OVC Human Trafficking - New Grantees Performance Reporting Training

TINA DIMACHKIEH: Thank you all for joining me for the Human Trafficking FY 2022 Cohort Grantees Orientation on Performance Measurement Reporting, and congratulations on accepting your awards for the FY 2022 year.

In today's session, we will be discussing performance measure reporting, providing a quick overview on performance measure reporting. We will talk about the reports and the due dates for your awards. We'll go over the Performance Measurement Tool, one of the platforms where you'll be collecting your data and submitting your data to OVC. We'll also go over the Justice Grants System for data reporting and semiannual report submission, and then I will be providing a summary and some resources, and we'll be providing contact information, so you can reach out to us if you have any questions.

Before we get started, I just want to introduce myself, I am Tina Dimachkieh I'm the training and technical assistance specialist working with OVC to provide contractor support to grantees along with the performance management team, which is the team that I am a part of.

So being a brand new grantee of OVC and having brand new awards, there's just a lot going on for you all. There's a lot of performance management side of things to keep track of, in addition to performance measures that are a requirement of your federal award. So, I just want to let you know why performance measures are so important in managing your award, and the performance measurement part is so important. That's because we really do pay attention to the data that you share with us and to the measures that you are collecting and sharing with OVC, and we make use of that data.

Across the federal government, focus has shifted over to grantee performance over basic compliance with regulations. And with that grantee performance and this data that we are collecting from our grantees, we're able to, in some certain acts as you see on the screen here, influence policy and make changes across the government based on the information that you share with us.

Data performance measures are so important and the timeliness and the accuracy of reporting data is very important to OVC, because it helps us demonstrate the value and the specific benefits of the program to Congress, to federal and state government agencies, to the victim services field in general, and to the general public and any other stakeholders that we work with. This all comes from accurate and timely reporting on your end, as our grantees.

We also get to generate annual reports on the program - the human trafficking program - to demonstrate output of grant funds and where those funds are going and what is happening and the great progress that's happening because of the OVC grant funding that's being received. We also get to emphasize the progress made towards achievement of OVC's strategic mission and the program goals, and we can also reach the target audience of grantees and the general public to raise awareness of the issues that we all are working on every single day.

So data reporting on your end is a very, very important piece, and performance measures is a small piece of the pie.

So performance management, managing your OVC award, is a very important task for your organization and your program managers or project managers working on your awards. The performance measures is a big piece of that, and needs to be done accurately in order to be in compliance with our requirements at the OVC level. As you see on the screen here, performance measurement is considered the data or the information that shows achievement of the desired goals or results, so those goals and objectives that you signed on when accepting your award.

And performance measures show the parameters against which progress towards goals is assessed, so it's really a great way for you all and for OVC to measure success and to see whether a program is successful or where there are any opportunities or challenges that a program is facing, so we can work together on addressing those and ensuring that we can move forward.

What does all of this mean in real life and in day-to-day of a grantee for OVC? It means that you are going to be collecting data based on the performance measures that we have provided to you. It's specific measures that we have developed for the human trafficking portfolio, and you'll be making sure that your organization has the capabilities to capture and securely save the performance measure data, so that you have a performance collection system in place where you can collect that information for your OVC award.

You'll ensure that you are tracking your data, making sure that you are understanding the performance measure definitions based on your award goals and objectives, and creating consistency in data reporting, so having a plan in place where you repeatedly complete the requirements and you repeatedly track the data accurately and consistently to be able to share it with OVC. And then, that's where you would be sharing it with OVC, where you are reporting that data and establishing a reporting point of contact, someone for your award that is responsible for completing the quarterly and semiannual reporting at the OVC level, and making sure that you also have a backup because, as we know, staff members get promoted, staff members leave, or things change with an organization.

So, having a backup that knows how reporting is done and knows about the due dates and the requirements of that OVC award is a very important thing. And then you also would be able to analyze in real life what really is taking place in your award. You'd be able to internally use a checks-and-balances system, where you use the data that you've collected over time to see if your program is successful, but also to apply for future funding and to look at how your organization is doing at the organizational level, outside of just the OVC award that you're working on.

Performance measurement topic areas: so, these are the different topic areas that OVC has developed for the human trafficking portfolio. As you see here, there's trafficking population, victim services, partnerships, training, strategic planning, task force, personnel, policies/procedures/protocols, investigations/prosecution, community outreach, data collection and evaluation, and TTA providers. These are different topic areas that your award could be reporting on. This does not mean that every single award for OVC's human trafficking portfolio is reporting on these topic areas.

OVC has a solicitation map that outlines which topic area the award is responsible for. So as a new grantee, you should familiarize yourself with that solicitation map on our webpage. I will show you where that is when we get to the resources piece, but you should go to our webpage and familiarize yourself with the solicitation map and identify what topic areas your award under your solicitation is responsible for. Most of our grantees are not responsible for all of these, they're only responsible for a certain amount of topic areas that apply more to the specific work that they are doing.

So, your first step as a grantee is identifying what exactly is OVC asking you to collect performance measures on, what data are we looking for for your award? Your second step is to actually use the performance measurement PDF for your specific human trafficking program and see what those questions look like based on those topic areas. That's another document that is also on our webpage and will be made available to you. And the third step is to use our job aid, which is a data Excel spreadsheet that can be used to track your data that you are collecting throughout the fiscal quarter before reporting is due.

So if you don't have a reporting mechanism or a plan in place of where you're going to report or collect your data until reporting opens up, you can use that Excel spreadsheet to keep all your data in one location. So for the report of performance measurement, I've mentioned it a few times and I've talked about reporting and requirements, but what does that mean? Where would you report? This is why you've joined the session, to find out, what exactly does the process look like?

So, we have two different reporting systems that we use for your OVC award. The first one is the Performance Measurement Tool, we call it the PMT. Over the life of your award, you will become more familiar with that term, the PMT. It's a web-based reporting system in which grantees can electronically submit qualitative and quantitative program performance data.

So, this is OVC's data collection platform, this is where you will enter every quarter and submit numbers or quantitative data for your program every single quarter, so four times a year, and we'll talk about those reporting deadlines in a moment. The second system is the JustGrants system, and a lot of our grantees are familiar with the JustGrants system because that is where you enter to accept your award when you first receive an award. So, this is where you've submitted award documents and worked on some financial items for your award, but this is also a platform where you have requirements on the performance reporting side of the house.

This grant management provides applicants and grantees with an end-to-end experience throughout key parts of the grant management lifecycle. And for us, for our purposes today, that's the performance reporting piece.

So, it's a two-step process that you would need to complete. A piece of it is in the PMT and then another piece of it is in JustGrants and I will speak to the requirements for each of those. Okay, so let's move into reports and due dates. So, we have three types of reports. As a new grantee, you should be focusing on the first two for now, but you should definitely keep that third one in the back of your mind, and I'll tell you what I mean in a moment.

The first one is a quarterly performance measure report. This quarterly performance measure report collects data over a three-month period for award activities and is entered into the PMT. Human trafficking grantees are instructed to combine any data from a subrecipient and a partner, as applicable, and enter it into the PMT. We say this because only our prime award recipients, so only you as the grantee, have access to the PMT for that award, so your subrecipients, your partners do not have any method or space to collect their data for OVC, aside from you sharing it with us and combining it with your data when you enter it into the PMT.

This quarterly report reflects three months of activity. It's due four times a year, and I will show you those deadlines in the next slide. The second type of report is a semiannual report. This report, in addition to having your quarterly data being due, you also have a narrative piece: narrative questions that relate to grantee and subgrantee activities. The narrative questions would cover progress towards goals and objectives. This is where you share with OVC and you showcase to OVC the work that you have done over a semiannual reporting period, and that is a 6-month reporting period. Semiannual reports speak to the previous 6 months of grant activity and to the future 6 months of what you're projecting your grant activity will look like.

And then there's that third piece which is the closeout or the final report. The reason why I mention this in a new grantee orientation is because you should always keep this final report, this closeout report in mind. This is when you've expended all your funds, when you've reached the end date of your award, this is what would be due, but you're always going to be working towards that final report.

So if you are reporting timely and accurately on the quarterly basis and if you are including comprehensive narrative responses in your semiannual report, you will be doing yourself a favor for that end date of your award, because that makes your final report much easier to complete than if you have not adhered to the reporting requirements, you have not submitted your quarterly reports on time and you did not provide comprehensive responses and you did not share with OVC what your goals and objectives are looking like every 6 months.

So, that's why you should keep that in the back of your mind, that the final report is coming even though it's 3 years away, it's still something to keep in mind because it's very difficult to go back and try to remember what did we do over a 3-year award period. And those quarterly and semiannual reports will become very helpful when you're completing that last report.

I also do want to let you know that when we're talking about reports, we're talking about reporting on grant activity. Grant activity means that activity that is implemented or executed with OVC grant funding. Your organizations do a lot of work and they do some incredible, phenomenal work. We are only looking for that work that is completed with our OVC funds.

We are not looking for the larger piece or larger data because we're only looking to review what is taking place with the OVC funding and how funding from our organization is helping on the local and state level. I also would like to say that even if you just accepted your award and you do not have any grant activity, you are still required to report to OVC.

There is space in your report that asks whether you have grant activity, if you began working on your grant, and you can just check off the "No" box and then submit your reports. And you are not required to enter any data because you would not have any data if you have not started expending OVC funds. But you are still required to report.

You're required to report from the start date of your award, so if your award started between October and December, you have a requirement to report in January on a quarterly and semiannual reporting basis. Here's the reporting schedule. So, our fiscal year, we follow the federal fiscal year. The fiscal year starts in October, October 1, and ends on September 30. So we have those four quarters as you see here.

October 1 through December 31, that's one full quarter, and data is required in the PMT by January 30, and data uploaded to JustGrants is also required by January 30. So, this is what your first reporting period looks like. You have the performance measures to complete in the PMT, and you have narrative questions to complete in JustGrants for submission, and I will go into detail on what that looks like. Here are the other three quarters, January to March, it's due by April, April to June, due by July, and then July to September, due by October, and then that last reporting period, that's where you have that final report that I mentioned in the previous slide.

As you see here, each quarter is 3 months, so 90 days, and you have 30 days to complete reporting for that quarter after it closes. So, let's look at the first quarter again. It closes on December 31. You have 30 days, so January 1 to January 30 to complete your reporting for that quarter's grant activity. And as you see here, your narrative questions are due every 6 months. Those are the semiannual questions, so they are due in January and they are due in July.

We do not have narrative questions in the April reporting period or the October reporting period. And if you move on to the column about uploading to JustGrants or utilizing JustGrants, you will see that those narrative questions are required and that's something that you would need to complete in JustGrants in January and in July. But then again in April and October, you do not need to complete anything on the performance reporting side in JustGrants.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the PMT, the Performance Measurement Tool. So as a new grantee, you should have, by now, received an email letting you know that an account was created for the point of contact at your organization that is listed in JustGrants as the grant award administrator. So, the initial access is only granted to the grant award administrator that's listed in JustGrants.

We know that sometimes that grant award administrator is someone that works in the finance department at your organization or someone in a leadership position at your organization and not a grant manager or a grant coordinator that is working day in and day out on that grant. So, please do reach out to that grant award administrator and make sure that they know that they have access to the system and that they share access with you or create an account for you, not share access. We definitely don't want staff members sharing accounts. You should each have your own account.

So again, an account has been created for all of our new grantees and here is the webpage ojpsso.ojp.gov. This is how you access the PMT system. The point of contact should have received an auto-generated email from the OVC PMT Helpdesk with login instructions, first time login instructions, where they need to create a password. They have a temporary password, but they need to create a password and complete security questions in order to be able to move into looking at their profile and their account.

If the organization has other OVC awards under different programs, the profile will include a new separate tab for each new program that you have. So, this is your first time working with a human trafficking award for OVC, that new tab will pop up for you in addition to the already existing tabs for any other awards that you have with OVC that report in the PMT. I will be showing you how to create additional users as well so you can have access to different staff members.

So, a few tips about the PMT. The system works best in Google Chrome 4.1.0 or above, so the latest browser or Microsoft Edge. If you're running into any technical difficulties or unable to sign in, make sure that you're using the latest browser as the first troubleshooting item. Make sure that you answer all the questions on all the pages before you move forward. You are not able to submit a report without having all the questions answered, so you need to provide a response.

Zero is an acceptable answer. If your organization does not have any data to report on in a specific question or a specific category, you can enter a zero. The system only accepts numerical values in the fields marked with a number, so you would not be able to enter "N/A" or put in a letter, you would have to enter a zero or an actual number, if you have data collected for that question.

Be sure to avoid the "Back" button because you could lose your data if you have not clicked "Save and Continue" before moving across the tabs. You can hover over underlined text and it prompts you with an explanation of what we mean by that specific measure or that question, and I do have a template where I will show you what that looks like. Also be sure to save frequently.

The system does time out after 30 minutes of inactivity. The system does warn you about that, there's language on the screen letting you know that the system does time out after 30 minutes. But be mindful of that, save frequently, just when you're writing a paper in Word having to save multiple times, so you don't lose your information, this is the same thing in the PMT. So, this is the login page. As I said earlier, ojpsso.ojp.gov is the PMT website. This information is included in your welcome emails and your welcome packets that you would've received from the OVC PMT Helpdesk. And then after you log in, you will need to choose OVC PMT as you see on the screen here.

This is the screenshot of hitting login and then this is the first page that shows up, and then you would need to select OVC PMT. Once you've selected OVC PMT, you'll be directed to the Profile page with multiple different tabs at the top as you see here in orange, so you can navigate through those different tabs for different needs, if you're submitting a report, if you're looking for information, or if you're requesting assistance.

The first tab is the OVC PMT Homepage and that just has general information about the PMT and general information about reports in general. There's actually a really, really important tab here and that's the Reporting Schedule. If you go to the Reporting Schedule, you can see our federal fiscal quarters, you can see what is due when, if it's due in the PMT or in PMT and JustGrants, similar to that chart I just showed you.

The next tab is the Administration tab. That has details on the federal awards that you have under your portfolio, your human trafficking portfolio. That includes information like a start date and end date and the purpose of your award. The Administration tab also is this place where you go to add new user information and to create new users for your organization. Again, I will show you how we do that in a moment.

The Profile tab, that is the default page where, when you first log into the PMT after you click on the OVC PMT button, you'll be directed to the Profile page and that is where the contact information for your organization, organization point of contact and your awards are all listed on one page.

The Enter Data tab is where you will enter data on your performance measures. That will be your most used tab, because every quarter you need to go in there and enter your numerical data.

And the Reports tab will be your second most used tab, because that is where we will go to check on your report status, to see if anything is still in progress or if it's been complete or not yet started and who completed it. But that's also where you'll be generating your semiannual PDF report that you'll be then attaching to your performance reports in JustGrants. I know this sentence sounds a little confusing now, by the end of the session you'll understand exactly what I mean because I will be walking you through that.

Then we have the Need Help tab. The Need Help tab has a link to our resources on the OVC performance measures webpage and how to use the PMT, and it also has a set of rules that we have embedded into the system for when you are completing your data entry. And I will explain what those rules and validations look like and what that means.

Okay, so first we wanted to talk about how to create a new user, the user management and create a new user. You'll go to the Administration tab, you'll hover over the Administration tab and then you have two tabs that pop up. One is your Federal Awards and the second tab is the User Management. You'll select the User Management tab and then the screenshot here shows what it will look like. There will be the user, that is your POC, there might be a user from department, from OVC, from our side just as an admin user, and then there's a button to add a new user.

You'll select that button and then you have to complete the required fields. Those are a full name, an email address, and a phone number. That is all that is needed to create a user. I also say User Management here because, in addition to creating new user, you should be visiting this page frequently when there are any staff changes.

If somebody no longer needs access to the PMT, you should be deleting their account. And if somebody no longer works for the organization, they should not have PMT access, continued access, so do visit this page frequently. You can also have as many users as you'd like. There is no limit on users. We do ask that for security reasons, only those individuals that need access to the PMT to enter data receive access and not everybody in your organization has access, and that you manage that page frequently to make sure that it is up to date.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the Enter Data tab. This is where you will go on a quarterly basis, so you'll need to enter your data by January 30, by April 30, by July 30, and by October 30 for the respective reporting months. On the Enter Data tab, you will select the Federal Award. Please be careful if you have multiple awards, that you select the right award and you enter accurate information for that award instead of mixing up the data or reporting inaccurately. Once you do that, you'll then select the open reporting period and you'll select Continue.

Please note that a reporting period will not open up or will not appear, or the current reporting period will not appear unless you've completed the previous reporting period. This will not happen as a new grantee. For your January reporting, you will only have one period to report on. However, in April, if for any reason you did not complete your January reporting, you will not have access to the April report because you need to complete your January reporting first. Once you do that, the system will prompt the next reporting period to open up and be available to you.

Okay, so Grant Activity. So, this is the first set of questions that you have when you select Continue on the Enter Data tab. The first question asks you if this is the last reporting period where you will have data to report on. As a new grantee, this should be "No" for quite some time, until your third year of your award or if you're terminating your award early, your answer should always be "No" to that question.

The second question asks you if there was any grant activity during the reporting period. This question is asking you if there was any activity implemented with OVC funding. If there was no grant activity, if you just accepted your awards, you do not have staff yet, you don't have a budget, you did not complete any work, and you did not use any OVC funding, you are going to select "No, there was no grant activity." If there was grant activity and you have data to report, you'll select the "Yes" button. If you select "No," you are required to provide an explanation as to why. This just means you will just explain to OVC that you either did not have the staffing or accepted the award on December 30, or whatever the reason might be.

We just need to understand why that is. Once you select "Yes," the actual topic areas will pop up in the PMT. The PMT does not show you the topic areas for your solicitation until you select "Yes," that there was grant activity to report on. And as you see here, so that first tab that we just looked at was the Grant Activity tab, once that individual selected "Yes, there was grant activity," all these other additional topic areas popped up.

Again, this is a template account. Your account might look a little bit different when it comes to the topic areas because you are going to be focusing on those that are aligned to your solicitation. Okay, so that's what it looks like when you first start answering those question sets for your grant activity.

Within the PMT or within your performance measures, we have current reporting questions, so you're answering on reporting for the previous 3 months of grant activity, but we also have a few baseline questions. The baseline questions are questions that you answer at the first time you're working on reporting, because the baseline questions gather information about activity that has occurred prior to the grant becoming operational. So, you're answering those questions only once and that answer will stay in the system because it should not change.

If you see on the screen here, the number of planned improvements prior to the grant becoming operational, it shows 20. That would not change in the upcoming reporting period because it's asking you about something that happened in the past and it should remain the same response. Also, when for the topic areas that do have a baseline question, you need to make sure that you click on the plus sign, so the actual questions for your current reporting period pop up on the screen, so you could see them.

The accordion function and that plus sign will expand, so you could see the rest of the questions. Again, as I said previously, you cannot submit a quarterly report without having all the questions answered, and sometimes grantees missed this entire tab of the current quarter reporting because it's collapsed and as you see on the screen here, so make sure to expand it, so you can actually answer the questions. So as you see here, this is an example where initially there were the baseline questions that we were looking at and then the grantee completed the baseline questions, and then collapsed the baseline questions and expanded the current quarter reporting, and now new questions popped up for them for that current quarter.

I also want to let you know that we've tried to make this as user-friendly as possible. We've tried to include as much information for our grantees as possible within this system, and we have definitions throughout the different topic areas that refer to the types of questions that are being asked or the terms that OVC is using within the performance measures. As you see here in the yellow box, these talks about definitions for what confirmed victims, potential victims, and US citizens mean and those definitions used by OVC.

Throughout reporting you'll find multiple examples of definitions. There's also additional information to help our users, and that is where we have instructions embedded directly into the question. This is where, if you recall earlier on, I mentioned hovering over a specific question, over the underlined text in a question, will pop up an Instructions tab where you can read about that specific question or receive additional instructions if you need them in order to best answer the question most accurately.

So the system also has skip patterns, accordions, accordion functions as you saw, and show and hide functions. This is just certain items that are embedded into the system to make sure that we assist with accurate reporting, but also to make sure that the user has the best experience when completing the reports. The automatic skip logics are embedded into the question sets where a grantee will need to make sure they're paying detailed attention to the instructions to make sure that they don't miss any questions or that they answer accordingly when there are those skip logics where within a yes or no question.

What that means is, let's say the question says, "Did you provide X services?" If you were to say yes, the system asks you to list out what those services are. If you were to say no, the system hides those services and lets you move on because you did not provide them, and I will show you an example of that. The second item is the plus sign and the minus sign. Those are the collapse and expand functions that we have, as I showed you in the baseline questions and the current reporting questions. Within the question sets or the topic areas, some of the questions have plus and minus buttons next to them indicating that there's additional data required, where you need to expand that question set in order to get access to that. And again, you will be seeing that momentarily. So, definitely be careful. Look for any alerts that the system notifies you about for missing responses, or if the system is not letting you submit a report, go back and check any incomplete response.

And keep in mind those skip patterns, those show and hide functions to make sure that you can submit your report. This is the first one that shows the skip pattern. If you see, question 17 asks, "Did you provide services to new victims of trafficking during the reporting period?" If you answer yes, you have to answer the questions after that. And if you answer no, the system instructs you that you should just skip to question 23. And it actually does not show you questions 18 to 22, it takes you directly to question 23, so you'll not have access to those questions.

And as you see here in the skip pattern example, I answered yes, so it showed me the additional questions. And then as you see, there's those collapse and expand functions for under Individuals and under the Demographics. So, you'd need to select the plus button for 19 because you have 19 A through D to complete, but it does not show on the screen here, so you'd need to expand it in order to see those categories, similarly for question 20. And then more accordions that you want to make sure to look at is that, like I said, question 19 A to D. Once you expand that, you want to make sure that you're responding to everything in the table because those are all required responses. Anything that has a number in the field needs a number included in there. Even if your response is zero, that's an acceptable value. Again, show and hide function, this is specific to victim services, it asks you about the services provided. And when you select the different boxes, additional questions will pop up.

Now I do want to warn you, if you're not using the latest browser, you're not using the latest version of Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, some questions may not show up accordingly, so if you select these boxes and you don't see anything, make sure that you check what browser you're using and make sure that you are aware that some questions are not popping up and you are unable to answer them. This is what I mean, we selected Information and referral and then additional 31A questions popped up, those were not on the screen prior to selecting that. So, let's talk a little bit about system validation.

So, system validations are basically a set of rules that OVC and our team has embedded into the system to make sure that you are reporting accurately to the best of your ability and the system helps you out with that. So, basically the best way to describe validation is that the system has rules that state one plus one equals two or question 22A must be equal to question 22, equal to or less than equal to or greater than are the different options. And as I said, under the Need Help tab, there you can find all of those rules and validations explained to you if you run into any issues. The system will prompt you if you answered a question that does not adhere to the validation, the system will pop up an error message as you see on the screen here, letting me know, hey, this total does not add up to what our validations are supposed to be. An example of that would be, let's say you served 22 new victims and you put that number in as 22 and then you're answering the demographics portion. And within the age demographics, you put that you served 50 victims that were between 18 and 32.

The system will flag that and let you know, Hey, you're saying 50 victims were within this age range, however, you said you only served 22 victims. This does not add up, your answer needs to be 22 or less in each of those categories under age. And they need, the total of the age categories needs to equal 22 because that's the total number of new victims you served. Okay, also, there's validations that are in the tables as well. So, specifically in this partner table, if you listed that you had one law enforcement agency as a partner, then you are required to answer if they were a task force partner, a core partner, or a new partner. If you were to enter any number other than a zero in the number of partners for any of these categories, you have to identify what type of partner they fall under, and the system will not let you move forward unless you provide an answer.

So, this is the Review page. After you've completed all your topic areas, the questions within your topic areas, you saved and continue, you get to a page that's the Review page. And that is a page where you get to see all of your responses to all of the questions that are required of your human trafficking award.

You also get to see alerts. If there are any questions that you missed, or you just did not have an answer to, or you didn't see because of a browser issue, the system will let you know that these are required questions and you have not completed them. You can click on the required word itself for each question and it takes you directly to that question, so you don't have to scroll through and scroll to identify where that question is within the topic area.

And the system will not let you submit a report until there are no alerts and all of your responses have a check mark next to them on the Review tab. Once you've completed everything on the Review tab and you've answered all the questions, you'll get to the Confirmation tab within the Review tab. It goes from just letting you review your report to confirming your report.

You do need to mark the data entry as complete, so check that box and then hit Save. You can also add additional comments for your grant manager or for our analysts, if you have any additional information you'd like to provide. But once you hit Save, you'll need to confirm that the data entry is certified and complete, and then that is how your report will be submitted. A lot of our grantees forget the steps. They think just entering the data means they've completed a report, that is unfortunately not correct.

You do need to make sure you submit your report and go to the Reports tab over here to check that your report is complete. As you see on the second screenshot on the screen here, the Data Entry Status is what you're looking for to ensure that you've completed data entry for that specific reporting period.

So once you go to the Reports tab, you're going to select that award number and then you have to find each quarter to see what the status is, who submitted it, and when they submitted it. And then you also have access to that report in an Excel document, so you can pull all that information that you provided, all the data, and save it for your records.

The second piece would be that semiannual PDF that we will talk about next. But before we do so, I want to let you know that once you submit a report, you can no longer make any changes to it, but we can always unlock a report for you. You do not have the ability to unlock reports after a reporting period has closed, but my team at the helpdesk can do that for you. And we really, it's not a problem to do that. If you realize that there's some information that was inaccurate or if you received additional data that you did not know about.

We always encourage our grantees to be as accurate as possible, and if that means calling the helpdesk and unlocking a report and making some changes, that's totally fine as long as it makes your data more accurate. So, now I'm talking about the semiannual report. So this is where, in the Report tab, you will find your piece of your semiannual report. And this is the piece that is the quantitative piece of the semiannual report. This is where you will share with your grant manager the data that you've collected over two quarters.

And as you see on the screen here, only one of the quarters shows a semiannual link because the semiannual report, the PMT generates that report with two quarters of data combined into one report, because that's what we're looking for at the semiannual level. So, what you need to do is you need to make sure that you are locating that semiannual report for the proper reporting period. You will have to do this for this first reporting period of your award, and then you'll need to save that PMT-generated PDF report to your computer.

You are not creating the report yourself, the system does all of this for you. All you need to do is locate it, identify the right reporting period, and select that link that says semiannual, and then the system generates that PDF. You will then save it to your computer and then you are responsible for uploading it to the JustGrants system to fulfill that second piece of the reporting requirements.

I'm going to show you what the report looks like. If you are working on the semiannual report you generated in a system, it should not be an Excel document, so this one on the right here is incorrect. That's not the right report. That only includes data for one quarter. It should be a PDF document, which is the document on the right. And as you see, it shows first quarter and second quarter, and then it shows the total between the two quarters, and that's what OVC is looking for to be entered into JustGrants, and that's what your grant managers will be reviewing, so please be mindful of that. They will return those reports to you and they will not approve your report in JustGrants, if those reports are submitted incorrectly.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the semiannual report in JustGrants. So, the semiannual report is a report in JustGrants and it is where you complete narrative questions. In addition to submitting that PMT-generated PDF, you are responsible for eight different questions, narrative questions, directly in JustGrants. We call them question sets in JustGrants. This is where you'll share with OVC the status of your goals and objectives.

The first question is actually asking you about your goals and objectives, so you'll speak to those. You'll also talk about whether your organization is on track, fiscally and programmatically, to complete your goals and objectives on time and within budget, so you're really speaking to the timeline of your award, and you're also reporting on what happened in the past 6 months, but also in the upcoming 6 months. And again, you can only report on what you know at the time and things will look different in 6 months and that is okay.

OVC is just looking to see what you plan on doing over the upcoming 6 months. You also should use these reports to ask for technical assistance from OVC and to share any problems, delays, or challenges that you are facing with your awards. The earlier you do so, you share that information with your grant manager, the better they can assist you and they can find solutions or workarounds to the issues that you're facing with completing your award.

These reports are formative reports to help your grant managers understand what is happening with your program. They are not meant to hold anybody accountable or cause any problems with your federal award. It's really just so they can understand what is happening and then they can be more informed. These are also, I consider them a space to brag about the incredible work that your organization is doing on the award, so sharing significant development and sharing success stories, redacted survivor stories, and information with OVC is extremely helpful in helping your grant managers really see how impactful your award and your work has been at the local level. And also you should be indicating whether the program is sustainable or not. This is something you should keep in mind at all times from the start of your award.

What are we doing to sustain the work once the funding is no longer available? Once we run out of funding, once our end date approaches, are we going to be able to complete or continue the great work that we're doing without the OVC funding? You need to be transparent, you need to be honest with your grant manager, so they can better assist you and so they can better advocate for your organization and for the victim services field on your behalf.

So once you answer that information, once you answer the questions, or let me show you where to find the questions. So in JustGrants, this is where those questions are. This is the semiannual report, you will need to go to the Performance Report. You go to Performance Management, and then you go to Performance Report. Once you open that Performance Report, if you see on the screenshot on the left here, at the bottom of the page, it shows question sets and then it shows you the actual name of your question sets. It says Semiannual Narrative.

You'll click on that Semiannual Narrative and you'll have a Begin button. You'll need to select that Begin button, and then this is where you start entering responses to the questions. Once you complete that, you'll need to also look for the Attachment button and you'll need to attach that PMT-generated document, that PDF that you generated that includes the quantitative data, the numbers for the two quarters, because you need to make sure those are included in your semiannual report.

So again, semiannual reports are narrative questions and a PDF that you've generated in the PMT, so that includes the data for your grant managers to see. I've also included a link here on how to complete the question sets and how to submit the report that JustGrants has created. It's a resource, it's a document that JustGrants can use or that JustGrants has created for grantees to use. Apologies. Here are a few other resources on how to locate the performance report, how to complete it, and due dates from the JustGrants side of the house.

I work with the PMT team, with the performance management team, and JustGrants is a separate platform and a separate team, so I wanted to make sure you have access to their resources as well. Okay, so let's do a quick summary of everything I've talked about to get you going, so you can report on time this reporting period. You need to obtain a copy of your program's performance measure questionnaire and you need to review the question banks or the topic areas that are assigned to your award.

Now that you've received your award, you need to know what exactly you will be reporting on, what the questions are and how you're going to be collecting that data over the life of your award. In order to do so, you need to find the solicitation map to identify what the topic areas are, or just access the PMT, they're already identified for you in the Enter Data tab once you begin completing a report. You also need to use the data Excel spreadsheet. That's a tool that's available to you throughout the quarter to collect data in real time before a reporting period opens up and you can start reporting directly in the PMT.

This document is, again, if your organization does not have your own data collection mechanism in place throughout the quarter and you need this job aid, it's there for you. It's not a requirement, but it is helpful, and it does include the OVC performance measures for you, so you can adapt it or make it your own as you start reporting for your award. You need to be combining any prime and subgrantee data into each quarter, so if you are already working with a subgrantee, make sure that you collect their data, make sure that they are aware of the performance measures for OVC, and that they understand the requirements for reporting as well. Some questions, again, may not apply to your work within the topic areas, and that is okay.

If you feel like you don't know how to respond to a question, entering a zero if you don't have that data is okay, where you see fit. You need to complete your quarterly reporting in the PMT for each federal quarter, starting from the start date of your award, even if you have not spent any OVC funding or if you did not begin working on grant activity yet. You are still required to report because your award is active. In January and July, in addition to reporting quarterly data, you'll need to generate and save a semiannual PDF from the PMT platform, and then you'll need to attach it to your performance report for that reporting period in JustGrants. You also will need to complete the semiannual narrative questions in JustGrants in order to submit your semiannual report and fulfill that requirement.

Here are a few of our resources. I know I mentioned the JustGrants resources, but we have our OVC Performance Measures webpage. We have a specific webpage for the human trafficking portfolio. This is where this recorded training will be housed.

There's other trainings around how to use the PMT. There's trainings around how to write a narrative report and trainings around the measures as well. We also have user guides, we have the actual performance measures themselves, the solicitation map and the Excel data spreadsheet, the job aid, and a dictionary and terminology resource that will help you understand what terms OVC uses to better understand how to report.

Here are some additional JustGrants resources.

I wanted to make sure the links are there for you, if you run into any problems, to troubleshoot the question sets, to really know how to upload an attachment. And there's also infographic about submitting a performance report in JustGrants.

Please do use these resources, they're extremely helpful and they will alleviate any confusion or frustration as you complete your reports because it does get a little bit stressful, especially the first few times that you are accessing these systems and completing your reports.

I also want to let you know that we are here to help. We love hearing from our grantees. We want to assist you, we want to help. If you'd like to schedule a one-on-one session, we call it a welcome session to OVC Performance Management or a session just to ask a specific question about reporting or the measures, we are more than happy to help you with that. Just email our helpdesk, ask for assistance, let us know you're looking for a session or you need a quick answer, and we will get back to you.

Our sessions, we host sessions for new staff members, we do refreshers for teams, but we also host sessions that end up being a 10-minute question that's answered, or an hour-long conversation around certain measures and how to report more accurately. So, really we're very flexible and we just want to be of assistance to you.

We're part of the helpdesk that I said you should reach out to, but there's actually two helpdesks. Our helpdesk is the PMT Tier 4 Helpdesk. We assist with PMT account creation, with navigating the PMT and any error messages, and also the performance measures and performance management of your OVC award. There's also the JustGrants Helpdesk. They are responsible for the JustGrants piece of reporting: account creation, password, updates, roles, onboarding to JustGrants, and any error messages in the system or uploading issues that you may run into.

Here's the contact information for both helpdesks and our hours of operation. And with that, I hope this was helpful. Please do reach out if you have any questions, if you run into any issues as you complete your reporting, we want to help you and make this a better, easier process for you, so you can continue the fantastic work that you do and not stress too much about performance measure reporting for OVC. Thank you, all.