On Oct 20, the National Science Foundation posted in the Federal Register an opportunity for the public to comment on plans to begin collecting data to inform an assessment of the Technology, Innovation and Partnership Directorate. Established in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and comprising several well-publicized initiatives, TIP has three mission areas of interest to the TBED community: technology translation, workforce development, and regional innovation ecosystems. The register notice announces NSF’s intention to exercise generic information-gathering authority under an as-yet-undefined TIP Evidence and Evaluation Measurement Framework. There are no details provided in the public notice regarding what might be requested from recipients and focus group participants for each of the three programmatic buckets and how that data might be tested in future assessments. NSF states in the announcement that it will work those details out with OMB approval rather than through the formal public comment period.
Written comments must be received by NSF before the December 21, 2026, deadline. More information is available here.