Federal Administration/Grantmaking

For the USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service, FEi redesigned and implemented the Food Aid Information System (FAIS).  FAIS brought significant benefits to the business process by streamlining and automating the entire workflow of grant/program management and performance tracking. FEi collaborated with the agency to transition from manual tracking through individual spreadsheets into a fully automated online application announcement, submission, and online review process.

This system fosters interagency collaboration among USDA and USAID to manage food aid programs across the globe, including:

• Establishing program budgets based on commodity and freight forecast estimates
• Soliciting, receiving, and analyzing food aid proposals
• Negotiating, awarding, and monitoring food aid development activities within the contracts
• Contracting for the procurement of commodities and the transportation of commodities
• Ensuring the delivery of donated food
• Performing program oversight
• Reporting the outputs and outcomes of the food aid program against established performance criteria
  

Grantee Monitoring/Reporting

FEi believes that the most effective means to understand a program is to get involved at the service provision level.  Our willingness to work directly with grantees provides both the grantee and the Federal agency with shared perspective on the challenges of reporting at various levels along with the benefits of shared data management.  The lessons learned in this process leads to a mutual learning environment illustrated by our growing involvement with more grantees through each award cycle.