How far along is your office in going
paperless? If you are fully or part way there, I (and the listserv I'm
sure) would like to hear how far along you are.
1. Do you have an online routing
system? If yes, home built or other? Are you routing the entire
proposal or just the budget, abstract and institutional details? UK is working on a home grown system that will route the
abstract, budget, budget justification and institutional details for multi-level
approval.
2. Are you using an archival server
(techies may have a better name for this) to store actual proposals and award
notices? What are you storing? What retrieval method/software do you use? UK
maintains a database that stores proposal and award details and account
transactions, but only has a space for transaction remarks and a text copy and
paste of the award notice. We do not support DOE and ONR
unilateral award notices which would have to be stored in a PDF format because
of the form graphic boxes.
3. Are you storing backup
documentation for post award transactions electronically once an account is
established? UK's current system has limited
ability to store transactions backup. We can enter text-based award
notices, but
4.
If you are using electronic records are you still maintaining a paper
or archival storage of the "official award notice"/contract and still have a
paper file. If you are doing archival storage have you eliminated the
paper copy, or do you keep both? UK maintains
a paper file and the electronic record.
5. Do you have a way to
electronically associate PI supplied backup for rebudgeting
requests/justifications, prior approval requests? UK maintains transaction back up
details in a paper file.
6. Are you maintain final reports
institutional and PI supplied electronically? Are
the submissions associated in your system via click through
access? UK maintains paper files for all
non-transaction backup, awards notice details are entered in a text
format.
7. Do you have a web interface for department and
investigator report retrieval? UK provides report account level
summary information on the web in department, college format in PDF and Excel
versions.
To give a base for comparison
please provide annual proposal volume and awards dollars. UK processed 2,354 proposals in '04 and has 2,311 active
awards. Awards received in '04 total $238 million.
If you cannot respond
directly to these questions, perhaps your information systems representative
can.
- the temporarily one armed
typist
__________________________________________
Kris E. Rhodes, MS CRA
Associate Director
Office of Sponsored Projects
Administration
University of Kentucky
213 Kinkead Hall
Lexington, KY 40506
Phone: 859-257-4826; Fax
859-323-1060