American Samoa's Governor, Togiola Tulafono, has issued a territory wide policy executive order which centralises the administration of all federal grants awarded to the territory.
Under the order, only the governor or his assignee will be authorised to sign and accept grant awards.
The new policy will require each agency to appoint a grant liaison person from the agency to the new office even though each agency director will still retain the responsibility of managing agency grants.
The treasury will still hold the responsibility for grant fiscal management including counter signing grant drawdown requests.
The new policy allows the territorial audit office the power to audit each federal grant.
