The government should make efforts to reduce focus on the micro accounting of grant expenditures and move towards a system where the peer review process and program managers base future funding decisions on broader measures of appropriate expenditures of cost. Princeton University suggests that one useful guide might be the IRS rules: in general, any expenditure that would normally be considered taxable income (apart ...more »
PIs at Princeton University spend a large amount of their time during proposal preparation on compliance approvals. One recommendation would be for the federal government to impose a pre-compliance standard at submission, which could include a document from the sponsored research office listing areas where they know that strict compliance has not been met. The compliance can then be fully implemented once/if the proposal ...more »
Faculty at Princeton University find it frustrating that each agency requires different data in different formats and that not all the web portals work well. For example, the DOE-BES PAMS system does not always save entries, and this can lead to loss of edits. Clicking to save an entry often takes the PI to the login page, often resulting in loss of data. So having a robust portal that automatically saves data entered ...more »
Given that the main product of federally-funded research is typically publications, Princeton University suggests that it would seem sensible to allow submission of PDFs of publications where they have already appeared as a result of the work funded by the grant, and reduce the reliance on extensive research summaries. If nothing has been published, then it makes sense to ask for a report on preliminary progress. NSF ...more »
Codify the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to eliminate potential interpretation differences of future auditors and inspectors general between Uniform Guidance and FAQs.
The RPPR continues to evolve into more financial and administrative reporting than it has to do with scientific/technical progress ever since you eliminated annual FFR's for SNAP grants. Institutions are getting hammered on follow-up questioning from Grants Mgmt Specialists regarding unobligated balances, effort reported on the participants tab, other support, use of IDP's and MyNCBI noncompliant pubs. Many followup ...more »
Section 5 of the DATA Act of 2014 requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish a pilot program to test whether standardizing the data elements used in recipient reporting can reduce the burden that grantees and contractors experience in reporting on the federal funds that they receive and spend. In this fiscal year, federal agencies have awarded $540 billion in grants and $297 billion in contracts. ...more »
There is much redundancy in the current reporting. Suggest the following: 1) one annual Progress Report 2) Performance Measure surveys ONLY to be done ONCE in the 3 year grant period 3) when submitting renewal grants if the workplans are not changes have a box to simply check that off. 4) same for budgets 5) Accessability and Site Safety checks only to be done ONCE in the 3 year grant period and reflected in the MOU. ...more »
AAU, COGR and APLU recommend that OMB strongly encourage Federal agencies to issue collaborative/linked awards as an alternative to subawards. Separately submitted collaborative proposals allow two or more PIs/institutions to manage separate awards for a single, unified project.
If a centralized reporting database could be developed that all federal agencies, grantees, subrecipients, etc. would be required to use for reporting, and it would prepopulate many of the fields once the entity enters their FAIN, this would ease a lot of the reporting burden.
However, first, the FAIN would have to start being included in grant agreements so entities have that piece of information to enter.
Last year, the Coalition for Government Procurement submitted a number of recommendations in response to the Chief Acquisition Officers Council (CAO) Council Open Dialogue to improve the economy and efficiency of the Federal acquisition system. The Coalition urges the government to take action on the previously submitted recommendations to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of Federal procurement. Implementing ...more »
Comment from June 10 Data Act Summit breakout session on Recipient Reporting:
As a Federal Award recipient, I want to see more pre-populated forms and drop-down options to minimize the burden of completing reporting.