Key Dates

Related Announcements

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Issued by

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Purpose

As the fiscal year (FY) comes to an end on September 30, 2020, NIH encourages Recipient Organizations to verify the accuracy of their grant assignments to Departments or Components within Organizations of Higher Education in eRA Commons through the Grant Re-assign function. Any corrections to the data must be made by 8:00 PM EDT on Friday, October 2, 2020 to be reflected in NIH annual reports.

NIH develops standard reporting files used to produce data found on the RePORT Website, to increase transparency about funded grants, address inquiries from the Department of Health and Human Services, Congress, and the research community, and to fulfill annual reporting requirements on NIH’s expenditures. The data in these files are frozen annually to ensure the reporting files produce consistent and meaningful results. It is imperative that corrections to the data occur through the Grant Re-assign function in eRA Commons before these files are frozen to ensure the veracity of NIH’s FY2020 reports.

Responsibilities for Authorized Organization Representative or Signing Official

Only the Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) or Signing Official (SO) has the authority to submit corrections for a recipient organization or investigator. The AOR is the designated representative of the recipient organization in matters related to the award and administration of its NIH grants, including those that require NIH approval. The AOR role is documented as part of the electronic submission process and is authenticated through the Grants.gov registration process. In the eRA Commons, this individual holds the SO role. Although NIH requires that the recipient organization designate such an official, NIH does not specify the organizational location or full set of responsibilities for this official.

Verifying Your Information
Verify the accuracy of the grant award information for your organization by going to the NIH RePORT Awards by Location and Organization site at https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm, selecting FY2020, location and organization. Once the search results return, select the Data tab on the far right, click on the Excel Export icon (green) located in the right-hand corner. Note: Only awards that have passed their budget start date at the time of the data load will appear.

Making Corrections

There is an option on the Commons Status page for Signing Officials that allows for grants assigned to the current FY FY, changes that occur before each Friday evening will appear on RePORTER and Awards by Location and Organization websites on the following Monday if the awards have passed their budget start date as noted in the section above. In all cases, the listings in Commons should be considered official for FY2020. The official frozen awards data are expected to be released through the Awards by Location and Organization page in December 2020.

For more information, please see the eRA Commons online help: Steps for SO to Reassign a Grant.

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