American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

Contact Us

Definitions for Department Provided Data

Data Element Definition
Award Description

<max length 4,000 characters>

For Grants and Loans: Award title and description with purpose of each funding action if any. The description should capture the overall purpose of the award. For example, "community development", "comprehensive community mental health services to adults with a serious mental illness", etc.

For Federally Awarded Contracts: Provide a description of the overall purpose and expected outcomes, or results of the contract or action under the contract funded by the Recovery Act, including significant deliverables and, if appropriate, associated units of measure.

NIH Guidance – Enter project abstract as provided by the HHS Readiness Tool, public health relevance statement, or other text that may be more informative to the public.

NSF Guidance – Enter the value from the field entitled, "Abstract at Time of Award" in Research.gov. If the abstract shown in Research.gov is longer than the space allotted, enter as much text as the space will permit, and end with the statement, "The complete abstract for this award is available in Research.gov at: www.research.gov."
Quarterly Activities/Project Description

<max length 2,000 characters>

 A description of the overall purpose and expected outputs and outcomes or results of the award and first-tier subawards, including significant deliverables and, if appropriate, units of measure.

For final reports where the expenditures are less than the award amount, provide a description explaining why the final expenditure amount does not equal the award amount, and confirm that no additional funds will be expended.

NIH Guidance – If there are no significant changes from the Award Description field, then it is acceptable to say, "As defined in the Award Description field." Otherwise report any significant progress or changes.

NSF Guidance – Recipients should provide a very brief summary of activities conducted to date to include items such as:

  • Personnel in place
  • Research underway; and /or
  • Equipment purchased or installed.
Project Status

<select option>

 Evaluation of completion status of the project based on work performed. Select one of the following four options:
  • Not started
  • Less than 50% completed
  • Completed 50% or more
  • Fully Completed
For awards funding multiple projects, provide your best estimate of completion of all projects combined.
Number of Jobs Created and Retained

<numeric field – enter FTE #>

 An estimate of the number of jobs created and jobs retained in the United States and outlying areas for the current reporting quarter. A job created is a new position created and filled, or an existing open position that is filled, as a result of ARRA funding. A job retained is a previously existing filled position that is now funded, fully or partially, by ARRA funds. Do not count unfilled positions.

For grants and loans, the number shall also include the number of jobs created and retained by sub recipients. The number shall be expressed as "full-time equivalent" (FTE), calculated quarterly as all hours worked divided by the total quarterly hours in a full-time schedule.

For instance, two full-time employees working full days and one part-time employee working half days would be reported as 2.5 FTE. A job cannot be reported as both created and retained.

For ARRA reporting of jobs created or jobs retained, you may use the percent of effort funded by ARRA awards for the reporting quarter as an FTE equivalent. A funded job is defined as one in which the wages or salaries are either paid for or will be reimbursed with ARRA funding.

See a more detailed FTE estimate example.
Description of Jobs Created and Retained

<max length 4,000 characters>

 A brief description of the types of jobs created or retained, and a narrative description of the impact on the recipient's workforce (including the impact on subrecipients). Use job titles, do not list individual names.

Example of brief description: "ARRA funds used to support 6 graduate student researchers, 1 Lab Manager, and summer salary for Principal Investigator"
Primary Place of Performance

<BERKELEY data will be pre-loaded. Change only if location is NOT Berkeley>

 Physical location of prime recipient's primary place of performance (city, state, congressional district, and country). Berkeley location data will be pre-loaded in these fields. If the project's primary physical location is NOT Berkeley, the correct information should be entered.
Vendor Payments $25,000 and over  – Description of Products or Services Purchased

<max length 255 characters>

 A description of the product(s) and/or service(s) provided by the vendor.

Note: Only individual payments $25,000 and over trigger this reporting requirement.