Notes on Methodology, TAGGS

The grant information contained in this report is from the Department’s Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS), which contains data generated by the twelve HHS grant-making staff divisions (Staffdivs) and operating divisions (OPDIVs). Developed and maintained by the Office of Grants (OG), TAGGS is the Department’s central repository for all HHS grant data.

TAGGS currently tracks obligated grant funds of mandatory and discretionary grant programs at the primary transaction level. The TAGGS database receives data submissions from the major grant-making HHS OPDIVs and Staffdivs on a monthly and annual basis. In addition to the grant award data received from the OPDIVs and Staffdivs, TAGGS receives grant recipient demographic data (e.g., type of organization, address) from the Central Registry System (CRS), part of the HHS Payment Management System (PMS), and Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Program information from the CFDA Web site at http://www.cfda.gov.

OG also maintains an Internet site (http://taggs.hhs.gov), which is accessible to the public and allows users to view standard TAGGS-generated reports and query the database. This TAGGS web site helps to increase the transparency of the Department’s grant-making activities and is used directly by OS and OPDIV staff, Congressional offices, other executive agencies, potential and current grant recipients, and other interested parties for a variety of informational purposes. Some commonly searched TAGGS fields are Congressional district, grant program name, recipient (grantee) name, recipient location (State, city, zip, and/or congressional district), awarding OPDIV, transaction amount (or sum of transactions), and fiscal year.

The data in this report reflect all grant awards obligated during FY 2006. The number of grants is a count of awards or projects receiving grant funds. This report also includes deobligated funds from prior fiscal years occurring in FY 2006. However, any deobligations to FY 2006 Awards occurring in subsequent fiscal years will not be contained in this report.

The data contained in this report will not necessarily agree with the FY 2006 budget and accounting records (e.g., Medicaid’s accounting adjustments) for several reasons, including: 1) the grant award data may include reobligations of prior years’ funds in addition to current year funds; 2) the cost of furnishing personnel in lieu of cash are included in the grants data, but are recorded as personnel service costs in accounting records; and 3) jointly funded grants are included in accounting records, but are not included herein unless awards are made by HHS programs.

The dollar amounts set forth in this report for each OPDIV may also differ from the amounts shown in the OPDIVs’ Budget Requests (“Preliminary Budget Submission to HHS,” the “Justification of Budget Estimates to OMB,” and the “Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees”). Percentages used throughout the report may not add up to exactly 100% due to rounding and other minor adjustments.