PHS-Funded Investigators are required by federal regulations to complete FCOI training within four years of the date the initial training was completed. Access this online training on the FCOI webpage.
Training completion will be recorded in SAGE and appear in your MyResearch Training Transcript – there is nothing more you need to do!
Proposal submission will be delayed if this training requirement is not met.
Updates
C4C to CoMotion Name Change in FIDS
References to C4C in FIDS have been updated to that office’s new title of CoMotion.
Revised Disclosure Review Statuses
A new Review Status of “Pending Answer” has been added so that the SFI disclosure reviewers in the Office of Research can identify those disclosures whose review is pending additional information from the investigator. The Review Status of “Duplicate” was removed, and all disclosures in that status were moved to “No Review Required” status.
Disclosure Notification Changes
In order to ensure attention is drawn to situations where an investigator may not be receiving a disclosure notification email, there are some changes being introduced to the eGC1s in SAGE.
- Providing visibility when an investigator’s email address is missing which means no disclosure notification can be sent. When no email address is available, the eGC1 Preparer will be sent an email they can forward to the investigator.
- Requiring the eGC1 Preparer’s email address, used for key notifications.
An issue that was causing travel financial interests more than 12 months old (and expired) to still be included in the total on disclosures that had not yet been reviewed has been resolved.
An issue in FIDS that caused disclosure notifications to be sent to investigators who had already completed a primary eGC1 disclosure has been fixed. Investigators will only receive notifications if they have not already been sent one and if they have not already completed a primary disclosure for that eGC1.
The primary goal of this release is to ensure that SFI disclosures reach a status of “Review Required” at a more appropriate time, which will improve the workflow for SFI Reviewers. No significant impact is anticipated for Non-Reviewers, however Non-Reviewers may notice a difference in disclosure statuses in SPAERC/SAGE. Disclosures will now reach a status of “Review Required” only when the disclosures are ready to be reviewed and only if the type of disclosure requires review. New logic and data updates were incorporated into FIDS disclosures to achieve the goal of appropriately classifying status.
Disclosures for all primary eGC1s (excluding ATF eGC1s) will now be assigned to Review Required or No Review Required (depending on whether SFI is present) at the time the primary eGC1 receives a child Funding Action.
Disclosures for primary eGC1s that are “After-The-Fact” (ATF) applications will be assigned to Review Required or No Review Required (depending on whether SFI is present) at the time the primary eGC1 reaches In OSP or Approved status.
Disclosures not connected to a primary eGC1 that have SFI will now go directly to WJIT status, and remain there unless manually set to Review Required or to No Review Required.
Annual updates
- To help compliance with GIM 10’s requirement for submitting an annual Significant Financial Interest (SFI) disclosure, FIDS will send up to three email reminders to investigators when:
- an annual disclosure update is due in 45 days.
- the annual update is due in 15 days.
- they are out of compliance. This message is copied to the PI.
- We updated the Create New Disclosure and Disclose SFI pages to simplify the process for reaffirming investigators have no SFI for an annual update.
Other changes in FIDS
- On the Disclose Significant Financial Interests page, we revised the questions to make it easier for investigators to identify the relationship between their SFI and a particular disclosure for an eGC1.
- When adding new SFI, investigators will no longer be asked “Has this SFI been previously disclosed?” The question was intended to be used during the short term as we transitioned from a paper process to FIDS.
Other key changes outside of FIDS
- SAGE users are no longer able to send disclosure notifications from eGC1’s where the sponsor name is “Pending – Notify OSP of Correct Sponsor”; they also can’t send the notifications if the sponsor name is left blank. This will help ensure that the correct disclosure rules and requirements are applied when the PI is updating their SFI in FIDS.
- To make it easy to find the list of current Public Health Service sponsors, we created a new PHS Sponsors web page. The FCOI online training and other communications will link to this page.
FIDS Style Updates
To ensure that our tools have a more consistent look and are easier to maintain, we made some changes in our code. In some newer browsers, you may notice slightly different colors, rounded corners, and other minor changes. The changes were made in the following tools:
- SAGE – System to Administer Grants Electronically
- FIDS – Financial Interest Disclosure System
- SPAERC – Sponsored Projects Administration & Electronic Research Compliance (for OSP)
- SERA – System for Electronic Research Accounting (for GCA)
- AUMS – Animal Use Medical Screening
The Complete Disclosure button remains on the screen
Investigators no longer have to scroll to the right to see the “Complete Disclosure” button when their application titles are long.
The Financial Interest Disclosure System (FIDS) is now available. FIDS replaces the paper disclosure process and allows investigators to report their significant financial interests online.
Visit the user guide and take the online course for FIDS to learn more about how to make your disclosure in the system.
Read Financial Conflict of Interest Case Scenarios to see examples of when and what to disclose.