InFocus - OMB Guidance

The following update from Susan Cessac, Manager of Cost Analysis, Office of the Controller, was included in the InFocus - F&A Quarterly Newsletter released on September 26, 2014.

Sponsored Programs Update

The new Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Uniform Guidance will be effective December 26, 2014 and implementation will be applicable to new awards and incremental funding awarded on or after that date. The Controller’s office has prepared a Uniform Guidance Summary that provides information on several of the new requirements that will impact the University Research Community. The summary and links to federal websites with additional information on the Uniform Guidance are posted on the Controller’s website under the Cost Analysis division.

The A-133 audit is underway for fiscal year 2014. We currently have eight major programs that are being audited, including Student Financial Aid, Research and Development, and other smaller programs. If you handle federally-funded sponsored projects you may be contacted for documentation to support expenditures charged to federal programs during fiscal year 2014. If you have questions, please contact your campus Sponsored Programs Office or the Controller’s Office.

You may access the original InFocus post and leave a comment here.

The Office of Sponsored Programs Administration has put together a dedicated OMB Uniform Guidance page which includes a summary of key reforms, important dates to remember, and additional information and resources about the new guidance.  To access this page please visit http://research.missouri.edu/ospa/omb. 

NIH eSubmission Items of Interest - September 18, 2014

The following Items of Interest notice was issued by the National Institutes of Health Thursday, September 18, 2014:

Systematic Application Compliance Checking – What It Is and What It’s Not

Automated enforcement of business rules by NIH eRA systems plays an important role in the application submission process – it helps you and it helps NIH. Understanding what that role covers can be the difference between your application moving forward to review and not.

System-enforced application validations are what they are – nothing more, nothing less.

They ARE…

… a strategy for providing users with the opportunity to identify and fix many showstopper errors prior to submission deadlines.

Grant Fact Sheet Update: Educational Fees

A new version of the Grant Fact Sheet, dated 9/12/2014, is available on the OSPA website. Please access the current version here, noting the following change:

• Updated amounts for various incidental fees per credit hour (p. 4)

NIH eRA Items of Interest - September 11, 2014

The following Items of Interest notice was issued by the eRA Division of Communication and Outreach on Thursday, September 11, 2014:

Take Notice!

If there is one concept that we are reminded about daily and that we try to remind you about, it is that the grant application and award process is complex.  Part of what makes it so complex is that it is highly dynamic; ever changing, adjusting and adapting to political, economic, and technological forces.  As a result we need to communicate critical changes with regards to processes and policy to you.  We accomplish this through a variety of the methods, such as Items of Interest newsletters (eRA and eSubmission), the Extramural Nexus, Dr. Rockey’s Rock Talk blog, etc.

The most formal method of communication is via Guide Notices.  Guide Notices (NOT) are official NIH announcements relating to a change in policy, procedure, form, or system.  Notices can be searched for at the NIH Guide.  And searches can be subscribed to via the recently added subscription service. Watch this tutorial to learn more about the subscribe feature.

You may wish to take note of these recent and/or important notices:

Grant Connections Meeting - September 2014

Wednesday, September 24, 2014
11:00 a.m. – noon
Room 171 (Reading Room) of the Bond Life Sciences Center

Join us for the next Grant Connections conversation to discuss two timely topics: Broader Impacts and the NIH Public Access Policy. Please bring any questions you have or discussion points for the Open Floor and Hot Topics portion of the agenda, which will lead off the meeting.

Agenda

• Open Floor and Hot Topics
• Broader Impacts Network
  Dr. Susan D. Renoe | Director, Broader Impacts Network
  Researchers who submit proposals to NSF are evaluated on their intellectual merit (science) and broader impacts (societal benefit). The MU Broader Impacts Network(BIN) assists researchers as they design, implement, and evaluate their broader impacts plans. This discussion will provide a greater understanding of the BIN and the services it provides, free of charge, to MU researchers.
• NIH Public Access Policy
  Kate Anderson | Head, Zalk Veterinary Medical Library
  Cynthia Haydon | Senior Grant Writer, School of Medicine
  NIH has recently returned focus to its Public Access Policy and is enforcing it more stringently by withholding or placing restrictions on continuation funding until all publications resulting from a grant-funded project are compliant. We will discuss how research administrators can best support PIs in meeting the requirements of the policy. 

eRA Alert: System Issue Affecting Submissions to NIH

The following alert was issued by the eRA Division of Communication and Outreach on Monday, September 8, 2014:

The NIH eRA team is seeing an unusually high number of applications encountering ‘System Issues’ upon submission . If you encounter a system issue that impacts your ability to submit on time, please refrain from submitting again and follow our standard Guidelines for Applicants Experiencing System Issues for guidance.

The NIH eRA Production Support team is proactively identifying and reprocessing applications that encounter system issues. Applications are typically identified and reprocessed within 2 hours of submission. Due to this reprocessing, you may see subsequent email notifications for the same application. You will know the application has reprocessed successfully if you receive a notification indicating you should check your application in eRA Commons, you can access a list of errors/warnings in eRA Commons for your submission or if you can access your application image in eRA Commons.