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Effort Certification

Understand the importance of effort certification and institutional base salary. Learn who is required to certify and what the process entails. Discover the significance of workload policies and the consequences of non-compliance. Effort certification ensures accurate reporting for federally funded projects.

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Effort Certification

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  1. Effort Certification Don’t Ignore It… Take credit for your efforts! Revised 7/11

  2. Objectives • Operational Definitions: • Effort • Institutional Base Salary • Workload • Why certify? (or what if we don’t?) • Who is required to certify? • What are we really certifying? • Workload example • Effort certification preview

  3. What is Effort?

  4. Effort Certification Defined • The reporting and confirmation of one’s time spent conducting any university activity that typically is expressed as a percentage of the total institutional compensated based time (Institutional Based Salary (IBS)) Effort is proposed Salary is charged Effort is Certified

  5. Effort: Work or the proportion of time spent on any activity and expressed as a percentage of University time. It does not equate to a 40 hour week or a fixed number of hours. Certify: Assert in writing the correctness of employee effort. Effort Certification Defined

  6. Institutional Base Salary (IBS)

  7. Institutional Base Salary • Definition of Institutional Base Salary (IBS) at UD: • 9,10,11,12 month faculty, professionals, etc. • all pay associated with the contractual agreement • full base pay amount • administrative supplement • any summer months paid out as either summer research or as part of annual pay • What is NOT included? • winter teaching overload • Overtime/reg semester overload • Effort certification is based on IBS

  8. Faculty Workload The Building Blocks of Faculty Effort

  9. Faculty workload policies • Per the AAUP and the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, all academic departments must have a workload policy on file. • Every faculty has a specific workload assigned to them. It varies from unit to unit and faculty member to faculty member. • UD Workload policies can be found at www.udel.edu/provost/documents.html • This workload assignment is re-evaluated annually at the time of faculty appraisals and should be adjusted according to research activity. Workload policies exist for all academic departments and your faculty should be familiar with their workload assignment.

  10. CBA 11.9 12 credit contact hours or 18 teaching contact hours per week per semester constitutes a 100% workload for the semester for the academic year. Assignment of a workload of other credit-contact hours per week or teaching contact hours per week per semester will be prorated as a percentage of workload for the semester, e.g. 9 credit-contact hours per week per semester constitutes a 75% workload for the semester for the academic year; 6 credit-contact hours per week per semester constitutes a 50% workload for the semester for the academic year; 3 credit-contact hours per week per semester constitutes a 25% workload for the semester for the academic year.

  11. Why Certify? And what if we don’t?

  12. Why do we have effort certification? • Effort reporting is a requirement of the Federal Government. In order to receive Federal funding (sponsored grants and contracts), UD must maintain an effort reporting system. • OMB A-21, J10 Compensation for personal services: • “a statement will be signed by the employee, principal investigator, or responsible official(s) using suitable means of verification that the work was performed.”

  13. Risk of Non-compliance Severe penalties and funding disallowances could result from inaccurate (False Claims), incomplete, or untimely effort reporting.

  14. Who must certify?

  15. Certifying Signature • Signer must understand what they are signing • Business managers cannot sign for entire departments. • Secretarial and accounting personnel should not sign for faculty. • The signer should be as close as possible to the work performed.

  16. Certifying Signature • Principal investigators must review and certify their total effort on all federal projects for each effort reporting period. • The federal regulations allow for a variance of effort up to 25% of what was proposed without prior approval. • The federal regulations allow for a variance of only 5% in the salary allocated as compared to that which the employee is certifying. • Effort promised or proposed to a sponsored activity (even if not budgeted) must be accounted for.

  17. What are we really certifying?

  18. Proposed and Committed Effort • Proposed • Is either sponsorbudgeted or otherwise • Is committed in the justification, budget, C&P or other documents • Committed • expected to be tracked, fulfilled and documented • Avoid over commitments • do not exceed one’s full workload.

  19. Effort Reporting Is Complicated By Cost Sharing • Cost sharing is the difference between the effort expended on a project and the effort that is paid for by the sponsor. • Cost sharing can be either mandatory or voluntary. • Effort committed but NOT funded by a sponsor is automatically Cost Share!!

  20. Cost Sharing (cont.) • The same cost sharing dollars can be used only once • The source of cost share fund cannot be other federal funds • Commitments should be realistic and money should be available to fund it

  21. Three Types of Cost Sharing • Committed CostSharing—documented in the notice of grant award from the sponsor • Uncommitted Cost Sharing—additional effort not required by the sponsor • Cost Sharing due to Salary Limitation—restrictions enforced by the granting agency (NIH Salary Cap)

  22. Workload Example

  23. Workload Example • Dr. Dots has a workload that combines teaching and research • Dr. Dots has a 9 month academic year faculty appointment with a $72K 9 month salary • Dr. Dots teaches 3 courses in the first semester and 2 in the second semester • Each course is 3 credits

  24. Workload Example • Dr. Dots has agreed to spend • 60% of his time (effort) performing research related activities, • 30% of his time providing instruction through teaching or advisement of students and • 10% of his time providing service to the public or the institution. • The total workload needs to total 100%.

  25. Faculty Workloadmonthly distribution

  26. How much is a month?

  27. Workload Calculation

  28. Dr. Dot’s research commitments • So this is good news. We only have 14% committed for Dr. Dots. We still have 46% left to commit or leave uncommitted as university funded research effort.

  29. How much effort? • Minimum effort required • Committed percent proposed in original submission • Only changes authorized by the sponsor can reduce this commitment • 1% is a reasonable minimum by OMB standards • Maximum • Depends on workload negotiated with Department Chair

  30. Case Study

  31. Anecdotal examples • Budget justification may say 30% of the academic year and 1.5 summer months. How much effort is that for this faculty member? • 30% of 9 months is 3 months • 3 months is 24% • 1.5 summer months is 12% • Total effort for this project for one year is 36%

  32. The Web Process

  33. The UD Web Process • Web-enabled process effective March 1, 2005 • All certification and adjustments will be handled electronically

  34. The UD Web Process • 3 effort periods for academic faculty • Period 1: Fall semester (September – January 15) • Period 2: Spring semester (January 16 – May) • Period 3: Summer research (June – August) • 2 effort periods for everyone else • Period 1: September - February • Period 2: March - August

  35. Effort Certification Web Process • ‘Delivered’ to the effort administrator 10 days after end of reporting period • Effort administrator will review and make necessary changes • Once reviewed, administrator will route to the employee for action • Employee reviews and certifies or returns to administrator for more changes

  36. Employee View (percent)

  37. Employee Certification View

  38. Employee view Fall semester, AY2005 Award Long Title Direct Funding 09/01/2007 to 01/15/2008 PI Cost Share Funding

  39. Approval • TWO (2) “review and certify” are necessary to complete the process • Effort admin reviews and certifies accuracy and forwards to employee • Employee reviews and certifies • IF employee is no longer at UD, then effort admin can select “certify for former employee”

  40. Employee Annual YTD View

  41. Summary • We must certify effort for UD to Feds • Responsible employee closest to the effort must certify • Over committed effort can be reduced by talk with Program Officer (variance of 25% is allowed) • Workload is king—refer to this first

  42. More information UD Effort Policy (6-5) http://www.udel.edu/ExecVP/policies/research/6-05.html Effort training http://www.udel.edu/research/training/efforttraining.html Effort FAQs http://www.udel.edu/research/preparing/faq.html#effort Manager of Effort Certification effortcert@udel.eduor x4956

  43. Questions? Contact/Info: effortcert@udel.edu 831-2136

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