Recovery.gov - Track the Money

The borrowing authority granted to Western in the Recovery Act was for the purpose of facilitating the development of high-voltage transmission lines necessary to bring new renewable energy resources to market. This project is designed to the program by ensuring Western develops the necessary principles, policies and practices to effectively carry out this new authority while providing funding transparency and accountability.

Western activities to implement its Transmission Infrastructure Program include significant interaction, collaboration and coordination with a large number of stakeholders, industry partners, DOE program offices, other Federal agencies and state and local governments. This work is already underway, using public processes to seek comments on the proposed program and to identify potential projects for development and participants in those projects.

Note: Western will not issue any grants or other financial awards involving Recovery Act funds, but will use standard procurement processes to issue any contracts for projects to be funded by loans from the Treasury.

Corporate Controls

Recovery Leadership & Operations - The DOE Recovery Office is the central point for implementation and execution of Recovery Act activities. A Recovery Operations Team will oversee implementation management, such as monitoring project status, evaluating cost and schedule progress, ensuring thorough reporting, coordinating with external entities, and holding monthly performance and review meetings with senior departmental managers on the implementation status of specific recovery projects.

Recovery Funding Oversight, Performance - In addition to DOE’s standard funds control mechanisms, Recovery Act funds are subject to additional process controls to ensure funds are not co-mingled, are tracked to enable reporting, and are spent responsibly. DOE recovery funds are released for implementation in a staged approach. Programs develop initial project plans which include performance metrics which require management approval.

Office of Internal Review (OIR) - DOE’s OIR helps programs ensure that internal controls are in place, effective, and support the risk based approach to managing Recovery Act activities. OIR programs are being implemented or expanded to ensure the Recovery Act objectives are met and DOE managers and partners are both held accountable for successful execution and also have the appropriate tools to ensure that success. These programs include coordinating DOE’s “Internal Control Acknowledgment” program, conducting agency wide assessments and analyses and performing oversight of Recovery Act programs, including site and field visits. OIR worked with key impacted programs to produce initial vulnerability assessments identifying potential program specific and cross-cutting risks to ensure successful execution.

Western Processes

In addition, Western has developed a full range of accounting policies, processes and internal controls to provide accountability and early warning of problems and is implementing the necessary processes and controls to enable monthly reporting of up-to-date financial, milestone/activity and performance information.

In ensuring sufficient oversight to validate the progress and performance of the implementation project and to maintain accountability and transparency, Western will:

• Develop a project plan with milestones and deliverables to track progress in implementing Western’s Transmission Infrastructure Program.
• Hold regular management review meetings.
• Use normal business systems and tools, as appropriate, to track and report cost and performance information.
• Modify existing financial management system, as required, to isolate project, and subsequent program costs, as required by law.
• Establish separate Treasury symbols to capture all project/program financial activity.
• Establish a risk management program to identify and mitigate challenges and risks in implementing the program.
• Incorporate this project/program as part of Western’s Internal Control/A-123 Program.

DOE leverages its existing corporate systems to track and report on Recovery Act activities and to ensure effective funds management. The DOE’s iManage Data Warehouse (IDW) is a corporate enterprise system integrating financial, budgetary, procurement, and program information to monitor project execution. Each Recovery Act program is tracked using unique Treasury Appropriation Fund Symbols, and each component project is identified by a unique Project Identification Code.

The IDW is a central data warehouse linking common data elements from each of the Department’s corporate business systems and serving as a “knowledge bank” of information about portfolios, programs or projects including budget execution, accumulated costs, performance achieved, and critical milestones met. The IDW contains information from multiple corporate systems and will be a tool used to meet information needs for Recovery Act oversight and reporting to Recovery.gov.

The Performance Measure Manager (PMM) is the Department’s performance tracking system. PMM tracks high-level budgetary performance and is being expanded to accommodate Recovery Act performance tracking needs. Performance evaluations will be organized and reported along with results from the Department’s annual budgetary activities in the Annual Performance Report and posted on: www.energy.gov/recovery. Performance results will be uploaded into the IDW for required agency reporting.

See DOE’s Agency Wide Recovery Plan for additional information on DOE’s financial and performance tracking mechanisms, found here: www.energy.gov/recovery.

Please refer to Monitoring and Evaluation Section above for Western-specific details.

Western will receive appropriated funds from the Recovery Act to develop a program to implement the use of borrowing authority to build transmission infrastructure (e.g. power lines and related facilities). However, these funds will not be used to build or rehabilitate Federal buildings, and, as such, the provisions for reporting do not apply.