FDP Expanded Clearinghouse Pilot Project starts Today - Thursday, August 18, 2016

The FDP Expanded Clearinghouse Pilot Project – of which MU is a Cohort 2 participant – is LIVE as of today, Thursday, August 18th. Notes from the topic discussion at the June Grant Connection Meeting are included below. Additionally included as attachments to this email are (1) screen shot step by step instructions and (2) our letters of intent for use with FDP Pilot institutions. These letters have been added to the OSPA Forms page.

Our participation in the Pilot Project requests that (1) when we are the Prime applicant we first look to the clearinghouse site to see if our subrecipient institutions participate in the Pilot as well - if so, we will not ask them to complete our subrecipient commitment form – instead gathering their institutional data from the clearinghouse site; and (2) when we are the Subrecipient to a participating institution we should not be asked to complete their subrecipient commitment forms – but should redirect them to the clearinghouse site for our institution’s information.

Should you encounter participant institutions that are not acknowledging or aware of their participation in the pilot project, the clearinghouse has provided some suggested language for use as appropriate:

SAMPLE PUSH-BACK LANGUAGE

I am writing to let you know that the University of Missouri is a pilot participant in the FDP Expanded Clearinghouse. It is my understanding that your organization is also a pilot participant. As a part of the pilot, both our organizations have agreed that effective August 18, 2016 we will not send or require completion of a subrecipient commitment forms, but will instead use our profile that is posted on-line at the FDP Expanded Clearinghouse site (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/fdp/PGA_171219). Please use my profile to obtain the information you need. Thank you.

Thank you for your support of this important initiative.

FAQs on NSF's Implementation of the Department of Labor's FLSA Final Overtime Rule

MU Grants Community,

Please see the FAQ information below from the NSF Policy Office regarding the implementation of the FLSA final rule.

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Dear Colleagues:

The Department of Labor recently announced the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) final over time rule. The FLSA final overtime rule automatically extends overtime pay protections to millions of workers and could impact some personnel on NSF grants, including postdoctoral researchers. The National Science Foundation continues to acknowledge the important role of postdoctoral researchers on NSF-funded projects, and, in general, NSF postdoctoral programs already include a stipend or salary in excess of the new minimum established by the FLSA final overtime rule.

Since the announcement of the new rule, NSF has received many questions on how this rule will affect NSF-funded projects. NSF has created a set of Frequently Asked Questions in order to address these questions. The FAQs are posted on the NSF Policy Office website at http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/faqs/flsa_faqs.pdf.

We encourage you to share this information with your colleagues. Please direct any additional policy-related questions not addressed in the FAQs to policy@nsf.gov.

Regards,

Jean

Jean Feldman
Head, Policy Office
Division of Institution & Award Support (DIAS)
Office of Budget, Finance and Award Management

Grant Connections | July 2016 Notes

Notes from the July Grant Connections meeting are included below. Thank you to all who attended. We hope to see you at the next meeting on Wednesday, August 24.

New Process for Resetting FastLane/Research.gov Passwords

MU Grants Community,

On Monday, August 1, NSF will implement a more convenient and secure process for resetting NSF passwords. NSF awardees and proposers will no longer be able to reach out to Sponsored Projects Offices (SPO) to reset their passwords on both FastLane and Research.gov; instead, they can reset their own password. Please note that this implementation was rescheduled from Monday, July 25, due to a power outage which caused all servers to shut down.

To reset passwords, awardees and proposers can go to www.research.gov and click “Log In,” then “Forgot Password.” After entering their NSF ID and clicking, “Send Temporary Password,” they will be able to reset their passwords using the temporary password sent to their email address on file.

Passwords must be between 8 and 20 characters and use three of the four categories below:

• Upper-case letter
• Lower-case letter
• Number
• One of these special characters # & % ! @ ( )

In addition, the last six passwords cannot be reused, and accounts will be locked for five minutes after the tenth unsuccessful password attempt.