Author: Roger Wood

Historically, IT skills certifications were a ticket to higher salaries for IT professionals. Based on data from Foote Partners IT Skills and Certification Pay Index for the third quarter 2011, this trend appears to be changing. In her article in Channel Insider, Ericka Chickowski notes that Foote Partners found that 13% of non-certified skills saw pay increases whereas only 5% of certified skill sets saw increases.

Increasingly, IT professionals are embedded with the business professionals they need diverse skills. These individuals succeed by understanding the business environment and being able to apply IT skills to support it. David Foote notes that these “hybrid IT business professionals” are expected to have strong IT skills but also business-related skills and that IT certifications per se, are less valuable than experience and on-the-job performance.

Calling all experts!

The EPA has several openings for nationally and internationally recognized scientists, engineers, and social scientists to serve as Special Government Employees on federal advisory committees to provide advice to the Office of Research and Development’s research programs.

Specific areas where expertise is needed currently include: atmospheric sciences, analytical chemistry, green chemistry, endocrinology, pulmonary and cardiovascular toxicology, systems science, social sciences, and behavioral sciences. More detail is provided in the call for nominations.

This can be an excellent opportunity to get faculty from your institution involved in important issues of the day.

The US Department of Energy has published a request for information “seeking comments and information from interested parties to assist DOE in reviewing its existing regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed.” Comments are being accepted through January 4, 2012.

Flowing from the President’s Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, the purpose of this RFI is to collect ideas from the public on rules, regulations or regulatory processes that are unnecessary, have become superseded by new technological developments, or might be amended to achieve their goals while imposing less burden on the public. Included in this evaluation are reporting requirements that may have become outdated or are unnecessarily complicated. While grants and contracts-related concerns and reporting requirements are not explicitly included in this request for information, it would appear they are fair game for comment.

NIH and some other parts of the US federal government have been operating under a continuing resolution, which will expire on December 16, 2011.  One detail embedded within the budget process is the NIH Salary Cap. The salary cap  has been set at Executive Level I since FY 2001. Prior to that, it was set at other levels in the executive pay scale or not tied to the Executive Level at all.

The President’s budget request for FY 2012 recommended that the salary cap be set at Executive Level II (section 203 page 59 of this document), which in the current Executive Level breakdown would reduce the cap from $199,700 to $179,700. The Omnibus spending bill  that is being discussed in congress starting today includes a recommendation to reduce the cap to Executive Level III, which is currently $165,300 [see section 203, page 79].

A reduction in the salary cap for NIH and SAMHSA of $20,000 – $34,400 would require institutions to cover the additional cost of salaries above the cap for time allocated to funded research projects.

Citrix announced results of a recent survey designed to assess how companies are responding to increasing pressure from employees who want to use personal smartphones, tablets and other devices for business use.

Their findings indicate that while many businesses lack policies for effectively managing employee’s personal devices at work, and in fact more than half of respondents said they were “unaware of all personal devices used for business purposes”, 38% of businesses do have a process or tool to manage and account for consumer devices. These companies have found that supporting use of personal devices encourages flexible work and brings productivity increases of 20% or more. Twenty-five percent of small and medium businesses actively support use of personal devices for business purposes. Not surprisingly, for 57% of respondents, security ranks as the #1 concern precluding them from adopting policies embracing use of personal devices.

While this survey was carried out among businesses, the same kinds of concerns and issues exist for universities, hospitals and research institutes, where IT support is often spread more thinly than in business environments.

YouGov and Research Now carried out the survey for Citrix between May 2011 and August 2011. They surveyed more than 1,100 senior executives and IT managers in Australia, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States.

The Research Business Models Working Group’s A21 Task Force has published comments related to its data gathering exercise focused on collecting input into ways the federal government could reduce the cost and burden of compliance requirements on recipients of federal grants and contracts while maintaining good stewardship of Federal funds.

Approximately 150 comments were received during the information gathering exercise, including official responses by COGR and AAU/APLU. Effort reporting topped the list with 57% of commenters identifying it as an area of opportunity for streamlining.  In order of number of comments received, the priority was:

• Effort Reporting
• F&A Rates
• Administrative and Project Management Support
• Cost Sharing
• Audits / Monitoring
• Regulations and Reporting
• UCA
• Definition of Equipment
• Other

According to Sally Rockey, the task force considered this input and is preparing its recommendations for actions to the reduce administrative burden, enhance the productivity of researchers, and streamline federal requirements, while maintaining sound stewardship of federally sponsored projects awarded to institutions of higher education.

Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB), will step down at the end of 2011. As head of the RATB, Devaney is widely credited with establishing a proactive transparency approach to monitoring the $800 billion federal stimulus effort under the 2009 Recovery Act.

Universities, states, and other recipients of federal stimulus funds through grants and contracts reported on their spending activity through Federalreporting.gov, which then fed this spending data to the public via the Recovery.gov website.

Earlier this year, President Obama asked Devaney to lead the Government Accountability and Transparency Board (GATB), created as a created as a cornerstone of the Campaign to Cut Waste. The GATB is also a key component of the DATA Act , legislation that is intended to codify reporting similar to that of the Recovery Act to all federal grants and contracts. The DATA Act is currently working its way through Congress.

OMB has approved the Real Property Status Report (RPSR) – SF429 – for government-wide use. Developed by the Grants Policy Committee, whose functions are now subsumed under the newly created Council on Financial Reform.

The SF429 will become the standard method for agencies to collect information from grant and contract recipients related to real property for which the federal government retains an interest and that was acquired, furnished, improved or donated under an award. Attachment A is for reporting real property status; Attachment B is for requesting agency instructions on acquiring, improving or furnishing real property; and Attachment C is for requesting instructions on disposing of real property.

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2011 (DATA Act) took a step forward on Wednesday, November 30^th. The House Oversight Committee passed the bill, which moves it forward on its path toward a vote on the House floor. Sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the DATA Act includes a government-wide spending oversight panel – the Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board (FAST Board) – designed as a successor to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that was created to oversee spending of recovery act funds. The DATA Act will also mandate a uniform reporting system for recipients of federal funds modeled on Recovery.gov, which was designed to report on spending of the stimulus bill’s $787 billion. Sen. Mark Warner (R-VA) has introduced companion legislation in the Senate that has not yet had a committee hearing.

On Wednesday, several amendments were offered to the bill including one by Rep. Issa that would expand sub-recipient reporting to all levels of sub-recipients rather than limiting such reporting to first-tier sub-recipients as has been the case with recovery act funds. While critics of the recovery act have noted that this would provide fuller oversight, clearly such a requirement will involve more work for universities and other recipients. As noted by Joseph Marks at NextGov,

“Transparency is wonderful, but it does come at a cost,” the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., said. “Agencies have more burdens associated with working with fund recipients and collecting data. The [inspectors general] and the [Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board] have the burden of spot-checking reporting compliance and aggregating data . . . Recipients of funds have costs associated with reporting requirements and tracking where funds specifically go.”

It remains to be seen what the final DATA Act will look like and if it will pass both houses of Congress, but that outcome seems likely.