National Science Foundation Conflict of Interest Problems With Grants to Short Term Employees

GAO reviewed the National Science Foundation's (NSF) policies and procedures for precluding conflicts of interest in its grant award process when the Foundation's short term employees are involved. The Foundation augments its permanent professional staff with specialists who serve in noncareer positions for 1 to 2 years. Recruited from colleges, universities, industry, and Government, these specialists are usually appointed as program officers with firstline authority for grant proposal evaluation. They are usually researchers who have been given or could receive Foundation grants.

GAO identified a significant number of problem cases involving these short term rotational employees. The Foundation needs to strengthen its policies and procedures to preclude conflicts of interest. Federal conflict of interest laws prohibit Government employees from acting for the Government in matters in which they have a financial interest. An ad hoc committee, established by the Foundation to resolve a series of conflict of interest questions, recommended that the Foundation's standards be revised to provide for the resolution of potential conflicts of interest involving prospective employees. However, Foundation officials have made decisions on their grant proposals that create an appearance of impropriety under the applicable Federal guidelines and regulations. Questionable activities include instances of officials awarding new grants, renewals, extensions, and supplemental funds to short term employees in the same unit or to researchers who were planning to join that unit; overriding negative peer reviews; and such improprieties as peer reviewing proposals in one researcher's name but awarding the grant to someone else and submitting proposals while still employed at the Foundation. GAO found instances of concurrent grant processing and employment negotiation, questionable grant actions during the employment period, questionable post-employment grant actions, and instances of the use of waivers of the post-employment restriction on submitting new proposals in a questionable manner.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Osmund T. Fundingsland Team: General Accounting Office: Program Analysis Division Phone: (202) 275-3455