At the end of the year, many news organizations often present a retrospective of what occurred the previous year. We prefer to look forward and provide an outlook as to what we think will be some of the biggest things to watch for in 2017. Here’s my list:

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Single Audit Information Service.) The National Science Foundation (NSF), in response to recent audit recommendations from the NSF Office of Inspector General (OIG), has completed a risk management plan that tracks risks pertaining to the agency’s implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) (Pub. L. 113-101). However, the agency has not effectively addressed other key OIG recommendations, such as developing a human resource plan for implementing the act.

The other day, I saw the headline from an article in the Kansas City Star, and I had to read a couple of times to make sure I read it correctly. The headline: “Area schools share a $14 million federal grant to reduce truck-hauling accidents”. My first reaction was, what do schools have to do with trucking? Aren’t schools more concerned about education grants and the trucking industry more interested in transportation awards? Then as I read the article, it began to make more sense.

Sometime you just need a helping hand, especially this time of year. This week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $132 million to five U.S. communities to redevelop severely distressed public or assisted housing and revitalize surrounding neighborhoods.

It may seem like we’re focusing our blog posts on the research community a lot lately, judging by recent posts coming out of National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but there has been a fair amount of noteworthy news coming from this segment of the grants community. Today is no exception as we are letting you know that NIH has published the revised NIH Grants Policy Statement, which is applicable to all NIH grants and cooperative agreements with budget periods beginning on or after Oct. 1, 2016.