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Action Taken. A draft of the perspective for the period of 1980-1984 with accompanying financial tables for that period was provided to the Board of Regents at its September 1978 meeting. At that meeting the Regents authorized the Institution to transmit the financial data to the Office of Management and Budget and to the Senate and House Appropriations Subcommittees to be used in conjunction with their review of the fiscal year 1980 appropriation request. These materials have been provided to the Office of Management and Budget but have not yet been transmitted to the Appropriations Committees in deference to OMB's request that such projections not be released until the President had determined the Institution's fiscal year 1980 appropriations allowance. As presented in the financial reports for the January 1979 meeting of the Board of Regents, these allowances have now been received and work is underway by the Institution's staff to update the plan and the financial projections consistent with those allowances. Approval will be sought at the January meeting for the Institution to transmit the narrative plan and the financial tables to the Appropriations Committees in conjunction with the submission of the fiscal year 1980 justifications to those Committees. Steps are now being taken to update the plan for the period of fiscal year 1981 through fiscal year 1985 and to integrate the plan more closely with the Institution's zero-base budget and other budget formulations. The updated plan will be ready for review by the Board of Regents in late summer 1979.

4. "With regard to various research awards programs, in addition to the changes proposed by GAO, the Institution should adopt the practice of a special review by the Regents or the Executive Committee thereof, of any awards which the Secretary believes might be perceived by the Congress or the public as self-serving or inappropriate"

Action Taken. A draft procedure for the review of awards for propriety was reviewed by the Board of Regents at its May 1978 meeting. This procedure was subsequently issued to the bureaus and offices of the Institution as an Office Memorandum. Related to this recommendation was the instruction to the Institution in the Conference Report No. 95-1672 on the fiscal year 1979 appropriation. This report states that "the Smithsonian is to require that the review panel for the Research Awards Program (regardless of fund source) include a majority of reviewers who are not Federal or private employees of the Smithsonian Institution. The Regents are requested to ask the National Science Foundation to establish the panel." In subsequent conversation with the Appropriations Subcommittee staff, it is the Institution's understanding that this requirement is also to extend to the review panels for the Special Foreign Currency Program. The Assistant Secretary for Science has discussed this requirement with the Director of the National Science Foundation. The Foundation is willing to certify the qualifications of these panels and is writing the Appropriations Committees to this effect.