 Rudy we'll turn this back to you Ellen's defense. I covet the gavel as well But only Eric gets to use it Okay, so moving along in the agenda for the open session. We're now at the review of the statement of understanding The statement of understanding is a brief document. It gets reviewed every February council meeting And I'm going to explain it to you. I will define a couple of key revisions that we're planning for the 2020 version and at the end of this I'll be happy to take any questions, but I will ask for a vote to approve and accept the statement of understanding So the statement of understanding is it's a very brief document if you haven't read it I recommend it to you because we wrote it. It's four pages long. It's pretty simple plain language easy to understand And it basically defines how the council and NHGRI will interact It defines the council responsibilities It sets limits to the actions that you can take during the review of applications and it also Lays out what the staff authorities are what actions can NHGRI staff take Without consulting the council and what actions are we required to bring to your attention either for advice or approval? So marching through the statement the first section is about the kinds of applications that were required to report to you And when I use the word report We operationalize that by listing those applications on the closed session agenda So in many cases we talk about the applications that are on the closed session agenda But simply listing them there is a way to also report them to you The kinds of applications were required to report to council on our large grants such as program projects cooperative agreements institutional training grants Applications that were deferred from a previous round for whatever reason applications that have human subjects or animal concerns applications from foreign institutions and applications that require Special counsel review so those are the kinds of applications that will show up on the CSA If we don't list an application on the CSA then it is it resides Well, let me back up just a second every application that comes to NIH Has to go through a peer review process and then it has to go through a second level of review by the council We don't list every application on the CSA Many of them are sitting back in what is called the master list of applications Those of you who have completed your vet vetting for financial and ethical conflicts of interest Have access to the master list. You can look up any application any summary statement That is for that particular round Now we don't discuss those applications that reside on the master list But when you take the on-block vote, which will be at the end of the council meeting tomorrow You are concurring with the IRG on all those other applications So our assumption is that every application receives a fair appropriate review by the peer review group So here are the four actions that council is allowed to take on any application You can concur with the IRG You can defer the application to be re-reviewed because you believe that there's been some sort of fundamental Flaw in the initial peer review process You can recommend that application for high program priority or low program priority And what that means is an application for high program priority We are asking to skip applications to make an award to an application that has a worse Impact score than others. We will of course justify that tell you the scientific reasons why we want to classify an application as HPP LPP would be just the opposite an application that has received a very good score But we don't want to pay it because for instance We already have too much research activity in that area or it's kind of just tangential to what our scientific goals are And again, we would present you with the rationale for that There'll be a staff analysis and a vote that would be taken for HPP and LPP You can also defer an application For the second level of review because you feel you need additional information about that application Before you can render a judgment whatever that judgment might be for instance concurring with the IRG Okay, there is something called expedited council concurrence or ECC There are certain application types that we put into ECC There is an ECC subcommittee right now that subcommittee is made up of Steve rich rent gravely and Gail Henderson These applications in large part reflect a set-aside program so SB IR applications LC applications unsolicited LC applications will be listed in the ECC There are others that don't fit that Characterization as being from set-aside programs So there are career development awards conference grants so-called small budget grants like RO3s or R21s that have Relatively limited budgets and short terms of duration. So why do we do this? We're trying to spread the workload Across the Institute our grants management staff Otherwise have to sit and wait to be deluge three times a year after each council meeting So about four weeks before the council members the council meetings the ECC subcommittee gets the list of these Applications and we asked them to approve them if they have any questions about them. We answer those questions Almost universally they do sign off on those and it allows our grants Administration branch to begin working on those awards. So it allows them to spread their workload quite a bit actually The full council does get a report of every application that was on the ECC It's part of the documents at the end of the closed session agenda So you will see at the time of council what has already been approved if you have questions about any of those applications We'll be happy to address them now staff authorities so this large this section of the Statement of understanding largely deals with the authority that the staff has to make supplements Administrative supplement awards to grants that the council has already reviewed now in the past We have been limited as to the size of those supplements that we can make and our Our caps were a million dollars or 25% of the council level approved budget requests for all years of the project So if an applicant submits an administrative supplement and is either requesting more than a million dollars and more or More than 25% of the total budget that was Requested and approved by council and we would have to bring those applicants those supplement requests to you Give you a staff analysis a discussion ask for a vote about them That is one of the revisions that we're proposing to make to the 2020 version of the statement of understanding We want to remove or eliminate those caps now. Why are we proposing to do this? I've been the Exec sec of the council for about six years. We've done this a number of times brought these kinds of supplements to the council In every case they've been approved. I think beyond that council has been rather enthusiastic and very supportive of these I take that to mean that we are exercising good judgment in the Supplement request that we bring to the council. I hope we've earned some measure of trust from you in that time It does take a lot of staff time to work up those Presentations and those documents to bring to the council They're reviewed at many levels including the division directors It takes your time to review the documents that we prepare and endure the discussions and go through the vote And that time might be better invested in other In other things that come to the council's attention We are leaving in place some restrictions We cannot make a supplement beyond one year of extended support The science that is the additional research that will be done under the administrative Supplement has to be within scope of the original grant. So we can't deviate very far from what those Those application at the time applications were proposing to do And it has to be to an award that this council has already seen and approved So we can't make a large supplement or any size supplement to a grant that another Institute has funded but we've decided we're interested in that science We would have to bring that back to you for you to approve that grant The other Revision that we're proposing to make to the statement of understanding is we would like to exempt The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science or SEGs applications from special council review Now let's be clear about what we're requesting here special council review is a policy that goes back to I think 2013 2012 or 2013 something like that And it's mandated for any application where the award to that application Would provide the PI with more than one million dollars of direct cost support When all of his or her applications are pooled together So the purpose or intent of special council review is For you not to Re-review the application but to affirm that what's being proposed here is not Overlapping with any other award that the PI has already received. So we're looking for redundancy here Again every time that we have brought a SEGs application to the council It is past special council review and the reason for that isn't that we're exercising any kind of judicious decision here It's because the SEGs grants the SEGs applications are required to be highly innovative They have to have the potential to be transformative in terms of Changing the field or landscape of genomic research. So de facto anything that's going to get a good review a good score from a peer review panel Has to already meet that novelty or Non-redundant status of their science. So again, we've burned up a lot of staff time preparing documents bringing them to the council Giving you presentations and asking for votes Every every time the SEGs grants have sailed through that special council review The other thing to point out the final clause in the statement of understanding is that the we are allowed to convene the council by virtual or electronic means in the event of some sort of national emergency or calamitous weather outcome so That's the statement of review a summary of the statement of understanding rather a summary of it and the Two revisions that we're proposing to make to remove the caps to the administrative supplements and to exempt SEGs applications from special council review But not from council review. You will still do the second level of review of SEGs applications They will be presented to you And you will have to sign off on them So that's my spiel. I'll take questions if there are any yes, Rick Steve Yeah, just to I Think it's in in in this you didn't say it but just because we don't Have to do a special review doesn't mean that all the work that goes on behind the scenes of Evaluation and coming up with it still going on. It's just that you don't have to prepare PowerPoint sites to show us stuff You're still going to see special council review. They just won't be on SEGs applications Right all the other type of application was a supplement over a million I mean, that's going to be all the all the background work that you're doing to evaluate Yes, or no from your standpoint will be done. Correct I also want to assure the council that if we are going to make any kind of momentous decision like to renew one of our large Consortium consortia We will be in touch with you well in advance of the deadline for doing that seeking your guidance Steve just that I'm sure everyone has tremendous confidence in the whole process But just wondering from a governance perspective, why would you want no cap? Well? Again, it's to eliminate what we've seen in the past to be unnecessary work Yeah, they think the thing I want to clarify I just want to say so but I'm saying of as opposed to pick a number 10 million I don't know right, but if you would feel more comfortable No, I'm just saying if you ask someone about basic governance They might tell you to do something like that Because you never want to have an unlimited So so there's a couple things around that so first of all just to be clear the default NIH wide is what we're changing to so not for the special counsel reviewer making an exception in the other situation Counsel previously had requested this cap be put upon us at special to us. I just to me. That's an important distinction Yeah, it's but yeah, it's not we're now falling in line versus being an exception with the special counsel review on the SEGs only for the SEGs We're making an exception We also have Deanna coming because it's not like we're no longer taking things to our streams for discussion to our funding means for discussion to our grants management people for Checking and all of these things all of our checks and balances that we do need to have are there Right, I just wanted to comment the NIH policy is that we can't supplement a grant for more than the actual grant laws We're limited anyway, so we do look at that. We review it. We look for overlap. We take all that out. It was a great clarification Thank You Deanna Sharon Yeah, I mean just it says for extensions less than one year The amount should not exceed the current level, but I thought that included extensions that were one year It does I'm not sure I understand your question What? It doesn't say or equal to that's why It just says less than one year doesn't say less than or equal to one year Oh, okay, so you would want that well most of the extensions are for a year Most of them are well I'm just saying it seems like if you want this to go into effect someone could argue and it's not going to accomplish What you want because somebody left out the or equal to okay, maybe when we vote it we should amend it, okay? it's Can't tell the page there aren't page numbers, but it's in categories number Okay Less than one year Okay, we will make that change Okay, no one's looking at me. You're all looking down at your papers So I can't tell if you're thinking or you've already moved on to the next agenda item You're happy. All right. Can I get a motion to accept the statement of understanding with the two revisions and the friendly amendment from Sharon? second All in favor Any opposed any abstentions? Thank you very much