History

The COE was developed in an organic manner to meet existing needs. It began as an agency initiative and over the course of ten years, its ongoing success led it to be repeatedly selected to expand its scope. Today it is a government-wide initiative tasked with providing grant management services.

The entity that has become the COE was created in the late 1990s by an ACF team who recognized that a well coordinated strategy which integrated technology with cost and program business goals would allow service of many grant management programs with a single system and provide significant improvements in customer service. Over 50 disparate stove piped systems were consolidated within ACF and ACF created an organization to develop and operate the resulting system.

Beginning in 2000, the Secretary of HHS made a decision to integrate grants management systems across the department.   A review of the different systems within the HHS agencies lead to the selection of the ACF organization as one of two HHS Centers of Excellence which all HHS grant programs would have to use for grants management support.  Under the executive sponsorship of Curtis Coy, the ACF Deputy Assistant Secretary, the COE continued to expand to serve more and more programs within HHS and began to provide services to several emerging grants agencies outside of HHS.

In 2006 the COE's scope and client base was again dramatically altered when OMB selected the COE to provide grants management to all agencies in the Federal Government.

Today the COE is an important component of the financial and programmatic stewardship of grant programs that provide more than $100 billion in aid annually.  The COE is a partner with 16 different agencies and hundreds of grant programs that are transforming the way the United States Government does business, not just through technology but also changing the way government agencies cooperate and leverage resources.