On April 7, 2006, the National Institutes of Health announced a change in business process to replace the principal investigator signature on grant applications, progress reports, and prior approval requests with an institutional compliance requirement. The new requirement goes into effect for applications submitted for submission/receipt dates beginning May 10, 2006.

The change requires each institution to secure and retain the PI signature as part of the institutional review/approval process. To meet the requirement, the Sponsored Projects Office has developed a new form, the "NIH Principal Investigator Assurance Certification Form." Effective immediately, the new form must be submitted to SPO with all NIH applications, progress reports, and prior approval requests. SPO regrets any inconvenience caused by this change, including the need for additional paperwork, but it is necessary to comply with the new NIH requirement. The form is available at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Forms/UCForms.html.

The benefit to investigators is that with this change, NIH has eliminated the PI verification step in the eRA Commons. Instead, once an application package has been successfully submitted through Grants.gov, all errors corrected, and the application assembled by the eRA Commons, PIs and SPO staff will have two business days to review the application. If everything is acceptable, no further action is necessary. The application will automatically move forward in the process after two business days. If, however, it is determined that the some part of the application was lost or didn't transfer correctly during the submission process, SPO staff will have the option to “Reject” the image and submit a Changed/Corrected application.

NIH made five separate announcements related to this change in the April 7 NIH Guide: a general announcement of the new requirement, change in business process for the eRA Commons verification, changes to the PHS 398 Application and Instructions., changes to the SF 424 (R&R) Instructions, and changes to the PHS 2590 Noncompeting Progress Report Forms and Instructions. The April 7 NIH Guide is available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/WeeklyIndex.cfm?WeekEnding=04-07-2006.

Please contact Susan Hedley in SPO (2-8119, shedley@berkeley.edu) with any questions.