IC Directors' Meeting Highlights
June 5, 2008
To:
From: Subject: IC
Directors
Kerry Brink, Assistant to the Deputy Director, NIH IC Directors’ Meeting Highlights – April 24, 2008 Discussion Items I. Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity Management
(OEODM): State of the Agency Briefing, In his State of the Agency briefing, Mr. Self updated IC Directors on the Management Directive 715 (MD-715). He explained that MD-715 consists of policy guidance and standards for establishing and maintaining effective affirmative programs of equal employment opportunity. MD-715 requires evaluation of agency policies, procedures and practices to identify any barriers to equal employment opportunity and to report plans and progress to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Mr. Self informed IC Directors that the ultimate goal is to establish and maintain a Model EEO Program which consists of the following six elements, with examples of NIH’s progress toward these elements during fiscal year 2007: Demonstrated Commitment from Agency Leadership
Integration of EEO into the Agency’s Strategic
Mission
Management and Program Accountability
Proactive Prevention of Unlawful Discrimination
Efficiency
Responsiveness and Legal Compliance
OEODM is conducting a trend analysis of the NIH diversity workforce compensation and reward system, and is partnering with the NIH Office of Human Resources to develop an applicant tracking system to assess whether vacancy announcements are attracting a diverse pool of qualified applicants. Mr. Self reported that in fiscal year 2007, NIH succeeded in increasing workforce diversity. Goals for 2008 are to continue to be proactive in equal employment opportunity and broadening diversity in recruitment, hiring and promotion practices. II. Update on Peer Review, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, Director, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) First-rate peer review is a cornerstone of NIH and the emerging reality of the increasing breadth, complexity, and interdisciplinary nature of modern research has created many challenges. Dr. Tabak explained that enhancing peer review has been guided by the charge to fund the best science, by the best scientists, with the least administrative burden. Whereas best science is dependent on many factors including scientific quality, public health impact, mission of the Institute or Center and the existing NIH portfolio. The NIH embarked on a year-long endeavor to examine and evaluate peer review in three distinct project phases: The Diagnostic Phase involved an in-depth evaluation of the current NIH peer review process. Joint efforts involving the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group, the Steering Committee (SC) Working Group solicited input from NIH internal and external communities, and deliberated on challenges and proposed actions. The Final Draft Report of the NIH 2007-2008 Peer Review Self-Study, issued February 29, 2008 (posted at www.enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov), reveals the outcome of the Diagnostic Phase, which describes recommendations under the following seven major challenges that emerged:
In March 2008, the NIH Director established the Steering Committee Peer Review Implementation Group to generate detailed implementation plans for each of the recommended actions. The Committee convened subgroups composed of NIH planning and analytical and evaluation experts, statisticians, and program staff to begin to develop the detailed implementation plans and evaluations. In addition, extensive feedback and input from the NIH internal and external communities, along with consideration of the pros and cons of both individual and combined recommendations, informed the development of the implementation plans. The implementation plans were then clustered within the following discrete core themes:
Within the next few weeks, the implementation plans and evaluations will be further vetted by the internal cross functional groups and the Steering Committee before coming back to IC Directors and final implementation plans determined. Kerry Brink This page was last reviewed on
June 5, 2008
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