Electronic Submission of all Administrative Supplements

Notice of Requirement for Electronic Submission of all Administrative Supplements

Notice Number: NOT-OD-20-128

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-20-128.html

 

Purpose

This Notice alerts the extramural community of three updates to our administrative supplement submission policies.

 

·         Effective immediately, NIH will begin accepting administrative supplement applications for multi-project awards electronically. Since the administrative supplement applies to the parent award as a whole, the single-project application form package used for research grants and cooperative agreements will be used for these submissions (e.g., Competition ID= “FORMS-F-ADMINSUPP-RESEARCH.”)

·         Effective July 25, 2020, the streamlined submission method through the eRA Commons will be discontinued and replaced with the option to initiate the administrative supplement application within eRA Commons and leverage technology available in NIH ASSIST to complete submission.

·         Effective July 25, 2020, all supplement applications to existing single and multi-project awards must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov using NIH ASSIST, Grants.gov Workspace, or institutional system-to-system (S2S) solutions.

 

Background

 

Administrative supplements are requests made for additional funds during a current project period to meet increased costs that are within the original scope of the approved award but were unforeseen when the new or renewal application or grant progress report for non-competing continuation support was submitted.

 

Currently, NIH does not require the electronic submission of administrative supplement applications. Requests for administrative supplements can be submitted utilizing a variety of submission methods including streamlined submission through the eRA Commons (subset of standard application information submitted directly to NIH within eRA Commons); electronic submission through Grants.gov using NIH ASSIST, Grants.gov Workspace, or institutional system-to-system (S2S) solutions; or by utilizing paper-based applications.

 

Paper-based submission poses a challenge to NIH staff when trying to track and capture structured data elements and streamlined submission through eRA Commons does not provide the level of detail captured in a full application through Grants.gov. An increasing number of administrative supplement opportunities have required electronic submission through Grants.gov to address these issues.

 

Aligning the administrative supplement application process with the business practice used for competing applications also allows us to standardize our application instructions.

 

Policy Implementation

 

Effective July 25, 2020, NIH will require recipients to submit all administrative supplement applications, electronically, for both single and multi-project awards.

 

Application Submission Information

These changes apply to all NIH administrative supplement funding opportunity announcements (FOAs).

 

NIH will reissue the following administrative supplement parent announcements. Any in-progress applications submitted through Grants.gov using these announcements must be completed by July 24, 2020. Applications submitted on/after July 25, 2020 must use the reissued announcements.

 

·         PA-18-591 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Optional)

·         PA-18-592 - Research Supplements to Promote Re-Entry into Biomedical and Behavioral Research Careers (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

 

On July 25, 2020, NIH will also implement changes to the eRA Commons submission method that will improve comprehensive data collection by leveraging technology available in NIH ASSIST. The current streamlined submission method through eRA Commons (subset of standard application information submitted directly to NIH within eRA Commons) will be discontinued and replaced with the option to initiate administrative supplement applications within eRA Commons to take advantage of pre-population and other features and completing the submission in NIH ASSIST. This functionality will be available even if responding to a Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) that indicates “the process for Streamlined Submission using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.”

 

 

 

If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Sponsored Programs @ ospa@umbc.edu.