, please go into DIAMD, and add each person as--and assign those roles. Once you've added them, please let them know to be on the lookout for invitation from DIAM, to go ahead and complete their registration process. Again, you may have already been through some of this process here, but we want to just orient you with a few other roles that are in the new system. Go to the next slide, Lisa. So now, let's review the roles that are important with Award Acceptance process. The Authorized Representative is the only role that is able to accept or decline an award. It must be the person in your--in your organization with the authority to enter into a legal agreement on behalf of the entity, and bind it to the award terms and conditions. The authorized representative is assigned in the application submission process. However, the Entity Administrator should verify the correct authorized representative to the award package in order to accept or decline the award. If the authorized representative has changed since
the application was submitted, the entity administrator will need to take steps to reassign the correct authorized representative to the award prior to accepting or declining. On the next slide, this image shows the steps that are taken, an important part in the application and award acceptance process. The entity administrator and application submitter role were submitted--created, excuse me, to the Grants.gov finished, and there's time. The entity administrator needs to create and confirm, again, the authorized rep, so that the authorized rep can be included in the JustGrants application submission. If an application will result in a funding approval, the entity administrator needs to invite and register the financial manager, and grant award administrator that will be responsible for the funded award. The authorized representative will then accept the award. Once the award is accepted, the entity administrator will need to add, again, those roles that are key to navigate through the system. So now, we'll take a few moments that we've seen key activities, and look at the award acceptance process in JustGrants. Lisa?
LISA HARTMAN: Uh-hmm. Oh, thanks, Jennifer. So let's take a quick demo and look at the award acceptance process. Again, the person in the organization who's going to accept the award is going to be the authorized representative. So, if you have not logged into JustGrants previously, we'll just orient you a little bit on this--on the home page here. On the upper left, you see a menu with various different options. You will always arrive, when you log-in on the home screen. And the home screen has this very important, My Worklist, here in the center. It's important to understand that whenever you open a task like a GAM, or a performance report, excuse me, from the work list, it will automatically open in edit mode. So we've had a lot of problems, a lot of questions about, you know, how do I edit my grant, how do I edit my award. This is the way. The best way, open it from the home page, and then, it will open directly. There's an option also to--a little further down the menu, to open a list of awards that are available to the entire--to your entire organization. You can open your award there, but if you do that, you're going to have to look for a begin button on a programmatic path. Until you hit that begin button, your award is not--is going to be in a view only mode, you won't be able to edit it. So, that having been said, I just wanted to get that out of the way because we get so many questions about that. So I'm going to go ahead and start off this little demo. And what we're going to do here is use--from the home page, again, we're going to look for the-we're going to look for actually a grant package. And if you look under the case type, there are all different sorts of case types. This one is going to be the accept or decline award, and these are awards as the authorized representative that I'm able to take a look at, and either accept or decline. So, once you find the awards you want to work with, you're going to click the blue link on the left, and it will open up the award package, or the grant package. So there are a number of things that as the authorized representative you have to review and confirm, and accept. So each of these separate sections, and the first one is the introduction letter, you'll see the text and the letter. And if you notice a little checkbox down here, you have to check that box, saying, you've read and you've understand the information, so you've accepted that section. Next we have the award information section, and this is to provide information about the award, and the number, the amount, and the like. The next section is project information, and again, here you have solicitation title, you see how it's linked to the application. The next section is financial information, you'll see your budget in here, with Total Cost Breakdown at the
bottom. And again, that is separately accepted. The next section, we have award conditions, and if there is a NEPA letter, you might see the contents of that in here. But each of these award conditions needs to be read and understood. You're going to accept all of the award conditions as a single group. So, we're--you're not going to be able to do that line by line. But, you know, again, we're reading pretty fast here. So, in this particular award, we have over 50 award conditions, and I think that, in general, there are a substantial number of conditions that are applied to most awards. So we'll watch as I'll scroll down here, and we'll make it down to the bottom, then we will accept all of the award conditions at once. And we're rolling into the 40s, so we're almost there. All right. Continuing down. I'd like to notice that just above the checkbox, there's a "Load More" link, which will load additional award conditions, then again, those will all have to be agreed too as well. So now you've agreed to all of the award conditions, and we're at the electronic signature page. You're going to see here, when you certify, it's going to populate the title, the name, and the timestamp, date and timestamp, that the person authorizing this. And this does have to be the person, it should be the person who is authorized to enter into a legal agreement, and binds your organization to these award conditions. So, you can see here, it's fairly straightforward. We do this all by electronic signature now. So, selecting that certified button here, we'll apply your electronic signature, there's no longer need to print and fax or scan or email a copy of this. At the bottom, you have the option to decline or accept. And you also have the option to cancel. But if you decline, they're going--you're going to be asked to provide a justification for declining the award. And if there's associated documentation, you can select that file, and upload it at the time. But we're going to accept this award. So there we are, go ahead click the accept button, and once we have accepted the award, then it is an active funded award, where you see, it's "Pending Account Creation" here. At this point, the entity administrator will need to assign the grant award administrator and the finance manager to this award in order for actions to be taken place. All right. Jennifer, I'll turn this back over to you, to see if there are any questions about the process so far?
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks, Lisa, for doing a demo on award acceptance. We do have a question on the audience. What's the easiest way to share the award agreement and condition with others in our--in our organization?
LISA HARTMAN: That is a good question. So the award conditions all come from the solicitation, which is actually accessible in that screen as well. So you can see that. And then, the other option--I know that right now with JustGrants, we have--there are some processes that we're able to print, and some that they're still working on printing. And I have to say, right up the top of my head, I am not sure that you can print the grant award package prior to accepting. But the award conditions are all included in your solicitation, and they should also be available in your application, and both of those documents are actually linked. And I'm going to go--maybe I can go back and show you where that is. So, when I come here, let's take a quick look. We're back here. And back a little farther, back a little farther, and a little farther. So, if you notice here, you can see the application here. There's a button link, and you should be able to see the award conditions in the application. And I believe that you can see the solicitation information as well, but the application can be printed from here.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Okay. Great. Thank you. That's the only question that we have so far for application, if you were accepted. So we can go ahead to the next section, and so, if you have any more questions related to our next section, which is GAMs. All righty. So Grant Award Modifications, also known as GAMs. A GAM is created to update the award details, but it reviews almost modify a key fact, or detail about the award. There are three types of GAMs, and on this screen, you will--you'll see that there are the three specific types that are available, Project Period Extension GAM, Programmatic GAMs, as well as Financial GAMs. And you can see the individual diagram to initiate the GAM. A Project Period Extension GAM is used to extend the project period of your grant. The Programmatic GAM is used to update changes in a project scope, or to gain prior approval for changes with Programmatic Cost and activities at the DOJ Financial Guide. Financial GAMs are used to modify budget details, or approve its budget that received a conditional clearance when awarded. As you see here, that there three types of Financial GAMs. There's a Budget Modification GAM, Sole Source GAM, and Budget Reduction GAM. If you notice at the bottom, there's a Budget Clearance GAM. However, that's only initiated by internal DOJ financial staff or OTFO. Users can enter information into a GAM, they can save it, and they can return with it to complete it for submission. Once the GAM is submitted, DOJ will use it, and send you a notification that is going to be approved or denied. We'll go over the next slide, to take a look of a few highlights. The purpose again of the GAM is to update award detail. They're used to modify again those key details of the award, and they're not limited to changes to award details that are--with compliance as far as requirements or deliverables, and you can delete a GAM before submitting it. Here are a few items that are no longer considered GAM. Before an entity would use a GAM to change the grant award administrator or authorized representative, now the entities will manage their own users and entity information assignment. Also entities use to have to process a GAM to release a hold on [INDISTINCT] not what happens in a different area of JustGrants without the need of a GAM. Let's see if we have a demonstration where we can walk through the process of submitting GAMs in JustGrants. Lisa?
LISA HARTMAN: So, thanks again, Jen. So, we'll take a look at how to initiate a GAM, and again, I want to emphasize that if you log-in to your award, and you have not logged in to using a--either to the--to the active award, in other words, if you have not logged in from your home page, or you have not clicked the begin button, when you are logged into the award from the awards menu, then you're not going to be able to take any action here. Also, it should--I should remind you that only the grant award administrator assigned to the award is going to be able to take any action on--in GAM. An alternate grant award administrator can also initiate a GAM, but cannot submit. If you look in the header of this award, you'll see listed on the left, below the solicitations title, second to the bottom, the grant award administrator. That is the only person in your organization able to initiate, and send a GAM, that for your--for this particular award. So, I'm going to go ahead and set this up, and so, the grant award modification is found within the Funded Award, and you can see that there's a Grant Award Modification Header here, and this is where all GAMs are initiated, and where they're tracked. So, you can see GAMs that are in progress, you can see historical GAMs at the bottom of the screen. But when you select a GAM, you can select the type. So the first one we're going to select is the financial type of GAM, and you can see it will give you a subtype menu option. You can choose the sub--the
Financial Subtype. If you select the Programmatic GAM, you can see that you have the Programmatic Cost or Scope Change options. And finally, if you select the Project Period Extension GAM, there is no subtype. It will typically just open up the fields for you to process a project period extension GAM. It is--it should be noted that a Project Period Extension GAM can only be created by your Grant Manager within 30 days of the project period ended. Prior to that, you can create your own Project Period Extension GAM. One more cautionary comment about GAMs is that, if you have a Project Period Extension GAM in progress, you won't be able to open a second one. This is true of any type of GAM. If you have a Budget Modification GAM in progress, you won't be able to start another one. The first one will have to be resolved first. So now, I'd like to take a look at the next demo, which is how to complete a particular type of GAM. So we do have training materials, a step by step instruction with screenshots, and we also have videos on how to--on how to initiate and submit every type of GAM we have. But to the interest of time today, we're just going to look at a Budget Modification GAM, just to kind of go feel for how the topic works. So again, here, I am on my Grant Award Modification, I'm going to do a Budget Modification GAM, which is a financial type. So I selected financial, then, I'll select the subtype, Budget Modification. And once I have that selected, I can click that blue button that says "Create New GAM". Notice underneath the In Progress GAMs, and there are also completed GAMs below that, so we're able to track all that. So the Budget Modification GAM allows you to revise your budget figures. And what you want to do is type the budget figure you want to be following the revision in the right-hand column. And you'll notice as you do, that JustGrants is going to calculate the requested change for you. So, it's pretty straightforward. Well, there you are, it's going to calculate all of these totals for you. And then, it's saying in the box, that you see surrounded by a box, is editable, you can make those edits. Notice in the center of the screen, there's a little line that says, "For guidance, see the DOJ Financial Guide Chapter 3.11 on indirect cost." And that link will take you directly to that section of the guide, in case you need additional information. You can type a text justification in the text field. And if you'd like to enter your indirect cost rate agreement, you can go ahead, and click the entity dock link, and it will allow you to just upload that file. You can also use the upload dock file to enter or to add any additional documentation that is required. And you can also type in your comments to your Grant Manager. You just type, and then, you click submit, and your GAM has been then sent off to--for approval. And you can see at the top of the page, these little purple messages at the top of the page, this one says, "Pending Approval". That tells you the status of your GAM or your award. So it's important to pay attention to those status quotes. All right. Jennifer, I'll turn it back over to you, talk about the Review and Approval process.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks, Lisa. So once a GAM is submitted, it's going to a Grant Manger for approval, and if a Grant Manager approves the GAM, it is sent forward through an internal review process. But internal review varies based on the type of GAM, and the managing office, so that may vary again depending on that particular GAM that you're submitting. If a GAM status changes during the internal review process, both the grantee and Grant Manager receive notification. Once a GAM has been approved, it is then sent to the financial system, or ASAP, to update the award information. And at this point, it can take up to 24 hours to update your funded award with financial information.
So let's go ahead and see if there are any questions related to GAMs in the chat. This is a great one that comes up quite a bit in our sessions. "Does the alternate award administrator have the ability to submit a GAM?"
LISA HARTMAN: The Alternate Grant Award Administrator has the ability to create a GAM or to initiate one but only the Grant Award Administrator can submit the GAM.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Okay. Great. Thanks, Lisa. And I don't see any specific questions around GAMs. We do have additional questions in chat that are separate from GAMs but we'll go ahead and move forward until we get to the end where we'll talk about a little bit more general questions.
LISA HARTMAN: All right.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: So now let's go and review the performance reporting process in JustGrants. On the screen, you will see a table that highlights general, quarterly, semiannual, and annual calendar dates for performance reporting throughout the grant award life cycle. This provides you with a general schedule for performance reports of frequency and due date. So we'll leave this up for just a few moments so that you can kind of get a sense of what this looks like throughout the calendar year. All right. And, hopefully, you were able to get a screenshot of that. And we'll go ahead and look a demonstration of the many performance reports in the system. Lisa.
LISA HARTMAN: Thanks again, Jen. So we'll take a look now at performance reports. And I know that this is a--this section generates a lot of questions and comments. So I'm going go ahead and set off this demo. This is a bit lengthy as we look at the different types of performance report. So, again, if you are the Grant Award Administrator, you are going to be the only person that can submit a performance report. And you'll find your performance reports, the ones that are due, here on my work list. So you can see all of the items there on the left that are marked with a PR-case ID. Those are all performance reports. Notice that they have an urgency listed in the center of the--of the screen, so you can tell which ones need to be addressed first. One thing about performance reports, performance reports are automatically generated by JustGrants just prior to your--to the--a date in which you can submit them. So each performance period will have its own performance report. And you have to finish the--you know, if one is not completed, you're not going to be able to complete the next one until the initial one has been completed. So they have to be done sequentially. So we'll go ahead open up a performance report. This one is performance report. I'd like to bring your attention to the section just below the little green bar where it says Complete Performance Measurement Question Set. So if there is no questions that's listed there, you'll need to--there--one of two things is going to happen you should--and you should contact your Grant Manager if you have a question. But the question set, if it is not displayed, if you have typically provided a performance report from an external system, then you'll need to upload that. If you typically provided your--if you're going to be providing your performance report through a JustGrants' question set and you don't see one there, then that is an issue for support. So we saw--we see that it's--this performance report defaults to a regular performance report, and that's based on the end
date for this performance reporting period. If you are going to close out early, you could click the final options just like I showed you there. As we move down in, again, the question set, when it says there, no cases there, then, you know, if you are not going to be submitting your performance report from an external system, you will need to contact a technical support team or your Grant Manager in order to get that question set resolved. You can enter comments about your performance report here, and it's pretty straightforward, text field. All right. EMT is an external system if that's not the one that you've used in the past. Once you put in a comment, you can click save, and notice that the comment appears in the comment history. Your Grant Manager will be able to see this comment. There are--there's an area where you can upload attachments so you can go ahead and upload it. You can drag and drop a file into that text box or you can go and find the file that you're looking for on your--on your workstation. And notice that there's a category field here. You can change the name on the file to read performance report or progress report for whatever, you know, the reporting period is. Notice the category defaults performance report. It should not be changed. That's what will indicate that this is a performance report document. At the bottom, you have a cancel button which means that you cancel all of this without saving anything. You can save and come back later if you choose to. And then finally you can submit your performance report. So this is the way that you would submit a performance report if you are generating that report in an external system. More and more as we move forward with JustGrants, you'll find that awards will have question sets associated with them, and so I'm going to show you next how you will submit a performance report with an associated question set. So starting back again from the home page in my work list, we'll go ahead and open up the performance report that we're going to submit. We'll wait while the demo chooses it. Oh, this is moving a little slow here. Let's see if we can get it to move forward a bit. All right. So one of the things that you'll see that's different is from the type of performance report that's an attachment upload to a question set is if you see a link here under the question set, the expectation is--the requirement is actually that you open that question set, and that will have the list of performance report questions that you'll need to fulfill. So you'll click the link, and when you do, it's going to open that question set. And I want to stop this here momentarily and show you up in the upper right corner here, just next to the assigned to field, you see a little begin link. That is important. Unless you click that begin link, you're not going to be able to make any edits to this performance report. So we're going to go ahead and click that begin link. Until you click the begin link, you can read all the questions but you can't take any actions. Once you click the begin link, however, all of these questions are now active. And bearing in mind that the performance report questions are going to be dependent on the information in your solicitation, we're just going to kind of show you sort of an example of what a performance report looks like. So you'll have radio buttons, these little circular buttons that allow you to have--to check one or the other option. You can't check both. And then you have the check boxes or squares in which you can select multiple options if needed. Down at the bottom right, you see the continue button that moves you to the next section or at the top, in the header, you see the section listed there. You can click those links as well. In some places, you're going to be able to enter something in the performance report and that will generate a follow-up question, and you just continue entering information until you completed all of the followup questions within that section. So we'll move to page three of this performance report.
Notice that the link has changed and now the--page three is dark. We've got drop down menus in this particular section. And there are--you'll notice also that you may find some questions with red asterisks at the end. You can see them at the end of the text of the question that indicates that that is a required field. If you missed one and you get to the end to try to submit your performance report, it will--you'll get an error message that says that there are required fields that were not completed. So, again, now we're on the fourth page, and, again, we have additional--we have additional questions here and then--that can be entered. So we're going to go ahead and do that. Some of these fields may have validations in which it requires a date or a number rather than alphabet. And then finally at the end, we have some narrative questions. And, again, these are all required. You can tell by the asterisk at the end of the question text. I'm just entering not applicable in all of these in order to move forward with the demo. And at the bottom, we have some yes/no questions, and then more additional text questions. Now, you can type directly into the field if you like or you can copy and paste. However, you like. So notice in the bottom right, the little button there says finish. It is not saying submit. This is an important distinction. When you click the finish button that indicates that you've finished answering the questions but that does not mean you have submitted your report. So we have had some questions about that. So once you've finished, you want to go up to the--you can see here that you have all of the questions and answers here, and you can go to the actions menu and print that. If you close the actions menu, you're back here in the performance report area. And notice that once you use the actions button and refresh, you have the option down here next to the question set to reopen if you need to. So you can reopen. Before you submit, reopen and make any changes that you need. Again, just as before you can enter comments, upload documents, but once you click submit then the performance report has gone off and the status has changed now to pending review. So those are the sort of two different ways to submit performance reports. The question sets, I believe, are the--you know, moving forward, are going to be our primary offer. Jennifer, I'll turn this to you to talk a little bit about the approval process.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks, Lisa, for sharing that demo with us. Once the performance report has been submitted, it will be routed to a Grant Manager. Then the Grant Manager or Reviewer has the option to review the performance report. Currently, there is no way to change your performance support in JustGrants, so your Grant Manager will communicate with you by email if additional information is requested. The Grant Manager will upload any of this additional information provided by the Grant Award Administrator as needed. Once all additional information has been provided the Grant Manager or Reviewer will approve the performance report. Once the Grant Manager approves the performance report, it will continue to the DOJ internal review and approval process. Currently, the deliverables section is included in the performance report tab, but-you know, because it allows you to view all deliverables associated with the work conditions, but it also allows you to view all deliverables associated with the work conditions, monitoring issues, GAMs, and other features. Deliverables are classified according to the category type selected for the file when uploading. Let's look here at how to upload documents in the system. To upload a document to JustGrants, you're going to navigate to the performance management tab if it's a performance report. In the funding award, we'll use the attachment button in the deliverable section to begin. Enter it, drag
and drop or you can select a file from a previous location to add. Once the attachment has been located, select the open button. Then you're going go ahead and select the deliverable category and enter a comment indicating the nature of the deliverable. If it applies to a performance report or it's in response to a monitoring issue, be sure to provide information indicating to which issue or performance report the deliverable is associated with. Award compliance deliverables have a separate category and the comments should reflect the condition to which it is--it is associated. Once the deliverable has been uploaded, it appears in the deliverable section with a link to open the document. All users with access to the funded award are able to view the deliverables. This applies to users within your organization, as well as your Grant Manager and other DOJ personnel that are a part of the review and approval process. Now, let's go to the chat to see if there are any questions. And I did see one question come in specifically for performance and progress report. "We have a few folks that have been trying to submit their performance report, and it has now become delinquent because of some challenges with the system. Could you speak a little bit about link reports and if funds would be frozen due to the delinquency?"
LISA HARTMAN: So, yes, I can. Yeah, this is a--this is a question and concern for, I know, a lot of people right now. We have had some issues with the performance reporting with the new system. I think that's not uncommon. But don't worry. If your report is delinquent at this point, there will be no funds frozen. There's not going to be financial repercussions for you, currently. Continue to try to submit the report. I know our development team is working every day to make this easier for you and to address these issues particularly around performance reporting and financial reporting as well. So continue to try to submit these reports. And please contact our technical support team if you can't submit the report because we need to be able to have these issues recorded so that we know the extent of the problem and--you know, and they have more information that they can use to, you know, develop fixes for this. But there--I think that the bottom line is that is--there is no financial repercussion to a delinquent report at this time. Any other questions, Jen?
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: I'm sorry. I was on mute. Yes. We do have another question. "What is the expectation for performance reporting if you are still trying to accept an award?"
LISA HARTMAN: That's a good question. If you have not yet accepted the award, you're not going to have access to a performance report. So I think from a JustGrants standpoint, you're not going to be able to process that. I would ask your Program Manager that question to see if there's anything pragmatically that is expected. So maybe I could ask Andrea or perhaps Kathryn to address that?
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: You may have to take yourself off of mute if you'd like to speak to the audience.
KATHY MANNING: Hi. This is Kathy. So for those who have not yet accepted their award, I think that Lisa may be correct, that you may not have the access to submit that
performance report yet. You're welcome to reach out to me and check and I can look in the system for you. Again, it depends on who's looking in the system. It could be that somebody other than the Grant Award Administrator is looking and is saying, "Hey, I don't see a performance report available to us," but it definitely just may be because it's not assigned to you. So I'd rather confirm. You're welcome to reach out to me, and we can look in the system and see whether or not the system has one ready for you. If you have accepted the award but your funds are still on hold due to withholding special condition or something, you are still required to submit a performance report. We fully understand that your answers are going to be--we haven't had any actually yet because we don't have access to our funds yet. That makes sense. We're not concerned by that answer. But the requirements still holds that you would need to submit a performance report. So if you have questions as to whether or not something is due, please feel free to reach out and I can check for you.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Okay. Great. Thanks so much. We do have a little bit more of a general question that was submitted earlier today in the presentation that I would like to just take a few moments to share with the group if we don't have any additional performance report questions. "As a Grant Award Administrator, how do I change our DUNS number and PACs ID number which are incorrect for our award?" Will anyone from the program office be able to speak to that, or, Lisa, would you like to maybe address this question?
LISA HARTMAN: I can address the question from a technical standpoint. Updating the DUNS number will need to be something you'll need to coordinate with our technical support team. So the entity account that you have is linked to the DUNS number directly, so any changes that need to be made will need to be done with our technical support team backing you up.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks so much, Lisa. We do have...
LISA HARTMAN: Uh-hmm.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: ...another question here about role assignments. "Can more than one person be assigned as a Grant Award Administrator?" And I'll go and add the user role matrix in the chat but I wanted to--for us to speak to this as a group. Kind of speak a little bit more about role assignments. Lisa, could you share a little bit?
LISA HARTMAN: Absolutely. So that's a very good question. So your organization can have as many people assigned to the role Grant Award Administrator as you feel like you need, either now or potentially in the future. In fact, we encourage--we encourage organizations to assign--you know, assign appropriate roles to, you know, multiple people. So--yes, so organizations can have a number of different people assigned to that role. However, for a particular award, you have to either only have one Grant Award Administrator assigned to that particular award. So that is limitations. The--also--there's also an Alternate Grant Award Administrator. And there's been some confusions--and there's just been some confusion about the limitations of that particular role. So the
Alternate Grant Award Administrator, it turns out, can only initiate a GAM. They are not able to affect or edit performance reports and they're not able to submit GAMs. They're just not able to do much right now other than initiate a GAM. So the Alternate Grant Award Administrator role is something I know that has been in discussion with our development office as to what that role will ultimately, you know, become, but for right now that is the limitation. So if that role in the future is able to manage performance reports, then you can have a Grant Manager and an Alternate Grant Manager--a Grant Award Administrator assigned to an award. And in the future that may be possible. But for now just the one Grant Award Administrator can do performance reports. Now, if you have two people that actually make entries within the performance report, you can have one person be assigned the role of Grant Award Administrator assigned to that award to allow their portion of it, then you'll need to get the Entity Administrator involved and they can reassign that award to a different Grant Award Administrator who can then complete the performance report and submit it. So that option is always available to you. Although, it does require three people to--you know, to be involved in that, you can assign and reassign that role, you know, as often as you need to in order for your process to work.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thanks, Lisa. That's very helpful. We did have another question come in. Just about being able to see different things in the system and roles always kind of come up here on our webinars. It looks this individual can see FFRs and progress reports but they can't see GAMs. Can you speak a little bit about what their role may be and why there may be limitations in what they can see in the system?
LISA HARTMAN: Sure. If you can see FFRs and progress reports then the likelihood is that you are a Grant Award Administrator and a Financial Manager. And that's not a problem. Any--you know, anybody in your organization can be assigned to, you know, all or some or one of the roles. So if you are going to be, for instance, the Financial Manager on one award and a Grant Award Administrator in another or if you fulfill both of those roles for a single award, you can be assigned both of those roles. So the reason you might not be able to see a GAM is perhaps you're not assigned as the Grant Award Administrator to the award for which that GAM belong--to which that GAM belongs. So that's one thing. There may be a number of different reasons why you're not able to see a GAM, but the first one that I would think of having to do with roles is perhaps you have that role as Grant Award Administrator but not on that particular award. That would be one thing to look for, so--that's why you can see both performance report and financial report because it's in--it's entirely possible that you have both of those roles assigned to you.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Okay. Great. Thank you all for submitting those questions. They're really helpful for us to kind of hear what you're still having questions and concerns about. We're going to share a few resources with you just before we wrap up our session today. So we can go ahead to the next screen, Lisa, if that's okay. So where to find help? We've created a wealth of resources to help you continue to navigate through JustGrants. We certainly want to share with you the self-service support website. This is really the one-stop shop where you can use step-by-step guides, you learn tutorials, FAQ, help documents, and get news and resource updates. I highly recommend that you bookmark
this page. This particular page walks you through all of the grant lifecycles phases. So, today, we didn't necessarily cover all of the lifecycle phases. For instance, if you were interested in figuring out how to close out your grants, harnessing financial reporting and reports, you can certainly go to this link here and see any of that information available to you at your leisure when you're ready to complete those steps in your grant award lifecycle. So this is a really great page to kind of explore further once you are ready to explore this material. We'll go to the next slide. We do have our user support team, so if you do need just those technical questions, if you're having challenges with the system, not able to see certain functionality, we certainly encourage you to reach out to--at [email protected]. That's the email address. Or you can call 833-872-5175. We have hours Monday through Friday from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. We also have weekend hours as well as federal holidays from 9:00 to 5:00 PM. So that's really helpful if you do reach out, you need technical support, we do have a team available for you. If you are reaching out to the technical support team, there are a few things to just keep in mind that will help speed up your request. We do encourage you to provide as much detail as possible about the path that you are trying to complete in the system. Here's a list of a few items that may be helpful to have nearby or available to share with the technical support team. When you reach out with your request and your challenges. I will leave this up for just a few moments. We'll go ahead to the next screen. As i mentioned earlier, we do have news and resources, so I did place in the chat the URL link to our specific JustGrants page as well as other training resources that are available. If you would like to reach out to our training support team, you can email us at [email protected] and we can provide you with additional support for your training needs and regarding the JustGrants. I wanted to just reiterate, there was a question about the individuals that are supporting BJA-specific grants. So I wanted to just mention those names again, and we have those available. Or if Andrea too would like to mention names and roles. We did have that question in the chat, just before we wrap up.
ANDREA BORCHARDT: Hello. This is Andrea. Can you hear me okay?
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: We can hear you. Yes. Uh-hmm.
ANDREA BORCHARDT: Yeah. The names that are supporting the day-to-day grant management activities are primarily Kathy Manning, she's a State Policy Advisor, myself, Andrea Borchardt, a Senior Forensics Policy Advisor, Michael Adams, a Research Associate, and Vanessa Castellanos, an Associate.
JENNIFER JEFFRIES: Great. Thank you so much. Okay. I'm looking to see if there are any last-minute comments or questions before we wrap up. If not, I'll turn it back over to Andrea to wrap us up and finish us out for today.
ANDREA BORCHARDT: Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for attending this webinar. Again, it has been recorded, and once it's downloaded and compiled, it will be posted. And also the link to the original email chain, again, you're welcome to share that with your grantees, yourself, anybody in your organization, and your sub--relevant sub-grantees. Again, you can reach out to us at any point. You have my email address. And
within the original invite email, you also will have Vanessa and Kathy's emails and I believe Michael's email as well. So you can reach out to us at any point if you need any help. I want to say thank you to Jennifer and her JustGrants Training Team. And thank you to all the Postconviction grantees for attending this webinar. This concludes the webinar.