Issue: ORN-2026-03

NSF FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan

The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories. For more than 75 years, NSF has advanced the frontiers of S&E research and innovation. To keep the United States at the leading edge of discovery, NSF funds basic and solutions-oriented research that generates new knowledge to fuel industries of the future, create world-leading technologies, and improve the lives of the American people.

NSF mission. To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense.

NSF vision. A prosperous and secure future for all Americans, driven by NSF's strategic investments in research, innovation, infrastructure, science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and workforce development.

NSF core values. NSF's core values guide the organization in support of the mission. These core values have been developed through the active engagement of NSF staff and guide how the agency makes decisions, sets priorities, addresses challenges, manages trade-offs, recruits and develops personnel, and works with awardees.

• Excellence. NSF employs rigorous, merit-based systems that are collaborative and transparent.
• Impact. NSF funds S&E research that drives societal benefits and addresses critical challenges.
• Integrity. NSF adheres to ethical principles to instill trust in science and research.
• Accountability. NSF upholds rigorous and transparent professional standards in the administration of its federal resources.

NSF's performance management framework. NSF has established a robust performance management framework in support of the President's Management Agenda, with the strategic plan serving as the agency's blueprint.1 In the FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan, NSF has established three strategic goals accompanied by eight strategic objectives that the agency will use to assess progress. The strategic plan provides a broad vision for the agency, while the annual performance plan will further define metrics and set milestones and targets for achievement that align with the President's Budget.

The sections in the NSF FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan include: 

Goal 1. Ensure American excellence and national security through investments in transformative research and innovation.

Goal 2. Advance American leadership in science and technology by empowering STEM talent.

Goal 3. Accelerate NSF's impact by optimizing capability and modernizing operations.

Crosscutting strategy for partnerships

Partnerships offer opportunities to amplify economic and societal benefits of NSF's funding across the U.S. by accelerating discovery and the translation of research to practice. NSF is uniquely positioned to harness the strengths of higher education institutions, industry and nonprofits through partnerships and will leverage funding, complementary expertise and synergies across partners to advance the objectives in NSF's FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan.

Agency priority goal

NSF has established a two-year agency priority goal (APG) in consultation with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The FY 2026-2027 APG will focus on ways to reduce administrative burden in alignment with Strategic Objective 3.2.

For the complete text of the plan, please visit NSF FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan website. 

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Research and Innovation Translation Partnerships Conference and Technology Showcase: Point of Care Technologies and Digital Health

April 20-23, 2026, William H. Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health

The Research and Innovation Translation Partnerships in Point of Care Technologies and Digital Health Conference and Technology Showcase will be held April 21 and 22, 2026 on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, MD. This event will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, forums, and e-poster sessions. 

The NIH Programs will showcase their outstanding resources, technologies, and expertise for promoting and nurturing innovative partnerships among the centers and affiliated/associated companies, clinical sites, and stakeholder groups including federal and international regulatory agencies. The conference will feature Technical Tracks in these areas:

• Heart disease
• Chronic respiratory diseases
• Sleep disorders
• Cancer
• Infectious diseases
• Maternal/Fetal/Pediatric health

The overall goal of the NIH conference is to share and disseminate best practices, leverage resources, and develop new collaborative opportunities to support the rapid development, commercialization, and implementation of innovative point-of-care and home-based diagnostic technologies with clinical applications.

A Grantsmanship Pre-Conference Workshop will also be held on Monday, April 20, 2026. 

This workshop will include:

• Presentations about the small business program and available resources for applicants and awardees from NIH program officers at participating institutes, centers, and offices.
• Panel-style Q&A with presenters.
• Brief 1-on-1 discussions with an NIH program officers to discuss project-specific questions, mission fit, appropriateness.

REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE

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NSF Policy Notice: Implementation of Policy Changes to Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 24-1, Supplement 2

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is releasing a Policy Notice Supplement 2, which provides updates to the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG), version 24-1. The PAPPG updates provided in this Policy Notice supersede the relevant financial assistance policies provided in the 24-1 version of the PAPPG.

In addition, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is updating its Project Reporting and Public Access Repository (PAR) systems to align with NSF’s Gold Standard Science Implementation Plan. 

The following policy updates are covered in this supplement:

Changes to the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) include: 

• Removing the 12-month publication embargo from all Portable Document Format (PDF) product types  
• Enabling input of Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM) and Version of Record (VoR) 
• Making machine-readable versions of publications in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format available for download 
• Enabling PAR Identifiers (IDs) to behave as Persistent Identifiers (PID), similar to the Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) 

Changes to Research.gov Project Reports include: 

• Auto-populating PAR IDs as Persistent ID links from NSF-PAR into Project Reports for journal articles, conference papers, datasets, and workshop reports 
• Auto-populating Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) and Version of Record (VOR) metadata from NSF-PAR into Project Reports for journal articles, conference papers, and workshop reports 
• Prohibiting direct dataset entry into project reports within Research.gov  

Questions? If you have IT system-related questions, please contact the NSF IT Service Desk at 1-800-381-1532 (7:00 AM - 9:00 PM ET; Monday - Friday except federal holidays) or via rgov@nsf.gov. Policy-related questions should be directed to policy@nsf.gov. Please check NSF.gov often for future updates.