What “Science: A New Golden Age” Report Could Mean for Research Administration

By Federal Pulse posted 08-07-2026 11:32 AM

  

On July 21, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Michael Kratsios released Science: A New Golden Age, a report that calls for a broad redesign of the U.S. research enterprise. The report argues that the current system is too slow, too bureaucratic, too concentrated in established institutions, and insufficiently oriented toward ambitious national missions. Across the report, four themes recur:

  1. Federal support should shift toward individual researchers and a broader range of organizations. The report recommends more direct and portable support for researchers, greater early-career independence, longer-term awards, and greater involvement of new research organizations, companies, nonprofit organizations, regional innovation entities, and other performers.
  2. Agencies should experiment with how they select and manage research investments. The report calls for alternatives to conventional peer review and standardized project grants, including fast grants, longer-horizon awards, prize challenges, regranting, and mechanisms that allow reviewers or program officers to champion unconventional ideas.
  3. Scientific discovery should be tied more directly to national technological and industrial capacity. The report seeks closer connections among research, prototyping, testing, manufacturing, workforce development, and domestic supply chains.
  4. The research enterprise should be redesigned for AI-enabled science. The report envisions greater use of AI, automation, shared data, and verification systems while emphasizing the laboratories, equipment, technicians, skilled tradespeople, and practical expertise needed to turn discoveries into working technologies.

The report is not a binding implementation document. Many of its recommendations would require agency action, appropriations, changes to award policy, or new legal authorities. Nevertheless, federal R&D agencies are required to submit action plans within 90 days of the report’s publication and incorporate the accompanying budget guidance into their Fiscal Year 2028 submissions to OMB (see this month’s What We’re Watching). In the coming months, research administrators should watch for new pilot initiatives, revised funding announcements, new recipient structures, unfamiliar award terms, and changes in agency review or monitoring practices. The practical task is to identify changes early, determine which organizational offices need to be involved, and clarify who bears legal, financial, and compliance responsibility before an organization accepts an award.

Director Kratsios also discussed the report and the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2027 research priorities during a July 22 hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Watch the hearing here.

Where the report and proposed Uniform Guidance revisions diverge

While the report and the proposed changes to Uniform Guidance (see the Feature Article, June 2026 Federal Pulse, for more information) come from the same White House and seek to significantly alter the federal assistance award system, their approaches diverge in key ways, both philosophically and practically. The report gives agencies a broad policy agenda and considerable latitude over implementation. The proposed Uniform Guidance revisions would establish a more prescriptive and legally binding government-wide framework for administering federal awards. The report emphasizes flexibility, experimentation, and risk-taking, while the proposed Uniform Guidance revisions place greater emphasis on cost documentation, recipient accountability, oversight, and government-wide consistency. The following table compares the two proposals across key issues relevant to research administration.

Issue How the two proposals compare Considerations for research administrators
Agency discretion and legal effect

OSTP report: Requires federal R&D agencies to submit action plans within 90 days, but gives agencies latitude to determine how the report's recommendations should be implemented through their programs, funding mechanisms, and portfolios.

Proposed UG revision: Would convert OMB's government-wide guidance into the binding Uniform Grants Regulation. Future OMB amendments generally would apply across agencies on OMB's effective date without waiting for separate agency adoption.

Expect variation in how agencies implement the Science: A New Golden Age agenda, but greater government-wide uniformity in the rules governing award administration. When reviewing a new pilot, distinguish between program features the agency can design and regulatory requirements it cannot waive without an authorized exception.
Funding mechanisms

OSTP report: Encourages fast grants, regranting, prizes, longer-horizon support, and alternatives to conventional project grants.

Proposed UG revision: Would eliminate most fixed-amount awards because OMB considers them insufficiently transparent for cost oversight.

Do not assume that a program described as flexible will have simplified financial administration. Review the award instrument, cost documentation, payment terms, and subaward requirements.
Recipient responsibility and administrative burden

OSTP report: Seeks to direct more federal support to individual scientists rather than established institutions, potentially making the investigator the award recipient.

Proposed UG revision: Continues extensive recipient and pass-through responsibilities and would strengthen risk review, monitoring, payment documentation, and subrecipient oversight.

Consider how your organization will operationalize federal agencies making awards directly to individual investigators, such as determining which recipient responsibilities will move with the award and which, if any, will remain with the investigator's organization. Without an alternative administrative structure, investigators could become responsible for financial management, compliance, reporting, subrecipient oversight, audit findings, and other functions currently handled by institutional research administration offices, or end up contracting with their organization to provide those services.
Risk tolerance and award stability

OSTP report: Calls for greater tolerance of scientific risk, unconventional ideas, longer funding horizons, and research whose value or payoff may not be apparent for years.

Proposed UG revision: Would allow termination when an award no longer advances current agency priorities or the national interest, including when those priorities change after the award is made.

Watch how agencies reconcile encouragement of high-risk, long-horizon research with the possibility that support could end abruptly because federal priorities change. Research administrators may need to proceed with caution with programs where the scientific strategy assumes substantial tolerance for failure or requires significant investments in equipment or personnel, but the award structure provides little corresponding protection against policy-driven termination.
Research performers and collaboration

OSTP report: Signals a desire to reduce the federal research system's reliance on universities as recipients/performers and redistribute some activity and potentially funding toward other actors and structures, including companies, nonprofit organizations, new research entities, regional innovation clusters, skilled practitioners, and other nontraditional actors.

Proposed UG revision: Would increase compliance and due-diligence requirements involving subrecipients, related entities, restricted parties, foreign involvement, and domestic sourcing.

Watch for changes in NOFO eligible-entity criteria, the types of organizations receiving awards, and the distribution of federal research funding among performer types, including potential shifts away from higher education institutions. Research administrators should also anticipate more varied partnership models and determine whether each participant is a recipient, subrecipient, contractor, consortium member, collaborator, or other partner, since those distinctions will determine which federal requirements apply or flow through.
Nature of agency discretion

OSTP report: Encourages agencies and program officers to exercise greater judgment in selecting research, experimenting with funding mechanisms, managing portfolios, and supporting unconventional ideas.

Proposed UG revision: Gives agencies substantial discretion in assessing recipient risk, imposing additional award conditions, taking enforcement actions, terminating awards, and determining whether activities continue to advance agency priorities or the national interest.

Greater agency discretion may benefit a proposal during selection but create uncertainty after award. Identify which commitments are fixed in the notice of award and which remain subject to continuing agency judgment.
Merit review and political/policy screening

OSTP report: Criticizes selection criteria unrelated to scientific merit and argues that research selection should rest on merit rather than “the political fashions of the day.”

Proposed UG revision: Would require a pre-issuance review of discretionary awards to determine whether proposed awards align with applicable law, agency priorities, and the national interest, allowing senior agency officials to withhold funding even after a proposal succeeds in merit review.

It is unclear how agencies would resolve this fundamental tension should the proposed OMB revisions to the Uniform Guidance go into effect as written.

What comes next

OMB’s target implementation date for its proposed Uniform Guidance revisions is October 1, 2026, although the Senate continuing-resolution could temporarily delay implementation (see this month’s What We’re Watching). That said, the NSF is already revising its award policies in anticipation of changes stemming from the OMB proposal. Separately, the OSTP report requires federal R&D agencies to submit action plans within 90 days, which should provide the first indication of which recommendations individual agencies intend to pursue. Even if implementation of changes to Uniform Guidance are stalled, research administrators should expect to see agencies take actions within their power to align with the OSTP report.


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