Frequently Asked Questions About the BJA TTA Reporting Portal Why did BJA NTTAC develop the TTA Reporting Portal? The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) National Training and Technical Assistance Center (NTTAC) developed the BJA Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Reporting Portal to further enhance the way BJA and its TTA providers capture, track, and report on TTA activities. The new system replaces TTARS and enables BJA and TTA providers to attain a comprehensive, real-time awareness of TTA activities. Additionally, the TTA Reporting Portal allows for standardized and robust reporting and analysis capabilities. How does the TTA Reporting Portal differ from TTARS? TTARS allows for the entry of quantitative data with few opportunities to capture valuable qualitative data. The TTA Reporting Portal provides an opportunity to capture a wide-range of TTA activities and better lends itself to aggregating reported data quantitative and qualitative data to understand the entire context of a TTA engagement and scope of TTA services. What are the benefits of replacing TTARS with the TTA Reporting Portal? The TTA Reporting Portal allows BJA TTA providers to more efficiently manage TTA services, track deliverables and progress against those deliverables, enter qualitative data, and upload relevant documents to provide a more holistic picture of TTA services. Additionally, the TTA Reporting Portal data will be used to fulfill BJA data calls, ultimately reducing the number of times BJA staff need to reach to TTA partners for data. What are the key features of the system? The TTA Reporting Portal key features enable users to report on, categorize, filter, and sort TTA services delivered to the field; track progress against deliverables and TTAs; and extract data and run reports in a more meaningful way, e.g., TTA activities that support a specific program area or targeted audience. How did BJA NTTAC identify and vet the key requirements/features of the TTA Reporting Portal? To identify the system s operational requirements and priorities, BJA NTTAC met with BJA staff and more than 40 BJA TTA providers in a series of virtual and in-person meetings over a period of 18 months. These discussions, as well as feedback gathered over the years from TTARS users, gave BJA staff a better understanding of the different types of TTA activities performed, the types of deliverables developed by BJA TTA providers, and identify work being done in support of a program area and target audience. These conversations also provided a better understanding of information BJA needs to collect from TTA providers. What resources are available to help me understand and use the TTA Reporting Portal? BJA NTTAC developed the TTA Reporting Portal User Guide and a Data Dictionary as resources to help BJA TTA providers and BJA staff understand how to use the system. The User Guide provides detailed step-by-step guidance on navigating and entering data into the system. The Data Dictionary provides lists of all data collected by the system, drop-down menu options, and performance
metrics for each type of TTA and deliverable. BJA NTTAC also offered a two-part training series during the summer of 2014 to help BJA TTA providers learn to use the TTA Reporting Portal, including live demonstrations. Recordings of these sessions, the User Guide, Data Dictionary, and FAQs can be accessed by logging into the system, navigating to the TTA Collaboration Portal, and visiting the TTA Reporting Portal Interest Group page. BJA NTTAC will offer refresher trainings on the TTA Reporting Portal on a regular basis, starting in December 2014. If additional assistance is needed, the BJA NTTAC Concierge team is available to answer questions and provide support at nttac@bjatraining.org or 1-855-BJA-TTAC (1-855-252-8822). How do I access the new system? Accessing the TTA Reporting Portal is a three-part process that includes creating an account in the BJA NTTAC site, requesting access to the TTA Reporting Portal, and then requesting access to specific awards for your organization. To get started, go to www.bjatraining.org and select the Log In link at the top right-hand corner of the page. From there, you will select Create Account and follow the guidance provided. Once you have created your account or if you already have a user account, refer to Section 2.0 of the User Guide for detailed guidance on next steps. At what point and how often must I generate a GMS Report from the TTA Reporting Portal and then upload it to GMS? Reporting requirements with the TTA Reporting Portal depend upon your award s end date. If your award ended before September 30, 2014, you should have submitted a report for activity from July 1 September 30, 2014 (the final quarter of the award) in TTARS. This report was due on October 30, using the standard TTARS reporting process. If your award ends after September 30 2014, enter data into the TTA Reporting Portal for all activity from July 1 forward. Generate a GMS Report from the TTA Reporting Portal semiannually and upload it in GMS as an attachment to your award s standard progress report. As a reminder, for the January to June reporting period, the progress report is due July 30. For the July to December reporting period, the progress report is due January 30. Additionally, upon conclusion of your award period, generate a GMS Report from the TTA Reporting Portal and submit it in GMS as part of your final report (due no later than 90 days after the award end date). When should I begin to enter information about my activities? The TTA Reporting Portal should be used in an ongoing manner throughout the award period - enter objectives, TTAs, and deliverables as soon as you begin working on them. TTAs and deliverables should be marked as Completed (and performance measures entered) soon after work on the TTA or deliverable has concluded. How do I provide feedback or ask questions about the TTA Reporting Portal? We welcome feedback on this new BJA NTTAC system. To provide feedback or to ask questions, please contact the BJA NTTAC Concierge team at 1-855-BJA-TTAC (1-855-252-8822) or nttac@bjatraining.org.
I have scheduled a webinar inviting hundreds of criminal justice professionals. Is this webinar a TTA or a deliverable? Delivering a webinar is a TTA and falls under the TTA category Training. Distribution of the webinar s resources, such as a recording of the webinar to download, is a deliverable under the TTA type Recorded (Podcast / CD/DVD/Webinar). For the purposes of entering data into the TTA Reporting Portal, a TTA is defined as any activity that provides state, local, and tribal agency assistance. A deliverable is defined as a tangible, reusable artifact that can be referenced by others. The User Guide provides definitions of key terms used in the system. I handle a large quantity of inquiries, such as phone calls and e-mails, or smaller types of TTA requests. Do they each have to be entered as an individual TTA item? No. Assuming there is a common objective for these smaller types of TTA requests, consider these activities as one TTA or a grouped TTA. A grouped TTA entry can represent tens, hundreds, or in some cases, thousands, of agency requests. In this scenario, the TTA Type field would be Requests for Information / Help Desk. If I submit one grouped TTA to represent many small requests, how will BJA know how many agencies I supported? Limit the TTA to a defined period of time, such as a month or a reporting period. You can reflect the period of time in the TTA Title and TTA Short Name fields (such as Help Desk Support: January ), as well as the TTA Start Date and TTA Actual End Date fields. At the end of the defined period of time, enter the end date (such as January 31), mark the status as Completed, and enter performance metrics to reflect the number of agencies served during that time period. You can then use the Cloning icon to create a new TTA entry to reflect support for the next period of time, such as Help Desk Support: February. (Refer to the TTA Reporting Portal User Guide, section 5.4 Clone a TTA for information on cloning TTA entries.) This process will enable you to record performance metrics at regular intervals and provide BJA with an ongoing record of the number of agencies you supported. I am preparing to conduct a number of onsite visits with the same agency to fulfill a long-term state, local, and tribal assistance engagement. Should each onsite visit or phase of this long-term plan be entered as a different TTA? Not necessarily. The TTA Reporting Portal allows for flexibility in how you handle ongoing and longterm TTA activities. Some options are: Scenario-based Questions about Data Entry in the BJA TTA Reporting Portal Reflect each site visit as a separate TTA entry, and include language in the TTA Description field, or set a tag, to identify the different TTA entries as part of a larger support effort. Enter one TTA to capture all of the support provided to the agency. Enter milestones for that TTA to indicate each phase of support and/or each site visit conducted. To determine the most appropriate way to reflect this type of TTA engagement, talk with your BJA Policy Advisor.
There are multiple events (meetings, onsite visits, and workshops) for a single TTA that I want BJA to know about and include on the BJA calendar. How can I do that? The TTA Reporting Portal captures information for one event per TTA entry. To publish or promote additional events on BJA s public calendar, do one of the following things: Create a separate TTA entry for each event. Contact BJA NTTAC to explore options, feasibility, and appropriateness of listing all events on the BJA calendar. Will I need to enter the number of participants in each training class, with information about their jurisdictional affiliation (federal, state, etc.) and discipline focus area (law enforcement, corrections, etc.) for each training event? Yes. Information about the training participants jurisdictional affiliation and discipline(s) is captured in the Target Setting/Audience page of the TTA entry. You do not need to enter the number of participants from each jurisdiction or discipline but rather indicate those which were represented. When a training TTA is complete, you will indicate the number of individuals who registered for, attended, and completed the training course in the Performance Metrics page of the entry. Which Program Area or Program Sub-topic Area do I enter when my TTA work supports the full spectrum of justice disciplines? Since providers are limited to selecting one program area for each TTA or deliverable, select the one primary program area that is most appropriate. More than one program sub-topic areas can be selected and enables additional justice discipline options. If you would like assistance with selecting the most appropriate program area for your TTA work, talk with your BJA Policy Advisor. Questions About the TTA Reporting Portal Compared to TTARS With TTARS, if I forgot my password, I needed to contact the Help Desk to reset it. How do I reset my password in the TTA Reporting Portal? The TTA Reporting Portal allows users to reset their passwords themselves, without needing to contact the BJA NTTAC Help Desk. From the system Log in screen, select the Request New Password link. The system will provide directions for resetting your password. With TTARS, once I submitted a TTA entry, the entry was locked. If I wanted to edit the entry, I needed to ask the Help Desk to unlock it. Do entries lock in the TTA Reporting Portal? No, entries in the TTA Reporting Portal do not lock. Information entered by users for awards, objectives, TTAs, and deliverables may be edited at any time. TTA and deliverable entries may be edited even after they have been completed (i.e., the status is marked as Completed in the system). With TTARS, I submitted reports quarterly. How frequently will I submit reports with the TTA Reporting Portal? The frequency of reports has changed from quarterly to semiannually. BJA TTA providers with awards that end after September 30, 2014 should record all TTA activity from July 1, 2014 forward in the TTA Reporting Portal. Providers will generate a GMS Report in the TTA Reporting Portal, and submit that report in GMS as part of their standard semiannual progress report. The report on TTA activity from January June will be submitted in July; the report on activity from July December will be submitted in January.
My organization has some ongoing TTA activities, which we perform for the full duration of our grant. I had entered information about these ongoing activities into TTARS. Do I need to create new entries for these activities in the TTA Reporting Portal? Yes, if you have an ongoing TTA which you will work on after July 1, 2014, you should create an entry for that activity in the TTA Reporting Portal. BJA NTTAC is not able to transfer information from TTARS into the TTA Reporting Portal at this time.