Triannual May 2022 Meeting
Federal Agency Updates Summary
Presentations & Videos
Federal Agency Updates
Description: Representatives from the Federal Agency Members will update the membership on activities at their agencies. Speakers include; Jean Feldman from NSF, Christine Diallo and Mary Sladek from NASA, Matt Faulkner from NIFA, Heidi Custer from DHS, Avery Tucker from NIH, and Debbie Rafi from ONR.
Committee/Working Group Updates
The Great Resignation and Potential Impacts to the Research Enterprise
Description: A number of economists and analysts of the U.S. labor market have begun to track what is often referred to in the media as “The Great Resignation”, signifying the challenge that employers are facing to fill open positions for the past year. Whether this is still an adjustment to the economic changes that took place during the pandemic shutdown or a long-term trend is still an open debate. This session will examine the trend in the context of the nation’s research enterprise, where the entire ecosystem of research activities and management is enabled by specialized knowledge in grant seeking, grant management, research regulations, and funded research program activities. Anecdotally, there is much focus on the difficulty many institutions are facing to attract and retain both researchers and research administrators. The same concerns are found within government agencies and in the research policy arena. This session will present some of the current data on the trend and provide an opportunity to discuss the challenges and identify potential impacts and areas for future work on this issue.
SciENcv and meeting requirements of the NSPM-33/OSTP Guidance
Description: This session will include updates on work to improve the SciENcv interface and how FDP members can get involved in testing and using the new functionality. Speakers will provide information on how SciENcv currently helps investigators leverage existing data to produce up to date biosketches and financial support documents for grant applications.
Faculty Forum
Description: The group will be discussing the next iteration of the Faculty Workload Survey and planning the next steps.
Efforts to reduce burden associated with the care and use of laboratory animals and other Research Compliance Committee updates
Description: In this session, representatives from NIH OLAW, USDA APHIS, and the FDP Animal Subjects Subcommittee will discuss various efforts to reduce the burden associated with the care and use of laboratory animals in accordance with Title II, Section 2034(d) of the 21st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255), which was enacted December 13, 2016. This discussion will also highlight progress of the FDP Compliance Unit Standard Protocol (CUSP) project, which aims to relieve the administrative burden and increase inter-institutional communication between researchers and regulators while improving animal care through the promulgation of procedures that have proven to meet the standards of IACUC’s, veterinarians, researchers, and national regulatory bodies. This session will also include other Research Compliance Committee and Subcommittee updates.
NSPM-33 Updates
Description: This session will provide an update on what has evolved with NSPM-33 Implementation Guidance since the January meeting, including a synopsis of the “Listening Sessions” that the FDP Foreign Influence Group (FIWG) had with NIH and NSF officials, the presentation made to OSTP as part of their “Engagement Hours” on February 28, 2022, how FDP is continuing to engage, and what agency plans are currently for rollout.
Research.gov Updates
Description: Goodbye FastLane proposal preparation, hello Research.gov proposal preparation! NSF is transitioning all preparation and submission functionality for new proposals from FastLane to Research.gov when the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 23-1) goes into effect in January 2023. As additional capabilities have been added, Research.gov is very near the point where it can support all of FastLane’s proposal preparation and submission tasks. Join a representative from NSF’s Division of Information Systems for an overview of the Research.gov Proposal Submission System, recent and remaining planned enhancements, and available training resources including an extensive proposal preparation demo site to help the research community make the transition. During the session, the presenter will show how to quickly and easily create a Research.gov proposal, upload proposal documents, manage senior personnel, and much more using NSF’s user-friendly and intuitive proposal preparation system.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn why you should encourage your Principal Investigators (PIs) to transition from FastLane to Research.gov proposal preparation well before January 2023
- Learn about the proposal preparation demo site and other available training resources to support the transition
- Step into the shoes of a PI and prepare a Research.gov proposal
NSF OIG Discussion on Promising Practices for NSF Award Management
Description: The speakers will provide an update on audit work at the National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General and will provide an overview of the recently issued report on Promising Practices for NSF Award Management. The speakers will discuss the most commonly identified audit findings, suggestions for strengthening controls in those areas, and promising practices that were observed in the recipient community during the course of the audits. Recipients can use these observations to evaluate their own award management environments which could result in cleaner audits and more efficient control environments. Click here for more information on NSF’s Promising Practices.
Plenary 1: Agency and Institutional Considerations to Build and Maintain Data Management and Sharing Infrastructure
Description: In the past decade, research data have become widely recognized as a critical national and global resource, and the risks of losing or mismanaging research data can have severe economic and social consequences” (NIST Research Data Framework). Federal funding agencies and institutional recipients have a shared obligation to provide the national and institutional infrastructure necessary to support best practices for managing and sharing our critical research data resources. This panel will highlight the various efforts undertaken by federal funding agencies and institutions to support the large scale infrastructure that could not be supported by a single institution alone and the considerations that remain to be tackled at the individual institution level.
Slides:
Grants QSMO – Current Federal Initiatives in support of Reducing Admin Burden
Description: The Grants Management Quality Service Management Office (Grants QSMO) was formally designated in January 2021 to transform government-wide grants management end-to-end. QSMOs are tasked with offering and managing a marketplace of systems and service solutions to improve customer satisfaction, automate processes, modernize technology, standardize data and related processes, and achieve efficiencies in time and money related to the grant management life cycle. The Grants QSMO is the only QSMO to include the public (i.e., applicants and recipients) as key stakeholders in their mission. The Grants QSMO will present on current initiatives, their path ahead, and gather insights from participants on how the Grants QSMO can best improve federal grants management for applicants and recipients.