On October 8, 2026, NIH released Guide Notice NOT-OD-26-118, a Request for Information (RFI) on opportunities to reduce administrative burden in NIH extramural research. NIH is asking researchers, peer reviewers, research administrators, and institutional officials to point out the requirements, policies, forms, and systems that cost more effort than they return in stewardship, accountability, or integrity.

This is not a routine comment request. NIH says it wants more than small fixes. It is open to redesigning research administration processes, including collecting information once instead of several times, asking for information only when it is actually needed, relying on institutional certifications in place of detailed submissions, and improving interoperability among systems.

Responses are due December 8, 2026. Sponsored programs offices see the burden every day, so they are well placed to give NIH the specific, evidence-backed answers it asks for. This post explains what the RFI covers, how to build a strong response, and how to use the exercise to review your own workflows.

In This Article

1. What NIH Is Asking For
2. Why This RFI Matters for Research Offices
3. How to Build a Strong Institutional Response
4. Use the RFI to Audit Your Own Workflows
5. How Fibi Helps Reduce Administrative Burden
6. Key Takeaways

What NIH Is Asking For

The scope of the RFI

NIH wants to find administrative requirements that impose unnecessary or disproportionate burden across the whole award lifecycle: obtaining, maintaining, and reporting on NIH funding. The notice specifically mentions burden that falls hardest on early-stage investigators, smaller institutions, and organizations with less-resourced grants administration infrastructure.

The seven topics respondents may address

The RFI lists seven areas. Respondents may address any or all of them:

1. Simplify, eliminate, consolidate, or defer: application, pre-award, post-award, reporting, prior approval, certification, or other oversight requirements that could be removed or moved to a later stage.
2. Duplication and consistency: places where the same information is requested multiple times, or where requirements vary unnecessarily across NIH.
3. Technology and existing information: reusing data already submitted, improving interoperability, reducing manual data entry, relying on authoritative data sources, and appropriate use of AI to synthesize or summarize existing information.
4. Unnecessary complexity or uncertainty: requirements, guidance, or systems that are hard to understand, implement, or administer, or that have unintended consequences.
5. High-impact opportunities: the changes that would most benefit investigators, institutions, reviewers, or NIH staff.
6. Clarity to prevent overcompliance: areas where unclear guidance leads institutions to do more than the requirement actually asks.
7. Reporting that is collected but not used: progress reports, recurring submissions, or certifications that rarely inform decisions, and where lighter-touch reporting paired with audit or verification could work better.

What NIH has already changed

The RFI builds on a run of recent simplification steps. NIH lists consolidating funding opportunities, aligning application forms with government-wide requirements (NOT-OD-26-094), dropping selected application requirements (NOT-OD-26-040), reducing duplicative documentation, and simplifying how collaborations are documented. The message is clear: NIH is willing to act on specific suggestions.

Why This RFI Matters for Research Offices

Most of the administrative work the RFI describes lands on research administrators: re-keying data between systems, chasing documents for just-in-time requests, reconciling Other Support and biosketch information, and preparing reports that nobody seems to read. NIH notes that some recommendations may need coordination with HHS, OMB, or other federal agencies, so a strong response can also influence the wider federal grants landscape.

Redesign idea in the RFI	What it could mean for your office
Collect information once	Less re-entry of the same personnel, effort, and institutional data across applications and reports
Request information later, when needed	Fewer documents prepared for proposals that are never funded
Rely on institutional certifications	Shift from detailed submissions to well-documented internal controls
Use authoritative data sources and interoperability	Data flows between systems in place of manual uploads
Risk-based approaches	Oversight effort matched to the actual risk of the award or activity

There is a second reason to care. If NIH moves toward institutional certifications and audit-based verification, offices will need clean, retrievable internal records to back up what they certify. Responding now and preparing your data now go hand in hand.

How to Build a Strong Institutional Response

NIH asks respondents, where possible, to name the current requirement or process, describe the burden it creates, and suggest a practical alternative. It also welcomes quantitative estimates of staff and investigator time. These steps help you produce that kind of response.

1. Collect input across the institution

Ask departmental administrators, pre-award and post-award staff, compliance offices, and a few investigators (including early-stage ones) to name their top three burdens. A short survey or two focused meetings is usually enough.

2. Quantify where you can

Estimates make a recommendation stronger. Useful measures include:

• Hours per proposal: time spent on forms and documents that are not part of the science.
• Just-in-time effort: how often requested materials change before an award is made.
• Reporting time: staff hours spent on progress reports and recurring certifications.
• Re-entry count: how many times the same data is typed into different systems.

3. Follow the requirement / burden / alternative format

Structure each recommendation in three parts so NIH can act on it easily. For example: Requirement: a document requested at application. Burden: prepared for every proposal although most are not funded. Alternative: request it only at just-in-time.

4. Keep it shareable

NIH states that responses may be compiled and shared publicly in unredacted form. Do not include proprietary, confidential, or sensitive information. Responses can be submitted with or without organizational attribution.

5. Submit before December 8, 2026

Build in time for review by your Authorized Organizational Representative or research leadership. Responses are submitted electronically through the RFI submission site linked in the notice.

Use the RFI to Audit Your Own Workflows

The questions NIH is asking itself are worth asking internally too. Much burden is created at the institution level, not by NIH. The RFI explicitly asks about overcompliance, meaning effort that goes beyond what a requirement actually asks for.

• Map duplicate data entry: list where the same data (personnel, effort, budgets, compliance approvals) is entered more than once.
• Review internal approvals: check whether every routing signature still serves a purpose.
• Check local add-ons: identify forms or steps your institution added on top of sponsor requirements.
• Measure turnaround: record time from proposal start to submission and from award notice to account setup.
• Document your controls: make sure certifications you sign today are backed by records you can retrieve quickly.

The findings feed your RFI response and give you a ready-made improvement plan, whatever NIH decides.

How Fibi Helps Reduce Administrative Burden

Many of the redesign ideas in the RFI, such as collect once, reuse existing information, and interoperability, are the same principles behind the Fibi Research Admin System.

• Proposal Development: keep investigator, budget, and institutional data in one place so it can be reused across proposals in place of being re-entered.
• Award Management: track awards, terms, and reporting obligations in a single record from notice of award through closeout.
• Integrated compliance: link related compliance approvals to proposals and awards so documentation is easy to find when certifying or responding to an audit.
• Reporting and dashboards: pull turnaround times and workload data that can support both your RFI response and internal process reviews.

Key Takeaways

• NIH released NOT-OD-26-118 on October 8, 2026, seeking ideas to reduce administrative burden across the extramural grant lifecycle.
• Responses are due December 8, 2026 and may be made public, so leave out sensitive information.
• NIH is open to deeper redesign, including collect-once data, later information requests, institutional certifications, interoperability, and risk-based oversight.
• The strongest responses name a requirement, describe the burden, propose an alternative, and include time estimates where possible.
• Use the exercise to find and remove burden your institution created itself, and to make sure your records can support any future shift to certifications.