Report of the Workshop on the Effort Reporting Requirements of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) Circular A-21

摘要

The purpose of the Workshop on the Effort Reporting Requirements of OMB Circular A-21 was to discuss faculty effort reporting and the recent agreements by Stanford and Yale that eliminate it, albeit for the time being. It also explored the adaptability of these agreements to other universities, many of which differ greatly from Stanford and Yale and from each other. More generally, the purpose was to probe the greater flexibility of the recent revision of A-21 and to disseminate the findings widely, particularly to presidents, comptrollers, and faculty senates of research universities. The Workshop made two recommendations: (1) that both the government and the university community carefully examine the Stanford and Yale agreements on effort reporting as examples of what might be achieved at other institutions, and, more broadly, that universities fully explore methods suited to their individual circumstances for eliminating effort reporting to document indirect costs of research. (2) that the Government-University Research Roundtable formed under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences mount a definitive study of policies and problems related to the handling of the indirect costs for research.