Staff at the National Institutes of Health continued funding for projects that failed to submit required progress reports on time, according to a report issued by the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services, and a majority of division heads didn’t verify whether their staff had even reviewed the reports.
The IG conducted a random sampling of grants distributed in 2011. “NIH approved 13 percent of awards for funding despite the fact that the awardee did not provide required information regarding its progress towards project objectives,” the agency stated in its findings.
If that percentage held steady in 2014, it would have applied to 6,764 of 52,034 grants issued by the NIH that year, totaling $2.73 billion of the $21 billion handed out for those projects.
Division heads in 11 of the 27 “Institutes and Centers” comprising the NIH stated that they did nothing to ensure that their staff had reviewed the required reports, calling into question whether project managers really needed to make any progress in order to retain their federal funding.
The IG found that the NIH continued to fund four projects that altogether removed or failed to meet their goals, at a combined cost of $7.2 million. Because no written documentation is required for funding decisions made by NIH staff, the reasons funding continued were unclear.
As part of the Department of Health and Human Services, NIH describes its mission as the pursuit of “fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” The agency provides federal grants to research that it deems compliant with that mission.
Curtis Kalin, a spokesman for taxpayer watchdog Citizens Against Government Waste, told the Washington Examiner that NIH had been “skirting the rules” and that it indicated their “flippant attitude” when it came to allocating federal dollars. Ensuring that “federal programs meet their goals is one of the most basic safeguards against wasteful spending,” Kalin said.
Researchers in the future may at least need to submit their paperwork in a more timely manner in order to retain federal funding. The IG recommended asking delinquent awardees where their paperwork was, stating, “NIH could … ask why untimely awardees are late in filing reports.”
It also recommended that the agency’s staffers begin documenting “awardee progress” and the reason that funding should continue if progress was not made or reported, and asked that “management staff ensure timely submission of required awardee reports.”
The NIH said it concurred with the recommendations.
