MERC Technical and Administrative Support Contract

The purpose of the MERC/CDR Technical and Administrative Support Program is to provide technical and administrative support for two international collaborative research programs, the U.S.-Israel Cooperative Development Research (CDR) Program and the Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) Program.

Both CDR and MERC fund collaborative research grants to address development problems while helping to strengthen international scientific capacity.

The overall goal of the MERC/CDR Technical and Administrative Support Program is to facilitate USAID's external peer review process while assisting in both the processing of large volumes of research proposals and oversight of ongoing activities. The following are the main objectives of this program: a.

For the U.S. scientific community to provide voluntary advice and assistance to the MERC and CDR Programs through substantive peer-review panels evaluation of research proposals, individually and collectively.

The products of the peer-review advice are to be used by USAID to assist the Agency in determining which proposals to select for award and what additional technical, administrative, regulatory and/or budgetary provisos to place on the projects before awards are made. b.

To assist USAID in its monitoring of technical progress of grants funded under the MERC and CDR Programs by summarizing the grantees' scientific reports of progress and providing information in response to inquiries from USAID.

This should facilitate USAIDs oversight of a large number of project grants and improve the ability of USAID and its grants office in U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv to take timely action as necessary. c.

To provide the required technical and administrative support for the above and associated activities, including the capacity to provide technical feedback on possible overlap of new submissions with previous projects, assessing the applicant investigators' responses to technical provisos and the maintenance of program files and database