Agencies play catch-up after blizzard, shutdown

By Bill Gregory
Special to CRN

Federal science and technology agencies in Washington are catching up with backlogged paperwork from budget- and blizzard-induced furloughs. But short delays inflicted at the beginning of a budget cycle, compounded by uncertainty over funding levels, will propagate longer delays downstream.

The initial Dec. 15, 1995, shutdown affected the National Science Foundation and its grant system supporting basic research in the following ways:

• More than 2,500 proposals, including those in computer science, backed up in the mail room in a month.
• Nearly 40,000 pieces of mail and 1,500 requests for forms and publications queued up for response or waited for distribution.
• Grant installments--156 due Dec. 31, 1995, and 266 in January--backed up for processing. These were being worked off at the end of January. But in the interim, graduate students went without pay, and laboratories were left short of funds to pay bills.
• Review panel meeting schedules were disrupted. As many as 50 were delayed or cancelled. At least a dozen were in computer science and engineering.

Because of the lost three and a half weeks, NSF advised university presidents and industrial laboratories that it might not be able to meet its six-month proposal processing target or honor start dates. Delays in receiving proposals or holding advisory panel meetings can cause delays in funding decisions or possibly gaps in funding for renewals. New competitions will be delayed while backlogs are cleared.

Under pressure in the furlough's wake is the advisory panel review process. In no case, though, the agency said, "will NSF compromise on its standards for rigorous peer review." In effect, the agency is trying to maintain review integrity while avoiding a specter: backlogged awards at year end that could leave some dangling without funding.

Among specific computer science programs:

• NSFnet program review and board of visitors meetings had to be rescheduled.
• Renewal programs for the domestic Networking Connections program and recompetition for the International Connections award will probably be delayed six months.
• Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure won approval from the National Science Board in mid-December. Submission deadlines slipped two weeks. NSF's Advanced Scientific Computing Division is playing catch-up with meeting schedules to explain the new program.

Not directly affecting computer science grantees now--but it might in the future--is a restudy of the agency's decade-old organization for its Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. A review committee headed by Rick Adrion, professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts and a Computing Research Association Board member, had scheduled a sequence planning meeting Dec. 22, 1995, for a report due in May.

Now that meeting has slipped until June. "That may sound trivial," said Melvyn Ciment, the directorate's deputy assistant director. "It's not. We have to get the reorganization plans to Congress for the next budget. If we miss that cycle, we may be a year behind."

Another case is recompetition of the International Connections program, for which Sprint is the contractor. "It's under an extension right now," Ciment said. "But because of the furlough's three-week delay in getting internal review, we now shift two months. That review was scheduled perhaps three months in advance. Rescheduling is not going to happen in three weeks."

The contracts office, facing its own problems because of the furloughs, can do little to help make up lost time. "We've lost six months. We hoped to get something done this year. Most probably it will have to go the Science Board for approval, something it otherwise might not have needed."

Holding off obligation of funds until later in the year avoids spending money that is not appropriated by Congress, but it leaves the grant or contract in the paperwork squeeze. Program offices have to close out their books by the middle of August so the agency can close its books at the end of September, the last month of the fiscal year. Contract offices decline to handle certain actions late in the year because of paperwork processing demands. So the prospect that a three-week furlough delay could stretch into a year for a program is not an idle one.

In another case, a review of the campus connections segment of the domestic Networking Connections program was scheduled in December, before the program announcement went out. Now the announcement has slipped two months. "We may not even be able to wait for that review," Ciment said. "We may have to do it with an internal review, which may not be the best kind of review we want."

Furlough effects outside of Washington varied widely. Officials at some federally supported laboratories contacted for this story said they did not notice any effects from the furlough; others reported missed grant payments that left unpaid bills.