You mentioned the removal of the programmatic involvement criterion – can you explain further?

The programmatic involvement criterion was removed in FY25, as it was deemed no longer relevant to most submitted applications. EPA used to have this requirement for the applicant to demonstrate involvement from related media programs (air, water, waste, etc.) which ‘owned’ the environmental data that was being collected or managed in the proposed project, as applications were coming in from central mission support or IT offices. Based on recent analysis, however, this was no longer the case for many applicants and, furthermore, the criterion was confusing and added very little value to submitted proposals.