Research Administration in History: The Development of OMB Circular A-110 Through Joseph Warner's COGR Subcommittee, 1976-1979‪.‬

The Warner Subcommittee Administrators seldom ponder the origins of the documents they use to interpret principles. Research administration developed rapidly beginning in 1948 with the federal government's transition from purely military procurement to investment in academic research. The inauguration of COGR in 1960, along with the proliferation of research administration offices in the 1960s, the growth of federal funding in the era of the Cold War and Sputnik from $405 million in 1960 to $1.7 billion in 1970, made it imperative for research administrators to have a voice in the revision of A-110, the first codification of federal standards to federal granting agencies (Norris & Youngers, 2000). When Joseph Warner's subcommittee arrived on the scene, university central sponsored programs offices were proliferating, and feeling their way with a fierce desire for independence from the federal oversight that had been the norm in the 1960s (Warner, 2008; Norris & Youngers, 2000). They were swept into the issue of federal principles guiding federal agencies, which concerned A-110. This issue characterized the period from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, which, as Norris and Youngers (2000) explain, "saw the greatest growth of regulation and compliance activity in the research enterprise." In this period the federal government began to play a direct role in assuring that universities fulfilled their responsibilities for handling federal funds, especially because of the phenomenal rate of growth from $2.5 billion in 1976 to $9 billion in 1989 (Norris & Youngers, 2000).