Government shut down
If Congress does not pass a budget or at least a continuing resolution by September 30, all non-essential government offices will be shut down, this includes the agencies that supply research funding.Research Affairs received the following note from the Council of Government Relations (COGR) earlier this week:
“In general, active grant and contract activity funded with FY2013 (or prior year) appropriations can continue. However, agency personnel most likely will not be available for approvals, supervisory support, and other administrative functions. In addition, it is not certain what will be the functionality of automated payment systems. Consequently, institutions should recognize that there is some risk that requests for reimbursement will not be processed. Other electronic administrative systems may or may not be available, depending on each agencies internal approach. For certain, no new awards will be issued. And most likely, new grant applications will not be accepted, though this also may depend on each agencies internal approach.”
2. Special Characters and Federal grant submissions
Grants.gov has a nice write up on ‘Restricting special Characters.’ Special characters, such as &,¿,*,%,/,#', -) and periods (.), cannot be included in the document names. Additionally, these special characters cannot be used in a fillable fields within the application (e.g. the title on the SF424 page).