WPost notices the Grants.gov snafus

Finally, some coverage for the general reader of the ongoing Grants.gov fiasco. The Washington Post has finally noticed that HUD's newly mandatory grant application system has glitches. Around here we've been following the glitches since last spring. Two new bits of news in the Post story, however: (1) Grants.gov doesn't work with Macintosh computers at all, and (2) the bunch of rocket scientists who designed this screwy system really are rocket scientists: the contractor is military and aerospace giant Northrop Grumman.

(Before you read the Post article, a warning against excessive knicker twistage: the contract is "only" $22 million, not $22 billion as the paper mistakenly said. There's a correction on the Post page but it's in fine print and kind of easy to miss.)

[MORE: The Housing Assistance Council is planning to host a valuable Feb. 22 conference call on the Grants.gov process. The guest speaker will be Barbara Dorf, the HUD official in charge of the SuperNOFA application process. Registrations must be received by this coming Friday, Feb. 17 -- registration form available for download here. Looks like a hot ticket as these things go.]