A head start on SuperNOFA grants today

Wow. Today HUD has published a large partial chunk, the "General Section," of the Super Notice of Funding Availability (SuperNOFA). The HUD press release is here, Federal Register text version here, Federal Register PDF version (24 pages) over here. This is pretty impressively early, considering that last year's SuperNOFA didn't appear until March 21. Today's publication doesn't specify actual deadlines yet, but it provides considerable other information that can help people start on the detail work in their applications before the main SuperNOFA announcement appears.

Someone at HUD seems to be making a real effort to involve SuperNOFA applicants as early as possible this year, as makes sense considering the number of 2005 application deadlines that had to be postponed due to technical glitches and complaints. It'd be interesting to know if the leadership for this within HUD comes from the Office of the Secretary or the Office of Administration. Back in December, HUD's Office of Administration invited potential grant applicants to register early for the electronic application process, which this year has become mandatory for all applicants except those seeking Continuum of Care funding or otherwise specifically exempted. In today's notice the contact for further information is the Office of Departmental Grants Management and Oversight, which is the division of the Office of Administration with responsibility for the SuperNOFA. Deputy Secretary Roy Bernardi is the signer of today's notice, but then he also signed the 2005 SuperNOFA, so maybe his participation is standard procedure for this type of announcement. It probably doesn't matter to most people whose idea it was to arrange this early start, but if anyone has heard where it came from within HUD, could you let us know?