Administrative Official (AO)

An AO is an official within an extramural organization and may be located within the Central Research Administration Office and/or an academic department. Depending on an institution’s workflow process, it is possible for the SO and AO to be the same person. In this case, only SO authority is necessary (as SO authority supersedes AO authority).

SO and AO authorities should not be combined.

NOTE: An AO is not authorized to submit reports to the NIH.

If you hold an AO role, you have privileges to perform the following tasks:

• Create all accounts other than IAR, TRAINEE, and FCOI
• Update Commons accounts created by the AO
• View status and award information for all institution grants

  NOTE: The AO cannot view summary statements or priority scores.

• Create affiliation between an existing PD/PI or IAR Commons account and the institution

  NOTE: An AO cannot modify the Institution Profile.