NSF Update, continued: limits on submissions

I had heard a rumor about this a few months ago, and now it's confirmed: there will be a CISE-wide limit on the number of proposals submitted by a PI (or co-PI/senior personnel). Here's the relevant text (from the IIS call, but it's part of the coordinated solicitation):

In any contiguous August through December period, an individual may participate as PI, Co-PI or Senior Personnel in no more than two proposals submitted in response to the coordinated solicitation (where coordinated solicitation is defined to include the Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Core Programs, the Computer and Network Systems (CNS): Core Programs and the Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs solicitations). For example, between August 2009 and December 2009, an individual may participate as PI, co-PI or Senior Personnel in one proposal submitted to a core program in CCF and in a second proposal submitted to a core program in CNS, or an individual may participate as PI, co-PI or Senior Personnel in two proposals submitted to an IIS core program, etc.

The key difference is this: in the past, each separate solicitation (whether TF, or IIS, or whatever) had its own separate limit on the number of proposals: now the cap is summed over the coordinated solicitation. I expect there to be major rumbling about this.

One saving grace is that this only applies to the coordinated solicitation: other cross-discipline programs have their own separate caps.