New NSF Grants.gov Application Guide

A message from Jean Feldman, Head of the National Science Foundation Policy Office:

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Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to announce that a revised version of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide has been issued. The NSF Grants.gov Application Guide has been updated to align with changes to NSF’s Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 18-1). Information about FastLane system registration has been removed and replaced with guidance for registering in Research.gov. Editorial changes have also been made to either clarify or enhance the intended meaning of a sentence or section or to ensure consistency with data contained in NSF systems or other NSF policy documents.

The new NSF Grants.gov Application Guide will be effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 29, 2018.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please contact the Policy Office on (703) 292-8243 or by e-mail to policy@nsf.gov. For technical questions relating to Grants.gov, please contact Grants.gov directly at 1-800-518-4726 or support@grants.gov.

Best,

Jean

Jean Feldman
Head, Policy Office
Division of Institution & Award Support
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230
voice: 703.292.8243
email: jfeldman@nsf.gov

Award Process Improvement

One of the pain points identified by the End to End (E2E) review of Berkeley’s Award Set-up Process was lack of transparency around the date awards are actually received by the Sponsored Projects Office (SPO) and the Industry Alliance Office (IAO).

There is often a gap between the date a Principal Investigator (PI) receives informal notification about an award from a sponsor and the date that a formal notice of award with terms and conditions is received from the sponsor by SPO or IAO.

Up until now, there has been no way for SPO/IAO to notify PIs that a formal award notice from the sponsor has arrived.

SPO and IAO are now happy to announce that PIs will begin to receive email notifications from SPO/IAO as soon as the sponsor’s award notice is received and logged in, initiating the award set up process in SPO/IAO. These notices will be emailed out between 6:00 pm and 6:10 pm daily and will include the name of the sponsor and the office (SPO/IAO) that will be processing the award transaction.

Note: PIs and CSS/Department Research Administrators will continue to receive email notifications from the SPO Records Team and a copy of the award and Phoebe Award Summary (PAS) when the award set-up process is complete.

NSF Research.gov Proposal Submission - April 2018

In the December issue of the NSF Proposal and Award Newsletter, the National Science Foundation announced that beginning in April 2018, proposers will be able to prepare and submit non-collaborative research proposals in Research.gov.

• The initial release of this new capability will run in parallel with existing FastLane proposal preparation and submission capabilities, so proposers can choose to prepare and submit non- collaborative research proposals in Research.gov or in FastLane.
• Separately submitted collaborative proposals must still be submitted in FastLane.
• NSF will preview the new functionality to the research community in February 2018, to collect preliminary feedback and to provide the community an opportunity to acclimate to the new technology.

For more details, see the article on page 6 of the NSF Proposal and Award Newsletter.