Sneak Preview: NSF Previews 2020 PAPPG for Comments

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published a draft 2020 Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) on May 29, and is giving stakeholders 60 days to comment on the proposed changes. Once final, the revised PAPPG is scheduled to take effect in January 2020.

Speaking recently at the recent Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) meeting in Washington, D.C., Jean Feldman, head of the policy office at NSF’s Division of Institution and Award Support, explained that NSF usually provides a 90-day period for comments on the draft of its annually revised PAPPG. However, publication of the revisions to the PAPPG are late, Feldman said, as the agency continues to respond to delays created by the federal government partial shutdown earlier this year. Feldman also noted that due to the shutdown, NSF delayed the implementation date of the 2019 PAPPG until Feb. 25, whereas the effective date of 2020 guide should be in January, as usual.

Other implications of the funding hiatus are tighter deadlines for issuing funding proposals, opportunities, award processing and project reporting, Feldman said. She also told the audience, mostly researchers and award administrators at institutions of higher education, that because the agency is on a tighter deadline to turn things around, grantee institutions may also feel some heat. “When you are contacted by NSF program officers, we’re going to need you to react appropriately,” she said. “If you’ve got a project report due, you need to get those in in a timely way.”

The primary purpose of the 2020 revision is to update the PAPPG to incorporate a number of policy-related changes and clarifications of language, according to the Federal Register notice. The draft is available on the NSF website at http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy, and revised text is highlighted in yellow throughout the document to identify significant changes. A brief comment on the change also is provided by NSF.

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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