News & Notices

Ironic, yes, but, apparently, quite true. “Big Data” research is all the rage currently, as evidenced by announcement by the White House in March 2012 of $200 million in funding for big data research and development. The National Library of Medicine NLM), a component of the National Institutes of Health, has been a key supporter of many big data databases since at least 1990 according to data published in Nature. However, the focus for NLM’s future funding is on supporting the development of new ideas rather than supporting existing resources, regardless of how important those resources may be for ongoing research.

This is not a new problem. I recall at a former institution struggling to determine how to fund maintaing a large data repository for a longitudinal study amassed by several investigators funded by grants over many years – but which was no longer connected directly to a funded research project. However, the problem does seem to be getting some real attention, which is good – because if there is one thing we can expect as an outcome from Big Data research and development initiatives, its more big data repositories.

The Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) is a standard federal form for progress reporting on Federally-funded research and related activities. All federal agencies sponsoring research awards has or is transitioning to the RPPR for interim progress reporting. While the RPPR is a standard form, agencies have been given significant flexibility in the details of their usage including choosing which components of the multi-part form are required and certain other adjustments to the generic format and language of the form. Despite referring to the RPPR as a “form” – it is an electronic document, not a printed document.

NIH piloted use of the RPPR with several Federal Demonstration Partnership institutions and is rolling it out to all institutions in October, 2012 for optional use. Use of the RPPR for progress reporting for SNAP awards and Fellowships is expected to become mandatory in Spring 2013. Piloting use of the RPPR for non-SNAP awards is anticipated during 2013 as well.

The RPPR will be completed and submitted via the NIH Commons. Training materials are available on the NIH RPPR web site. The NIH Office of Extramural Research has scheduled a webinar on October 17th, 2012, for those responsible for completing and/or submitting progress reports to NIH. As significant interest is anticipated, institutions are being encouraged to offer classroom-style viewing of the webinar and to register early.

Title:    NIH RPPR Training Webinar for all Grantees
Date:    Wednesday, October 17, 2012 – Live Broadcast
Time:     1:30pm-3:00pm EDT
Registration Required!

Webinar Logistics:
Reserve your webinar slot at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/647997446
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing a unique log-in number and additional information about joining the webinar.
System Requirements:
PC-based attendees:  Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh-based attendees:  Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer
The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.  Questions will need to be submitted using the online tool.
Review the RPPR webpage in advance for additional materials, including background and the RPPR Instruction Guide.

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington ruled today that President Obama, in his March 9, 2009 Executive Order and subsequent guidance issued by NIH, correctly interpreted the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which bars use of federal funds to support research “in which human embryos are created, destroyed, discarded, or knowingly be subjected to risk of injury or death greater than allowed for research on fetuses in utero…”. Since July 7, 2009, and after significant public input on the matter, NIH published new rules that allowed funding of research using human embryonic stem cell lines but maintaining the ban on use of federal funds in the development of such cell lines.

Maggie Fox on NBC News said of today’s court action, “The ruling is unlikely to put the issue to rest and one of the judges pleaded for Congress to make clear what the government should and should not be able to do.”

NIH published guidelines and procedures (and also Grants.gov packages) for submitting Successor-in-Interest (Type 6) and Change of Grantee Institution (Type 7) applications electronically.

    •    Notice of Pilot for Processing Post-Award Changes in Grantee Organizational Status: Successor-in-Interest (NOT-OD-12-133)
    •    Notice of Pilot Processes for Post-Award Change of Grantee Organization Applications to NIH (NOT-OD-12-134)

Traditional methods for requesting such changes can be continued during this pilot at the institution’s discretion. NOT-OD-12-132, also published today, provides guidance on submitting post-award relinquishing statements electronically via the NIH Commons. Relinquishing statements may not be submitted via Grants.gov. The goal of this pilot is to move processing of Type 6 and Type 7 applications from paper to electronic procedures.

Institutions using system-to-system solutions, such as InfoEd Proposal Development, may use those systems to submit Type 6 or Type 7 applications via Grants.gov. A few key things to note are listed below:

• A single Opportunity has been posted for all Type 6 applications (PA-12-269)
• A single Opportunity has been posted for all Type 7 applications (PA-12-270)
• Each of these opportunities, when viewed at Grants.gov has several packages associated with it. Each package is designed to be used with a different activity code (mechanism) or group of activity codes, as indicated in the Competition Title column of data on the Grants.gov opportunity download page.
• Even if the original application was submitted with a modular budget, the Type 6 or Type 7 application package must be submitted using a detailed budget (SF424 RR)
• Grantees are encouraged to contact the Awarding IC prior to submission.

In a recent Notice (NOT-OD-12-139), NIH published changes “in payment method, policies, and processes for awards to foreign institutions made on or after October 1, 2012” and also changes to FFR requirements for foreign institutions. Note that these changes do not affect US domestic institutions with awards including foreign components.

Foreign institution payments will be migrating into the Payment Management System (PMS) and away from the traditional fixed quarterly advance via check or wire transfer that has been past practice. In addition to the transition to PMS, the process for carryover funds between FY 2012 and FY 2013 will be affected.

Additional changes in Federal Financial Report (FFR) requirements and currency exchange rates used for drawdowns are also described in the Notice. All non-US institutions with direct NIH awards are affected by these changes. Non-US institutions receiving funds via sub award from a US institution are not impacted by these changes as they will continue to be paid via the terms and conditions of their sub award agreements with the Prime awardee.

On August 20th, NIH published NOT-OD-12-140, which announces a new Special Council Review policy as a step toward more effectively managing extramural research support.

A key fact behind the perceived need for this new policy is that NIH support from Congress has been relatively flat for nearly a decade – with no signs of that changing in the near future – and thus their buying power for awards is shrinking. At various meetings and presentations over the past year, Dr. Sally Rockey, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, has been discussing the need for some tough decision-making with regards to how to “continue to fund outstanding biomedical research during austere times” (Rock Talk blog). Among the ideas described, is the Special Council Review (SCR) for particularly well-funded investigators.

The details of this new review procedure have altered slightly over time as the folks at NIH collected public input on their ideas. The threshold for triggering SCR has been reduced from $1.5 million in total award costs per year to $1 million in direct costs per year, which better reflects the actual support for scientific work by the investigators by taking institutional indirect costs out of the mix. And, importantly, this new policy does not stipulate a cap on funding. As Dr. Rockey put it in a recent blog post, “the Special Council Review process provides a consistent prompt for the Advisory Council to consider the amount of funds a principle [sic] investigator receives, yet allows each NIH institute and center (IC) to retain enough flexibility to fund the best science in support of their respective missions.”

Only new and renewal applications for investigators currently receiving $1 million or more in direct costs on research project grants will go through special review. Most P01s and other multi-component applications, multiple PI applications, applications in response to RFAs and administrative supplements will be excluded from special review.

This new policy was piloted in May 2012 and is modeled on a review procedure that has been in place in NIGMS previously. As the number of applications for NIH funding continue to increase and the cost of doing research also increases while the NIH budget stays flat or is reduced, clearly decisions have to be made. A number of additional options are on the table for consideration within NIH as additional approaches to effectively managing the NIH research support portfolio, as I’ve described in a prior post and Dr. Rockey has discussed a number of times.

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) are offered by many US employers as part of their health care benefit plans. The Treasury Department and IRS in a recent notice indicated that they were considering modifying the use it or lose it rule. They have requested comments on “whether the proposed regulations should be modified to provide additional flexibility with respect to the operation of the use-or-lose rule for health FSAs and, if so, how any such flexibility might be formulated and constrained.” Comments must be submitted by August 17th, 2012 and may be submitted via email to Notice.comments@irscounsel.treas.gov with “Notice 2012-40” in the subject line of the email message.

FSAs allow workers to set aside pre-tax earnings to pay for approved healthcare expenses such as doctor visit co-pays and braces. Recent rules have restricted the use of FSAs for over-the-counter drug reimbursements and limited contributions to $2,500 per year. A long-standing but controversial rule associated with FSAs was that employees had to spend all their FSA funds in the year or forfeit them back to their employer. Originally, this rule was enacted to discourage using FSAs as a tax shelter. However, with the new $2,500 per year limit, the use it or lose it rule may no longer be necessary.

In response to the President’s Digital Government Strategy, the National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks guidance in prioritizing its efforts. NSF is seeking input to help identify what NSF data sets are of most interest to the public. Individuals can suggest data sets they would like to see made available and can vote and comment on the relative importance to them of ideas others have submitted.

Currently, there are eight suggested data sets identified on the site. Public access to additional NSF data will be achieved via Application Programming Interfaces (API), which will allow web developers to access previously inaccessible or difficult to work with NSF data electronically, merge NSF data with information from other sources, and present it in new and innovative ways. Currently posted ideas include Project Outcome Reports, NSF Award information and funding rates, The Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT), and Science and Engineering Indicators, among others.  The site for data collection went live on August 8th and will be available until August 22nd.

In an August 9th memorandum from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a component of the Office of Management and Budget, the Obama administration instructed federal agencies to “engage in advance testing of information collections” – the forms we all fill out regularly for grant applications, taxes, etc. The purpose of this requirement is to help ensure that agencies are doing everything possible to minimize complexity and confusion for users in filling out government forms.

The memorandum instructs agencies to test forms “in order (1) to ensure that they are not unnecessarily complex, burdensome, or confusing, (2) to obtain the best available information about the likely burdens on members of the public (including small businesses), and (3) to identify ways to reduce burdens and to increase simplification and ease of comprehension.”

Agencies may use focus groups, observation, web-based experimentation, and randomized controlled experiments or other appropriate means to fulfill this obligation either before or during the public comment period associated with information collections based on the Paperwork Reduction Act.

The memorandum identifies various types of information collections where such testing may be particularly relevant including applications to obtain permits, licenses, benefits and grants. Could this eventually signal a re-evaluation of the 424/424RR grant application forms? Research administrators and principal investigators will have to wait and see.

A new report published by the Grattan Institute, written by Andrew Norton, titled “Graduate Winners”, proposes that:

Most students should pay more for higher education, given how
much they benefit from a degree. By the middle of this decade,
tuition subsidies will cost taxpayers around $7 billion. Yet it is not
clear why the public should pay. It is time for a new approach.

Australian higher education costs are subsidized by the government, with the subsidy amount varying by discipline. In this report, Mr. Norton runs the numbers and demonstrates that there are cases where the public benefit outweighs these subsidy costs and other cases where they do not. His proposal would, over a phase-in period, save about $3 billion annually, with those costs being borne by students generally in the form of loans.

Mr. Norton makes the case that most students would not be dissuaded from pursuing their higher education by these additional costs. This is contrary to what is being observed in the England. In a report from the Independent Commission on Fees just published, total university applicants numbers have dropped by nearly 9% – 37,000 fewer applicants – in the first year of higher fees. While some of the decline in applicants can be explained by declining numbers of college-age youth in the population, it seems clear that rising costs are a significant factor.

Andrew Trounson, writing in The Australian, argues that “The HECS system could ‘break’ if student fees rise too high as a result of cuts to government subsidies…”. As prospective students weigh the pros and cons, as they see their loans stretch out before them for fifteen to twenty years and begin to impact other life activities such as home purchases, the value of higher education may lose some of its luster.