Take Note: New Automated Proposal Submission Compliance Checks Coming to FastLane on January 26

Dear Colleagues,

Please see the below notice from NSF detailing the new automated submission compliance checks that Fastlane is implementing beginning January 26, 2015.

Please forward this to your faculty and researchers.


Jonathan K. Lew, MPA
eRA Officer
Sponsored Projects Administration


Colleagues,

 

Beginning January 26, 2015, the FastLane system will run an additional 24 automated compliance checks on proposals to ensure they comply with requirements outlined in the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG), Chapter II.C.2 of the Grants Proposal Guide (GPG). These checks will validate a proposal for compliance with page count, proposal sections per type of funding mechanism, and budget-related rules for proposals submitted in response to the GPG, Program Announcements and Program Descriptions. At this time, these checks will not be enforced for proposals submitted in response to Program Solicitations. If your proposal is still in progress on January 26, these additional checks will apply to your proposal.

 

·         Page Count: Page count rules will be enforced on the following proposal sections:

o   Project Description: 15-page limit [exceptions: 8-page limit for Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), and 5-page limit for Rapid Response Research (RAPID)]

o   Budget Justification: 3-page limit for the proposing institution and a separate, 3-page limit for each sub-recipient organization

o   Mentoring Plan: 1-page limit

o   Data Management Plan: 2-page limit

·         Budget: Budget-related checks will focus primarily on proposal duration and requested amount. For example, the system will enforce a maximum requested amount of $200,000 for a RAPID proposal and $300,000 for an EAGER proposal.

·         Proposal Section: Proposal sections will be enforced by their type of funding mechanism for Program Announcement, Program Description and other GPG-type funding opportunities. For example, an error message will appear if a Project Description was not provided for an EAGER proposal.

 

The checks detailed above will be triggered when you select the “Check Proposal,” “Forward to SPO,” or “Submit Proposal” functions. Depending on the rule being checked, a warning or error message will display when a proposal is found to be non-compliant. If an error message appears, you will not be able to submit the proposal until it is compliant. To view a detailed list of all compliance checks, click here.

For any questions, please contact the FastLane Help Desk at 1-800-673-6188, or ithelpcentral@nsf.gov.

 

Thank you.

 

The FastLane Team

 

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