But We Have a Policy
The Office of Research Administration at a small institution, Keynote State College, has an internal policy that all financial and administrative data pertaining to grants must be shredded three years after the termination date. While they have relatively few sponsored projects, they do not have the room to store boxes and boxes of old records. The Director of the Office of Research Administration, Alfredo Fettucine, has a very small staff and, in Fettucine’s view, he cannot afford to have them spending time dealing with old records when he has been charged with assisting faculty member in proposal development and building the level of funded research.
Prof. Elderberry was the PI on an NSF grant that expired on December 31, 2002. Once the grant expired, Prof. Elderberry had some difficulty with completing the final project report. He finally submitted the project report on September 30, 2003, nine months after the expiration date of the grant. In February 2006, NSF contacted Fettucine and notified him that the agency was going to perform a cost-sharing audit of the Elderberry grant and would need to review records for the entire project period.
Questions to Consider
- Assuming the office policy were followed and the grant records, including financial and administrative data were destroyed in January 2006, what can be done?
- How can Fettucine respond to the NSF auditor?
- Is it possible to recreate the records?
- What should Fettucine do in terms of changing his office policy?
