On behalf of Brown University, last Friday we submitted a comment in response to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) proposed rule, “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance,” published in the Federal Register on May 29, 2026.
 

Our understanding is that OMB set out to improve transparency, accountability, and oversight for use of federal taxpayer dollars and to reduce the burden on recipients of federal research awards. Brown shares the government's commitment to these principles for careful stewardship of public research funds. Since World War II, the federal government and the nation’s leading research universities have partnered to make the U.S. the global leader in scientific progress and innovation. This longstanding partnership works because federal agencies set public goals, experts evaluate the science, and universities make the people, facilities, systems, and long-term commitments needed to carry the work through. 
 

Our comment outlines how the proposed rule, as drafted, would make this partnership less stable. It would introduce standards that shift after awards are made, reduce the role of expert reviews, impose blanket administrative requirements without regard to recipient risk, restrict ordinary dissemination of research findings, and allow performing awards to be suspended or terminated without the procedural protections needed to correct errors before research is interrupted.
 

We fully support OMB's stated goals of improving transparency, accountability, and oversight in federal awards, ensuring that public funds are used for their intended purposes, and upholding compliance with federal law. The question is not whether federal awards should be subject to strong oversight — they should — but whether the specific revisions proposed in the new rule are necessary, legally justified, and reasonably respond to those stated purposes. On that question, the proposed rule falls short, as we detail in our comment.

We thank all of you who shared your individual comments with us and will continue to monitor our email (federalupdates@brown.edu) to address any additional questions or pertinent information regarding these (or other) federal actions moving forward.
 

Francis J. Doyle III, Provost

Greg Hirth, Vice President for Research