Notice Number: NOT-OD-08-091

Key Dates
Release Date: July 3, 2008

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH), (http://www.nih.gov)

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2008

Background

On January 25th, 2008, the National Science & Technology Council (NSTC) announced an initiative of the Research Business Models (RBM) Subcommittee of the Committee on Science (CoS) to create greater consistency in the administration of Federal research awards.  Given the increasing complexity of interdisciplinary and interagency research, it has become increasingly important for Federal agencies to manage awards in a consistent fashion. Under the initiative all research agencies would be able to utilize a standard core set of administrative terms and conditions on research and research-related awards that are subject to OMB Circular A–110, ‘‘Uniform Administrative Requirements for Grants and Agreements With Institutions of Higher Education, Hospitals, and Other Non-Profit Organizations’’ (2 CFR Part 215) (see Federal Register. Vol. 73, No. 17, pages 4563-4567). 

Research Terms and Conditions

The Research Terms and Conditions are largely based on the terms and conditions originally utilized by 98 research institutions participating in the Federal Demonstration Project (FDP), and termed "expanded authorities".  NIH previously implemented Expanded Authorities (with the exception of automatic carryover of unobligated balances) as the standard terms and conditions for all NIH grant awards (NOT-OD-01-070).  Consequently, NIH implementation of these Federal-wide Research Terms has no significant change in the requirements or terms and conditions for NIH awardees.  Participants in the FDP will notice that the specific FDP award footnote has been changed to remove reference to FDP Terms but still references FDP participation.

The Government-wide core set of administrative requirements and other documents pertinent to this RBM initiative are posed on the National Science Foundation (NSF) website at:  http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/rtc/index.jsp.   Grantees are encouraged to review the companion documents which include a Prior Approval Matrix, National Policy Requirements Matrix, Subaward Requirements Matrix, and Agency-specific Requirements.  NIH Agency-specific Requirements are found at: 
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/rtc/nih_708.pdf

Reference to these Federal-wide Research Terms and all corresponding documents is now included on the Award Conditions and Information for NIH Grants website:  http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/awardconditions.htm

Inquiries

Questions about this Notice should be directed to:

Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration
Office of Extramural Research
National Institutes of Health
Telephone: 301-435-0949
Email: [email protected]