A. Council members will be selected by the Chair of the Council to provide en bloc concurrence on behalf of the Council. One Council member will be assigned this concurrence responsibility for a group of applications limited by an individual Program Class Code (PCC, e.g., AN). A Council member may be assigned more than one PCC. An alternate Council member will be assigned this responsibility for applications within a PCC for which the primary assignee has a conflict of interest.

B. The Council has agreed upon the parameters for applications eligible for expedited concurrence:

1) Mechanism: R01, R21, R13, R15, R24,, R25, K (all), T32, R41, R42, R43, R44

2) Percentile Score: 15.0 or better

3) Priority Score for non-percentiled applications: 150 or better

4) Maximum Direct Cost in any year: $500,000

5) Foreign Applications: exclude

6) Applications with a Human Subjects Concern, Animal Welfare Concern,
Unacceptable code for minorities, gender, or children are excluded.

C. The Council Executive Secretary will alert the Council member(s) with delegated responsibility for expedited concurrence when summary statements for eligible applications are available on the Electronic Council Book (ECB). Concurrently, all other members are alerted of this communication. The Delegated Council member is requested to respond with a recommendation to concur or not on the applications for which the member has responsibility. This should be communicated via e-mail, phone, or fax. All Council members are reminded that they may request that any application be brought to the Council for full discussion. To comply with the latter, all Council members are afforded a minimal period of two weeks to request full discussion on any application in any bloc.

D. When notifying Council of available summary statements, the Council Executive Secretary will provide the following information to the members: Application Number, Name of Principal Investigator, Project Title, and Percentile/Priority Score.

E. A report of the en bloc recommendations will be presented at each Council meeting.

F. Council may consider the parameters for expedited eligibility at any time, but no less than
once a year.

Updated: June 8, 2005