DG Program Move Will Alter Proposal Process
CISE reshuffle likely to eliminate pre-proposals, change deadlines for Digital Government grant paperwork
From Valerie Gregg and Larry Brandt
Digital Government Program Managers

As you may be aware, the Computing and Information Sciences and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation is being reorganized. It is anticipated that the reorganization will become effective October 1, 2003, and a new program announcement for Digital Government is expected in November.

It is our understanding that a "dear colleague letter" will be released in the coming weeks that will provide much more information about the reorganization.

General information about the proposed reorganization can be found in this presentation (.pdf), which is also viewable in slideshow format for IE users here: http://www.cise.nsf.gov/news/display_news_item.cfm?evnt_id=20079&division=cise

As a result of the reorganization, it is likely that the Digital Government Research Program will be transferred to the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS). This division will support research in several broad domains including:

• Systems in context
• Understanding, inference, & data
• Data-driven science

Larry and I have had several opportunities to brief our new Division Director, Michael J. Pazzani; information about Dr. Pazzani's research interests can be found at: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~pazzani/Research.html. He seems very supportive of the program's goals, objectives and research portfolio.

One request that Dr. Pazzani has made which Larry and I will honor is to require full proposals (not pre-proposals as we announced at the May dgo2003 meetings).

The new DG program's deadline for proposals will be in mid-December (exact date TBD). Our deadline will be the same as the other IIS programs. This will enable proposals to be reviewed in multiple panels if appropriate.

We will continue to keep you posted of other changes as they develop. Stay tuned.

Valerie and Larry