Web Posted: 10/19/2009 4:03:36 PM
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The Office of Justice Assistance (OJA) Egrants program joins an elite group of award winners that represent the best practices in state governments across the country. Selected from almost one-hundred nominations from across the country, the Egrants program has received a 2009 Innovations Award from the Council of State Governments.
The Innovations Award program recognizes exemplary state programs and practices, and is the only comprehensive national awards program that focuses exclusively on state programs and policies.
Web-based Egrants is a robust grants management system for announcing funding opportunities, submitting online grant applications, managing grant awards, monitoring project progress and reporting grant activities. OJA launched the Egrants program in March of 2006.
Wisconsin’s Egrants system was adapted from a grants management system initially developed by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency with federal funds and made available for no-cost to other states.
With a modest state investment to adapt the program to Wisconsin’s needs, we now have a state of the art grants management system which can be shared with other interested Wisconsin agencies at no cost. The Wisconsin Department of Commerce implemented the program this summer.
OJA has greatly improved efficiency and reduced costs through the Egrants system. While the amount of activity administered by OJA has doubled, Egrants has expanded OJA’s capacity to handle increased volume without additional staff resources.
In addition to the significant savings achieved by lower start-up costs, it is estimated that Egrants is saving Wisconsin taxpayers more than $100,000 each year.
Egrants has also improved customer service by streamlining the grant process, improving communication between OJA and grant applicants and award recipients and increasing transparency and accountability in the grant award process.
