Grants Blog

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The National Science Foundation – on behalf of the Grants Policy Committee and the Research Business Models Subcommittee – is accepting final comments on the new governmentwide Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) format, while at the same time putting the format out for use by federal agencies.

In a Federal Register announcement, NSF said agencies may now use the new standard format, which is designed to help streamline the reporting process for grantees as well as allow federal awarding agencies to more easily analyze, compare, and compile research program information.

NSF says it expects this to be the last opportunity for public input before the reporting format is finalized. Comments may be submitted until February 12 via email to Suzanne Plimpton, splimpton@nsf.gov.

You can access the FR notice inviting comments here.

Our annual Federal Grants Update seminar will have additional information about this new report, as well as other developments in grants management. Dates and locations of the one-day seminar will be announced soon. Watch this blog or visit our website www.managementconcepts.com/grants for future information.

President Obama has prohibited federal employees from texting while they drive, but the ban may not stop there: federal agencies will now be “encouraging” their recipients and subrecipients to also ban employee texting while on government (or company) business or in government vehicles.

The Executive Order, issued October 2, prohibits federal employees from text messaging while driving on official government business or while in government-owned vehicles. It also directs federal agencies to consider adopting education and awareness activities about the dangers of texting while driving.

But agencies now must also “to the extent authorized by applicable statutory authority” encourage recipients and subrecipients to adopt similar text messaging bans and to begin their own outreach and prevention  activities.

I’m not sure how this will play out – or if we’ll see any impact at all on federal grants – but it will be interesting to watch.

During the week of July 20, federal officials plan to conduct a series of web-based training sessions covering the recently issued Recovery Act reporting guidance (see blogs below). The sessions will be aimed at helping recipients and subrecipients understand the new reporting guidance issued June 22 and the online technologies that will be used for the reporting.

We have no information yet on when, where, or what these sessions will entail, but we wanted to give everyone a heads-up about the training.

I’ll post more information once it’s available.