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FAQs for Criminal Justice Technology Regional Centers Solicitation

We will be posting as we receive them questions and answers here regarding the fiscal year 2009 solicitations for operation of Technology Centers within the NLECTC system.

If you don't see the answer to your question, try also our general FAQs on applications and funding. We also strongly encourage you to read carefully the full text of each solicitation, available on the Current Funding  page.

General
Q: The solicitation states that the abstract cannot exceed 600 words. If tables and figures are included in the abstract, are the words contained in those tables and figures included or excluded from the word count limit?
A: Tables and figures are not normally considered part of the proposal abstract.
Q: Please clarify what is meant by “Program design and methods.
A. This is the applicant’s technical approach in responding to the solicitation.
Q: One of the required appendices is a timeline, research calendar or milestone for a project. Again, this seems not applicable in this particular situation. Please advise.
A: Although a timeline or research calendar may be more appropriate for a research project, a list of critical milestones, including project start and end dates, proposed number of conferences and other significant events should be displayed as project milestones.
Q:Is there a way to submit a joint or collaborative proposal in response to this solicitation where each collaborating agency receives funding directly from NIJ?
A: No. You can submit a collaborative proposal but it must be a single application and the award would be made to a single agency, which would have to establish means to fund the collaborating agencies.

Alternatively, you can collaborate and submit two (or more) proposals, but each will be reviewed individually and considered on its own merits. Note that this applies whether or not one or more of the collaborators is a federal agency.
Solicitation: Criminal Justice Technology Regional Centers
Q: Does NIJ want applications that simply propose to develop a plan to restructure the NLECTC System's current regional centers structure to make it more effective and efficient in providing outreach, or does NIJ want applications that propose a plan and it's implementation?
A: NIJ seeks applications that propose both a plan and its implementation.
Q: Can a proposal propose a solution addressing the needs of a specific region?
A: Yes. Per the Solicitation, "Although the NLECTC System must be able to conduct regional outreach activities to all criminal justice agencies across the nation, NIJ will entertain applications proposing solutions that serve only a subset of those agencies."
Q: Can we offer scaled pricing? E.g.: Covering 4 states, 6 states, 10 states?
A: Yes. Per the Solicitation, "Although the NLECTC System must be able to conduct regional outreach activities to all criminal justice agencies across the nation, NIJ will entertain applications proposing solutions that serve only a subset of those agencies."

Additionally, as noted in the Solicitation, the NLECTC System’s current regional centers structure covers all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Put simply, NIJ’s intent with this solicitation is to transform the current regional centers structure to offer a more sustainable, efficient and effective way to provide regional outreach to as much of criminal justice practitioner community as possible, ideally the entire community, within the up to $4.5M anticipated to be available for this solicitation.
Q: Please clarify the definition of “dissemination strategy” in the context of a Regional Center. It seems inapplicable for this specific solicitation.
A: A dissemination strategy would address what the applicant would distribute at outreach activities and how it would be distributed. Additionally, applicants may develop a strategy addressing how, through outreach functions, they will  disseminate lessons learned, including technology needs and demonstration activities supported or participated in by the applicant. This also includes providing substantive content for inclusion in TechBeat, the quarterly publication of the NLECTC system.
Solicitation: Criminal Justice Electronic Crime Technology Center of Excellence
Q: Under the Specific Information section, the last sentence of the sixth bullet states: “Appropriate assistance will be provided to all facets of the criminal justice community, including small and rural law enforcement, corrections, forensic service providers, school resource officers, or other State and local practitioner communities.” Some of these groups seem to be outside the electronic crimes arena. Since there were multiple RFPs in the solicitation and they all used this same wording, do all of these groups need to address electronic crimes or is this text just an artifact of the wording for all three RFPs?
A: All practitioner agencies have some form of electronic crime activities and are not considered outside the electronic crime arena.
Date Modified: May 29, 2009