Key Dates

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Issued by

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

Purpose

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking input from the biomedical research community and other interested parties on opportunities to further reduce administrative burden associated with obtaining, maintaining, and reporting on NIH extramural research funding.

NIH is interested in identifying administrative requirements, policies, processes, forms, and systems, that impose unnecessary or uniquely disproportionate administrative burden on researchers and research institutions (e.g. small businesses, investigator career stage, institution type), without providing commensurate value to the stewardship, accountability, integrity, or effectiveness of NIH-supported research.

Through this Request for Information (RFI), NIH seeks specific, actionable recommendations for making the life cycle of the NIH grants process more efficient and effective, while maintaining appropriate accountability for and oversight of Federal research funds.

Background

NIH supports a vast and complex extramural research enterprise encompassing investigators and institutions across the United States and around the world. NIH recognizes that administrative requirements associated with applying for, receiving, managing, and reporting on Federal research funding require substantial investments of time and resources by investigators, research administrators, institutions, peer reviewers, and Federal staff. Moreover, these requirements can disproportionately affect early-stage investigators, smaller institutions, and organizations with less-resourced grants administration infrastructure.

While some administrative requirements are important for effective stewardship and catalyzing responsible scientific advances, others may be unnecessarily complex, duplicative, outdated, or disproportionate to the risks they are intended to address. Requirements also accumulate over time, creating increasing levels of burden that threaten to become unsustainable.

NIH has undertaken several recent activities intended to simplify and streamline the management and oversight of extramural research awards. These efforts include, among others:

• consolidating Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) and increasing reliance on broad, investigator-initiated funding opportunities (NIH-OD-26-098);
• consolidating and simplifying how investigators identify NIH funding opportunities and research areas of interest (NIH-OD-25-143);
• aligning application requirements and forms, where appropriate, with government-wide requirements and those used by other Federal research agencies (NIH-OD-26-094,      NOT-OD-26-018);
• eliminating selected application requirements and procedural steps that are no longer necessary (NOT-OD-26-040);
• aligning certain application receipt dates with NIH standard receipt dates to simplify submission, receipt, and referral processes (NIH-OD-26-029);
• reducing unnecessary or duplicative documentation requirements (NIH-OD-26-019);
• simplifying requirements for documenting research collaborations (NIH-OD-26-094); and
• revisiting the implementation of requirements that have resulted in unintended administrative complexity (NOT-OD-26-032, NOT-OD-26-063, NOT-OD-26-067, NIH-OD-26-100).

NIH is interested in building upon these efforts by identifying additional opportunities for meaningful burden reduction/government efficiencies throughout the extramural research lifecycle.

Importantly, NIH is interested not only in individual agency requirements that could be eliminated or simplified, but also in opportunities to redesign research administration processes more fundamentally. This may include collecting information once rather than multiple times; obtaining information later in the process when it is actually needed; relying on institutional certifications rather than submission of detailed information; using existing authoritative data sources; simplifying policies, forms, and instructions; improving interoperability among systems; and adopting risk-based approaches in place of uniform requirements where appropriate.

Information Requested

NIH invites input from researchers, peer reviewers, research administrators, institutional officials, professional and scientific organizations, and other interested parties on opportunities to reduce administrative burden across the NIH extramural research award lifecycle.

Respondents are encouraged to address any of the following:

1. Requirements or processes that could be simplified, eliminated, consolidated, or moved to a later stage. This may include application, pre-award, post-award, reporting, prior approval, certification, or other oversight requirements.
2. Opportunities to reduce duplication and improve consistency. NIH is interested in areas where similar information is requested multiple times, where requirements vary unnecessarily across NIH, or where greater standardization or harmonization would reduce burden.
3. Opportunities to make better use of technology and existing information. This may include reusing information already submitted, improving interoperability among systems, reducing manual data entry, relying on authoritative data sources, or appropriate use of artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, or large language models in the synthesis or summarization of existing information or from autoreactive data sources.
4. Requirements, guidance, or systems that create unnecessary complexity or uncertainty. Respondents are invited to identify administrative requirements that are difficult to understand, implement, or administer, including those that may have unintended consequences.  This may include requirements, guidance, or systems that disproportionately affect early-stage investigators, smaller institutions, and organizations with less-resourced grants administration infrastructure.
5. High-impact opportunities for burden reduction. Changes that would have the greatest benefit for investigators, research institutions, peer reviewers, or NIH staff.
6. Feedback on where additional clarity is needed to prevent overcompliance or assumed compliance that goes beyond stated requirements.
7. Reporting requirements that collect information without using it. Respondents are invited to identify progress reports, recurring submissions, or certifications that rarely inform decisions and respondents are invited to suggest areas whether lighter-touch reporting paired with audit or independent verification can better serve both burden reduction and program integrity. 

For recommendations offered, NIH encourages respondents, where possible, to briefly identify the current requirement or process, describe the burden it creates, and suggest a practical alternative.

NIH also welcomes examples of effective burden-reduction approaches used by other Federal agencies, research funders, or institutions that could be adapted for NIH, including approaches that use technology enabled solutions to reduce reporting and enable risk-based oversight.

Response to this RFI

Responses to this RFI are voluntary and may address any or all of the topics above. Respondents are not required to provide information for every question.

NIH encourages respondents to be as specific as possible. Quantitative estimates of burden, including investigator or administrative staff time, are welcome but are not required.

Responses may be submitted electronically at Request For Information: Opportunities to Reduce Administrative Burden in NIH Extramural Research by December 8, 2026.

Respondents may choose to identify themselves or their organization or may submit comments without organizational attribution.

Responses will be compiled and could be shared publicly in unredacted form. Please do not include any proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information in your response.

How NIH Will Use the Information

NIH intends to use information obtained through this RFI to identify and prioritize opportunities to reduce administrative burden across the extramural research enterprise. Some recommendations may be within NIH's authority to implement directly, while others may require coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, other Federal research agencies, or changes to regulation or statute.

This RFI is for planning purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation, grant announcement, or obligation on the part of the Federal Government to provide support for any ideas identified in response to it. NIH will not pay for the preparation of responses or provide individual responses to submitted comments.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

NIH Office of Extramural Research
[email protected]