NSF Sets Guardrails for Research Security Analytics

The National Science Foundation announced last week that it has published guidelines for how the agency’s research security office will perform analytics to identify potential failures to disclose information that is required as part of the grant application process.

Office director Rebecca Keiser emphasized in a foreword to the guidelines that agency program officers will not be permitted to use such analytics as part of the merit review process, shielding them from the “burden of geopolitics.”

The analytics will only be conducted by staff members in her office, who will be prohibited from making inquiries that are “explicitly or implicitly designed to return the identities of individuals of a specific national origin or racial identity.”

NSF states these analytics are designed only to identify “potential compliance inconsistencies” and does not view them as “investigations,” which are handled by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.