Key Dates

Related Announcements

None

Issued by

Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health (OD)

Purpose

To facilitate award management and communications with applicant organizations via Authorized Organization Representatives (AORs), NIH has modified the system of records by adding a new routine use to clarify that information may be shared with applicant organizations.

Effective June 24, 2020, the overall impact score and the NIH Summary Statement will be made available in the eRA Commons to the Authorized Organization Representatives (AORs) of the applicant organization with the Signing Official (SO) user role in the eRA Commons.

Background
In accordance with the requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, the Department of Health and Human Services has modified thesystem of records maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as published on September 20, 2019 in the ‘Federal Register’, 09–25–0225, ‘‘NIH Electronic Research Administration (eRA) Records, HHS/NIH/OD/OER,’’ to include a new routine use allowing NIH to disclose information to applicant organizations for the purpose of communicating about matters related to agency award programs.

Implementation
Specifically, this means that the NIH will make the overall impact score and all current and previously issued summary statements available to the applicant organization through the NIH eRA Commons for users with the Signing Official (SO) role.

Instructions for accessing the overall impact score and summary statements via Status in eRA Commons
The SO will log in to eRA Commons, go to the Status module and click General Search. The SO will search for a grant application and click its number from the Application/Award ID column. The Status Information screen will appear, with expandable sections.

• To view scores, the SO will click to expand the Review section, where the overall impact score will be listed.
• To view summary statements, the SO will click to expand the Other Relevant Documents section and click the Summary Statement link to see a PDF of the summary statement, which may include bulleted critiques from assigned reviewers, a brief summary of the discussion, the overall impact score, criterion scores from assigned reviewers and more.

Program Directors/Principal Investigators will continue to receive notification of the availability of the summary statement and continue to access it in the eRA Commons as they do currently.

Resource Tools
For more information, please see the eRA Commons online help following the release.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

System Policy Branch
Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration
Office of Extramural Research
Email: OPERAsystemspolicy@nih.gov