Improve ALN updates and validation

LeoFotovich commented 1 year ago

This issue has morphed since it was opened. There isn't an immediate action, but it should stay in the backlog as we go into quarterly planning. Updating and validation ALNs is a much larger scope of work that needs some dedicated planning.

Original description:

Zendesk link

https://fac-gov.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/521

FAC components involved

[ ] submission system (app.fac.gov)
[X] workbooks
[X] static site (fac.gov)
[ ] The helpdesk (zendesk)
[ ] API (api.fac.gov)
[ ] other

What browser did the user report as using?

None

Gdrive link

No response

What happened?

On our sefa we show the Federal Perkins Loans outstanding at the end of the fiscal year. When I entered this on the federal awards spreadsheet the Federal Program Name did not appear when I used the ALN 84.038, so I typed in the name. When uploading my file it failed validation. I removed the Federal Perkins Loans outstanding from the file and my file then passed validation and uploaded. The issue is now the total on the spreadsheet does not match the total in our audited financial statements and our auditors will not certify.

Can someone please advise how we should report the Federal Perkins Loans outstanding on the federal awards spreadsheet?

danswick commented 11 months ago

Capturing @Carley-Jackson's findings here and updating this ticket.

It looks like the core issue (merged ZD ticket here) is a missing ALN (84.038). If this should be in the drop-down, let's add it!

danswick commented 7 months ago

It's not immediately clear whether 84.038 should be added to the template. Per chat with @timoballard, the source of truth for this sam.gov.

danswick commented 7 months ago

I looked through sam.gov's ALN data. There are a few sources and I'm not sure how to interpret them:

datagov: I looked through data from 2024, 2023, and 2022 and didn't see 84.038 listed in any of the "Program Number" columns. It is referenced as a related program ("Federal Perkins Loan Program_Federal Capital Contributions").
grantsgov: same story as datagov.
usspendinggov: 84.038 does appear under the "Program Number" column, so it may be valid and missing.

jadudm commented 7 months ago

https://www.singleaudit.org/program/?id=84.038

This appears to be part of the pain that is ALNs. They are not globally unique identifiers over time.

I even (early days) wrote about this in a ticket: https://github.com/GSA-TTS/FAC/issues/1555

They get created/decomissioned/reused. Although singleaudit.org seems to claim it was expired in 2010, there are Education supplements that refer to it all the way until 2020/2021?

This doesn't help, per se; my Googling just shows that this ALN did exist at some point, and it is unclear how we should handle ALNs now. This conversation has come up with OMB in larger contexts, and a short answer for the public ticket might be "this is much more complex than it appears."

I do not have a conclusive answer at the moment as to the best course of action.

GSA-TTS / FAC