Re: Let's mobilize to fight electronic proposal submission SNAFU Robert Beattie 03 May 2005 10:37 EST

I was not keeping close count but it did seem that most of the comments
on G.g came from folks at institutions not in FDP.  Do note there there
were only 6 messages so is this not really a wide-spread problem or
have people at only a few places had problems.

Anyway, I mention FDP because the that group has been involved with
Grants.gov since its inception.  The FDP's Committee on ERA has been
closely involved.  Some were in on the original testing and even have
attended development meetings.  Even with the input of FDP, we are at
the point we are today.  Ken's comment below is well taken; but note
this would not be "a start of this discussion."  This discussion has
been going on since at least 2000.  Go here for minutes of all those
meetings
http://thefdp.org/Meetings.html

Steve Dowdy (xxxxxx@mit.edu) is the chair of the FDP ERA committee and
I think he would welcome comments from members of this group on their
experiences with Grants.gov.

There will be two sessions that I see on the agenda dealing with
Grants.gov.  The director of the project will be speaking at the second
one.  The agenda of the May meeting can be found here
http://thefdp.org/Meeting_May2005.html#P57_3559

Perhaps between now and the May meeting, specific problems can be
stated here.  Not vague comments like "I was told..." or this or that
may be happening.  What are the specific problems people have had?  We
can produce a list which can be given to the Grants.gov director prior
to the meeting with a request for comments.  By the way, I listened to
the last G.g webcast and heard no problems stated.

We need not ask that all agencies just adopt FastLane as that is not a
viable solution for agencies that already have their own internal
systems. Moreover do you really want a web based system to which you
give your data and then have to re-enter into your local proposal and
award management system?  The Grants.gov System to System solution,
with html or other data transfer, should be better.  I think most
universities, at least, want electronic internal proposal development,
routing, approval, and archiving systems.  These systems will create
the data streams that go to Grants.gov.  Thus you create the data
locally, keep the data, and send it to the agency.  Do folks at some
institutions want to keep using paper applications?

So, within the context of the short term Pure Edge solution and the
long term S2S approach, what are the specific problems that you think
Grants.gov staff have not solved?  With answers to such problems in
hand, a better way to address the problems can be reached.

Bob
__________________________________
Robert Beattie
Managing  Project Representative
 for Electronic Research Administration
Division of Research Development and Administration
University of Michigan
3003 S. State Street   Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1274
office: 734 936-1283    mobile: 734 717-6281
xxxxxx@umich.edu

On May 3, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Landorf,Kenneth R. wrote:

Forgive the naivete, but isn't there a meeting scheduled soon of the FDP
group?  That sounds like it would be a fine place to start this
discussion w/ some of the folks on the Government side of the house.

If this is a verboten issue, please accept my apologies upfront.

Ken Landorf
UConn Health Center
Farmington, CT 06030

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG] On
Behalf Of Glenn Krell
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:28 AM
To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Let's mobilize to fight electronic proposal
submission SNAFU

Hi again resadmr's, per my original post I was asking: "Let's discuss
what
kinds of emails, and to which decision-makers in the government,
resadmr's
should be sending..."

The responses are interesting so far, and so is the discussion. Thank
you
Steve and others for your posts. I do agree 100% with several folks: we
want
to be positive and constructive.  But again, who are the decision makers
we
need to reach? to let them know about the serious problems some of us
are
having, and to offer our constructive feedback?
-Glenn
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