Tracking Grant Reinstatements
We have updated our terminated NIH grant tracker to reflect developments in NIH’s grant termination activities. Specifically, some previously terminated grants have purportedly been reinstated.
We track data on reinstated grants from court filings (many reinstatements are in direct response to litigation), as well as changes in grant status as published by HHS and and NIH. Specifically, we track changes in the government-provided PDF of terminated grants that is hosted on the HHS TAGGS home page (“TAGGS PDF”), and the “Post-Award Action” field on NIH RePORTER grant pages. Importantly, reinstated grants no longer appear on the TAGGS PDF, and the Post-Award Action field is removed from the web pages of these grants. We compare current versions of the PDF (which make no mention of the terminated grants) to prior versions which previously listed them, and similarly compare snapshots of RePORTER web pages. Removing reinstated grants from the TAGGS PDF or RePORTER has effectively removed any official government acknowledgment that reinstated grants were ever terminated. To preserve the record of each grant’s termination, we continue to list reinstated grants in our database alongside the indicators that the grant has been reinstated. As the TAGGS PDF and RePORTER may be inconsistent, we list both in the reinstatement_indicator field. We also include an estimated reinstatement date, which is the earliest date the termination was removed from either system.
The real-world implications of grant reinstatements remain uncertain. For example, we cannot yet confirm that Principal Investigators are able to draw down funds on reinstated grants in all cases. We also cannot confirm whether grant terms will be extended to account for the time each grant was deemed “terminated,” nor can we confirm whether total grant budgets will remain fully intact. We will provide updates as the implications of these reinstatements become more clear.
Smaller updates
We have upgraded our NIH submission form to simplify submissions and bring in in line with our NSF submission form. We continue to see new NIH terminations. Please submit them!
We have added a new column to the NSF terminations table,
nsf_total_budget, which is the total intended budget from NSF Award search. This better reflects the total grant size, especially for continuing grants, where the total obligated funds from USAspending.gov may not reflect the total budget. In some cases, such as when additional funds are added to the grants.nsf_total_budgetmay be belowusaspending_obligated.