Definition
Grants are used across the Commonwealth to achieve government policy aims and outcomes for the public through payments to individuals and organisations. Grant Management is defined as the publishing, administering, and managing of these Government-funded services and opportunities.
Purpose
Grant Management systems enable the administration of grants through the full grant lifecycle. This includes, but is not limited to, processing grant applications, assessment of eligibility, management of grant funding, tracking of grants and grant programs, auditing, and reporting.
Objective
The objectives of this Australian Government Architecture content are to:
- Maximise the value delivered by the existing grants hubs.
- Ensure digital solutions are aligned to achieve the Australian Government’s strategic outcomes of efficient use of taxpayer funds.
- Reduce implementation risk through the reuse of proven designs within government.
- Ensure that new Grant Management solutions draw efficiency from preceding investments, implementations, and learnings.
- Foster technological, data, and workflow consistency across agencies, resulting in simpler and more accessible Grant Management.
Whole of Government Applicability
The Grant Management capability contributes to the seamless delivery of Australian government grants through opportunities for leveraging this capability across:
- Shared services arrangements.
- Reuse of business process design and rule validations.
- Reuse of commercial engagements, including whole-of-government arrangements.
- Replication and redeployment of proven technology platforms, data ontologies and workflows.
- Mobility of APS employees to support knowledge sharing.
- Reuse of lessons learnt from prior implementations.
Policy Elements
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Publish on GrantConnect.
Grant opportunity guidelines and grant awards must be made publicly available on GrantConnect, except where there is a specific policy reason to not publicise the grant opportunity guidelines, or grants are provided on a one-off or ad hoc basis.
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Reuse existing designs, patterns, and investments.
Consideration must be given to minimising risk, improving consistency, accelerating delivery, and lowering total cost of Grants Management. This includes leveraging existing standards and designs prior to considering alternative new developments.
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Build for reuse.
Where reuse is not possible, provide evidence of which systems across government have been investigated (specifically the usage, users, scale, and security classification of the system), demonstrate how any new investment may be extensible and operationalised for reuse, and highlight potential benefits to agencies seeking similar capabilities.
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Engage the Department of Finance.
When developing a Grant Management platform, Non-corporate Commonwealth Entities (NCEs) should contact the Department of Finance in the first instance.