Comment from Andrew Hardaway

I am a neuroscience researcher and NIH grantee for over 15 years, writing to object to the proposed change to § 200.204 that will allow agency heads not to publicly post notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs). Briefly, as a researcher in an area with essentially no commercial funding, I could not conduct science without funding from the federal government. I rely on NOFOs to alert me to opportunities for which my proposals may be competitive. Clearly, without public NOFOs then researchers such as myself will be left in the dark about opportunities and will not apply. Public posting of NOFOs is entirely within the federal government’s interest because it is how the broadest range of applicants and their scientific ideas are solicited. Unpublished NOFOs inherently narrow the range of applicants and therefore their ideas, which undermines the government’s interest in funding the best science. § 200.204(1) proposes that: “A Federal agency head (or designee) may approve exceptions to this requirement when the agency determines that publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States.” This is an extraordinary proposal without any limiting principle or meaningful checks and balances, which means that it is an invitation to corruption. Federal agency heads are given no guidance on what constitutes a risk to national security and appear to have no requirement to justify any exceptions they make on this basis. Similarly there is no guidance on what constitutes the “national interest”, but elsewhere in OMB-2026-0034-0001 (specifically § 200.202) it is proposed that all program planning must be in the national interest: “Federal agencies must apply a domestic-first framework, under which international elements may be included only if the Federal agency determines that such elements are justified, consistent with program objectives, and in the national interest of the United States.” Thus § 200.204(1) would allow all NOFOs to be unpublished so long as an agency head invokes an undefined “national interest”. Unpublished NOFOs are an invitation to favoritism and corruption. By design unpublished NOFOs restrict the pool of applicants, which restricts the range of scientific proposals, which diminishes the science the federal government funds if the proposed changes to § 200.204(1) pass. Unpublished NOFOs, especially if widespread, degrades the goodwill and morale of the scientific workforce on which the federal government depends for high-quality scientific proposals. Proposing such a radical change to allow secret NOFOs in a document that mentions "transparency" 71 times and "accountability" 52 times is an affront to reason. My recommendation is that the proposed changes to § 200.204(1) be struck in their entirety. If there is a need to fund research behind a veil of secrecy in the interest of national security, the federal government has other means to do so such as the National Security Act of 1947 and the Other Transaction Authority in 10 U.S. Code § 4022. However ff OMB insists on implementing unpublished NOFOs then there must be meaningful checks and balances to include: 1) requirement that agency heads credibly justify their exceptions in writing, 2) exceptions must be limited to a small number and small percentage of NOFOs and there must be a system for monitoring the issuance of exceptions, and 3) “national interest” must be defined precisely, otherwise its invocation is an invitation to abuse.