Recovery.gov - Track the Money

Services available to youth include tutoring, alternative schools, occupational training, work experience, leadership development, mentoring, counseling, supportive services, and on-going career counseling after a youth exits the program. The Recovery Act extends the youth eligibility age from 21 to 24 and provides $17.8 million in additional funding for Native American youth activities, including summer employment for youth. These funds are a portion of the $1.2 billion that the Recovery Act provided for WIA Youth activities.
In accordance with Sec. 801 of the Recovery Act, up to one percent of the program funds provided may be used for management and oversight of the program. These funds will be expended in accordance with the operating plan submitted to the Office of Management and Budget and Congress.

Grantees offering employment and training services to Indian and Native American youth provide year-round and summer youth opportunities, and needs-related payments.

Summer Youth Employment - Summer youth employment to increase work readiness skills of Indian and Native American Youth. This activity increases the pipeline of available skilled labor in local Indian communities. This is the primary activity grantees will engage in through the life of Recovery funds.

Year Round Services - In addition to summer youth program, other year round services are made available to youth including: culturally relevant activities mentoring job placement, occupational training, internship placements, basic work readiness skills, GED preparation, and leadership development opportunities.

The Department has established reporting systems and Office of Management and Budget-approved forms that grantees use to track, document and report expenditures and performance on a regularly scheduled basis that provides updated information to ETA at a minimum of once a quarter. Grantees are required to certify the accuracy of these reports prior to submitting them to ETA through the established electronic systems.

ETA uses its Grants Electronic Management System (GEMS) and other related electronic data collection systems to conduct and document quarterly desk reviews of financial obligations, expenditures and program performance. Grantees identified as high risk grantees through these reviews are given priority attention for on-site monitoring. ETAs quarterly desk reviews along with on-site reviews are used to identify potential risks and encourage program improvements through technical assistance and training. Additionally, federal regulations require that WIA fund recipients and sub-recipients continuously monitor grant-supported activities. ETA Federal Project Officers review the States monitoring efforts during on-site visits.

To further ensure that funds are spent on the intended purpose and accurately reported, DOL requires all grantees to submit single audits annually. ETA works with grantees to resolve any audit findings through additional reviews and the development and implementation of corrective action plans.

ETA conducts a final review of each grantees expenditures and performance during the grant close-out process.

As for program evaluations, DOL is in the process of developing a plan for evaluating several components of the Recovery Act-funded programs. These evaluations will likely be implementation studies.

Top Management Challenges identified by the Office of Inspector General for the Department include:


Improving Performance Accountability of Grants
All state and local government and nonprofit recipients that expend $500,000 or more in Federal assistance in one year are required by the Single Audit Act to obtain an annual audit by an independent public accountant. A challenge for the Department is that grantees audits conducted under the Single Audit Act are not always completed in a timely manner. Therefore, ETA has implemented a procedure for annually reviewing ETA grantees Single Audit Act report status and sending written notifications to grantees whose single audit reports are delinquent.

Single Audits
Send follow up letters to grantees who continue to be delinquent
No action to report.
November 2009
Codify standard operating procedures into Procedures Manuals
To date, procedures have been updated to include steps for sending delinquent notices to grantees once the list has been received from the accounting office.
FY 2009

Consistent with the transparency and accountability objectives of the Recovery Act, states will submit a new monthly report reflecting the aggregate counts of youth whose participation in employment and training services is Recovery Act-funded. The report will record the number of participants (new and total), their characteristics, the number engaged in summer youth employment, services received, and attainment of work readiness. Participation in summer employment is a new data element whose collection is required because the Recovery Act authorizes summer youth employment. Additionally, data pertaining to the attainment of a work readiness skill by summer employment participants will be collected. Work readiness represents the only outcome measure that will apply to summer employment.

ETA will post the summary of program data on the ETA website, the DOL Recovery webpage, and Recovery.gov.

The Department of Labor cost accounting model used for regular appropriations will be applied to the WIA Indian and Native American program.

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