Shared Services: Using Grants.gov Web Services With Other Grant Systems

If you have spent a year or more in the federal grants world – whether as an applicant or as a federal employee – you may have noted the wide range of federal grant systems that are used across the government.

It is lesser known among grant pros that Grants.gov has created a range of web services – often called application programming interfaces (or APIs) outside the grant world – that system administrators can use to link their grant systems to Grants.gov.

An example of this from everyday life is a blogging platform that gives users the option to publish a blog post via a third-party email client (by sending an email to a specific address).

Similarly, Grants.gov can integrate with other grant systems to streamline workflows for both applicants and grantors. Grants.gov refers to this type of integration as System-to-System (S2S).

Shared Services in Federal Government & Grants.gov

Many federal agencies conduct similar types of work, such as awarding federal grants. While the mission and specific goals of each grant program vary, many of the processes for posting, applying for, managing, and reporting on federal grants are the same. This is where federal shared services come in. Rather than each agency developing & maintaining the same services, the costs and benefits are shared. In this role, Grants.gov serves its purpose—to be a shared service for both the public and federal agencies.