The National Institutes of Health Generally Implemented the Safe Workplace Federal Reporting Requirement, but Opportunities Exist To Improve the Reporting and Monitoring Processes

Why OIG Did This Audit

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded recipient institutions are expected to provide safe and healthful working conditions for their employees and foster work environments conductive to high-quality research.
• The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (CAA), mandated the NIH Director to require recipient institutions to report to NIH when individuals identified as principal investigators (PIs) or as key personnel in an NIH Notice of Award are removed from their position or are otherwise disciplined due to concerns about harassment, bullying, retaliation, or hostile working conditions.
• This audit determined whether NIH has implemented the CAA reporting requirement and how NIH has used the reported information to address work environments at recipient institutions.

What OIG Found

• NIH has generally implemented the CAA reporting requirement. However, NIH did not take any actions to address the delayed institutional reporting in some sampled cases subject to the CAA reporting requirement. NIH did not have policies and procedures describing actions that should have been taken to address delayed reporting by the recipient institutions.
• NIH used the reported information to address work environments at recipient institutions by taking PI, grant award, and recipient institution-specific actions in response to reported harassment or other inappropriate conduct cases. However, NIH did not have policies and procedures to facilitate consistent, timely, and proper actions in response to reported cases.

What OIG Recommends

We recommend that the National Institutes of Health: (1) educate recipient institutions on the importance of compliance with the CAA reporting requirement; (2) develop policies and procedures for monitoring recipient institutions’ compliance with the CAA reporting requirement; and (3) develop policies and procedures to facilitate NIH’s consistent, timely, and proper actions in response to reported harassment and inappropriate conduct cases. NIH concurred with our recommendations and described actions it plans to take to address them.