We are seeing an increase in the number of large interdisciplinary proposals being prepared. The issue of maintaining the confidentiality of salary information can be a serious problem as budgets are viewed by more and more people in the process of preparing the proposal. While this is an issue for all proposals, this is of particular concern with NSF Fastlane budgets where everyone (inside and outside Duke) with access to the proposal online has full access to all the budgets of the proposal. In these cases, we suggest that the online budget show only a single lump sum for all senior personnel salaries. The detailed budget with a breakdown of senior personnel salaries can be done on a separate set of forms, reviewed in Research Support and sent to the sponsor's program officer with a cover letter.

If a principal investigator decides to use this type of budget, the program officer should be contacted prior to proposal submission so he or she is aware of the type of budget being prepared.

SPS NOTE: The individual salary amounts in budgets prepared in the Sponsored Projects System can only be viewed by the authorized personnel in a faculty member's department. For other departments approving the proposal, except for the personnel of their own department, only lump sum salary amounts can be viewed.