Suzan, I got a similar message several months ago, and the error was caused by a typo in our DUNS number. Once that was corrected, the proposal went through grants.gov error free.

 

Could that be what caused this error for you rather than g.g just  being a @#$%^&*?

 

Just a thought. J Although the issues that most are having with g.g while others can get theirs in on the first try and quickly makes me agree that lately it’s just the luck of the draw on what transpires.

 

I do love the idea of taking it higher to those who might actually be able to get the system improved and consistently and reliably usable.

 

Vicki

480-965-2171

 

 

While I agree, there have been some improvements (it no longer takes 30+ minutes to log into Grants.gov to check the application status), there are still major issues.  Yesterday we experienced a disturbing new one - a rejection to a submitted application stating, you are not a designated AOR (message copied below).  We've received 2 of these so far on applications we believed had made it through the initial hurdles (following multiple attempts at login).  We too use an institutional username and password and were successful on several other submissions.  Of course, the only solution offered is to submit again.  Not helpful to an already overloaded system!

Sadly, many of the agencies are putting the burden on the user community to "start earlier" which is meaningless and doesn't address the actual problem - the current Grants.gov system is inadequate.  It is critical that we find a way to get these issues raised beyond our individual voices complaining to contracted "help desk" folks and each other.  Our Vice Chancellor for Research is going to take this issue up at the upcoming AAU meeting.  FDP, COGR, SRA, NCURA, all have large participant communities - we need them to raise our voices to anyone in Washington with the power to actually affect this problem.  It would be wonderful to enlist the sponsor agencies as well, with their understanding this isn't just a procrastination problem.  

We need to take action.  If you're interested in forming a user community action team, let me know (xxxxxx@unl.edu).  If such a group already exists, please let us all know, so we can participate.

Bob, I want to dream of all the things I'd like this system to be capable of, but first there must be a global recognition of the magnitude of the problem.  I shudder to think how it will go submitting the expected quick influx of new packages tied to ARRA!  

Dear Applicant:

Your submission was received on 04-Mar-09 10:48:12 AM, ET
.
However, it contained the following errors and cannot be forwarded to the granting agency.The following errors were detected:

Error:You are not designated by your organization to be an Authorized Organizational Representative and your application cannot be validated. You either have not successfully completed the registration process or your E-Business Point of Contact has not authorized you to submit on behalf of your organization. To verify whether you have been successfully registered with Grants.gov, click https://apply.grants.gov/ApplicantLoginGetID.  For instructions on how to register with Grants.gov and for information on being designated as an AOR, click https://apply.grants.gov/GrantsgovRegister.

Please correct the above error(s) and resubmit your application to Grants.gov.


Suzan G. Lund, CRA
Associate Director, Sponsored Programs
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
312 N. 14th St., Alexander West
Lincoln, NE  68588-0430
Ph:  402-472-1930     Fax:  402-472-9323
email:  xxxxxx@unl.edu
website: http://research.unl.edu/sp1

From:	Bob Beattie <xxxxxx@UMICH.EDU>
To:	xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Date:	03/04/2009 10:43 AM
Subject:	Re: [RESADM-L] Trouble with Grants.gov

 

Let me add a few comments to this discussion.  We too are have  
problems, but as I have said in the past, we can submit quite nicely  
until 11am.  27 so far today.  25 yesterday, but also in the  
afternoon so we got 40 in altogether.  Afternoon submission took 4-5  
trys.

I thought I had written earlier, warning people to ignore that false  
credentials message.  That is just part of the system user id  
overload.  There is no excuse for it, but it can be ignored.  I got  
it 2 or 3 times yesterday,  once I ran out of the 3 allowed tries.  I  
just closed the
application and opened and tried again.  All of our AORs have the  
same password -- an institutional password,  not a personal one.  
Thus, I am not going to change anything for anyone.   I have come to  
realize that the Help Desk does not really understand what
is going on.  They do not submit applications, nor know how the  
system works.   They are just contractors with scripts to resolve  
simple problems.  We all on this listserv are much more knowledgeable  
than any of them.

I suggest that there are no tricks or changes that will help us get  
application into the system at this time.  Just open the file, save  
and submit, and if you are lucky you will hit an opening.  If not,  
try again.  I believe the Grants.gov staff are working with their  
consultants from
General Dynamics Information Technology to improve the process.  
Perhaps the GDIT folks did not realize what a pain using Adobe Forms  
would be when they got the contract back in 2006.  Still, we expect  
them to meet the demands.   A statement from them on why
they cannot would be nice, but better to just fix the thing.

It might be unfair to say that the big system fix in early February  
"hasn't fixed the problem in any way. It seems worse than ever."  We  
are not now getting all those pesky false errors such that we did not  
know if the application got to the sponsor or not.  I have noticed an  
improvement in submission speed,
however, only before 11am :(  The error checking process now seems to  
find real errors.  This morning we got a rejection because there were  
1000 participant/trainees listed in an R01 subaward budget.  That has  
been the only rejection in the past couple of weeks, compared to the  
almost every
submission prior to the big fix.

I like Kathleen's point in the last paragraph that some drastic  
"thinking out of the box" is needed.  In the meantime, as we all  
focus on the submission delays, we are not thinking about all the  
other issues that need to resolved.  Wouldn't we like to print an  
entire application, with all budget years, for example.
There are other such changes that we need, too.   Keep thinking about  
what you want the system to do, besides be faster.

Luckily NIH has been very flexible in helping us deal with the  
submission delays.  By their next deadline, there will be new forms,  
and there must be improvements in capacity.


Bob
------------------------------
Robert Beattie
UMICH eBusiness Point of Contact
University of Michigan
xxxxxx@umich.edu   (734) 936-1283

On Mar 4, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Foster, Kathleen C wrote:

Winnie,

I agree with your impulse to want to find a way to manage a situation  
that seems to be growing increasingly out of control with every large  
deadline we come to. We began seeing serious Grants.gov system issues  
three days before the deadline, which seems to indicate that the  
system upgrade Grants.gov implemented February 7th and 8th hasn't  
fixed the problem in any way. It seems worse than ever. I like your  
suggestions, but I'm not sure we'll be able to convince the agencies  
to see things from our point of view. NIH has been very  
accommodating, but other agencies less so.

I want to relate a particularly frustrating and alarming experience I  
had with the Grants.gov help desk yesterday afternoon. We have been  
experiencing the full range of bizarre error messages and submission  
problems that everyone else has seen (just business as usual, at this  
point), but yesterday afternoon we saw a new one: failure to  
recognize the username and password of our AOR. I called Grants.gov  
to determine if this was just another symptom of system slowness or  
if something was really wrong with our AOR's credentials. The help  
desk representative ran a report and determined that the username and  
credentials were fine, and suggested that I reset the password. I did  
so, and we still received the error.

I called back once more, just in hope of determining whether there  
was actually a problem with the password or not. The help desk  
representative really could't say, and advised me to ask our e-biz  
point of contact to delete our AOR's registration completely and have  
us re-register her under a new user name and password. When I pointed  
out that it seemed a bit unrealistic to take that action just two  
days before the NIH deadline, knowing it can take up to a day to  
process a registration, she indicated that it was my only option. I  
asked her once again if that was really necessary -- was there an  
actual problem that would be solved by taking this action? She would  
say only that they were recommending this action to everyone who was  
experiencing this error.

I sat in my office for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the  
recommendation. We have been submitting successfully to G.g almost  
daily for two years. Since our initial registration, we've never done  
anything to change the username and password of our AOR. Was  
something really wrong with it? Could the re-registration be  
processed in time to allow us to submit the many other applications  
in queue by Friday? Would this just cause more problems that it  
solved? Did I really want to contact our E-Biz POC and ask him to  
drop everything and deal with this? While I was thinking this over,  
my colleague came to my office door and said, triumphantly, that he  
had just been able to submit two applications.

So, there was absolutely nothing wrong with our AOR's credentials at  
all. I was advised by Grants.gov to take a course of action that  
would have been incredibly disruptive and problematic, and might have  
jeopardized our ability to submit for the rest of the week, for  
absolutely no reason.  Why would the help desk rep give me such bad  
advice? Why wasn't she able to determine that the error message was  
just a false message, and that the real problem was the same system  
overload that we've encountered at every deadline?

I think what bothers me most of all is that there seems to be a  
failure to acknowledge what is now obvious to all of us: the  
Grants.gov system is not able to handle the thousands of applications  
that hit the system in advance of a major NIH deadline. The help desk  
continues to advise us to try one pointless thing after another, when  
in reality, the only actual solution is to submit at a moment when  
there isn't a bottleneck.  Why not save us all the time and energy  
and figure out a way to stagger submission windows by area of the  
country, for example, so each region has a designated time to submit?  
I'm sure there are many other solutions as well, but until the  
problem is acknowledged, it can't be solved.



Kathleen Foster
Director, Research Systems and Funding Information
Office of Sponsored Programs
Boston University

p: 617.353.4365
f: 617.353.6660


From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On  
Behalf Of Wilma Ennenga
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 7:05 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Trouble with Grants.gov

I’ve followed the traffic over the past days and weeks (years!) as  
the capacity issues a Grants.Gov have caused more and more of us to  
fail to submit on the first, second, third, fourth, ad infinitum  
attempts until finally the proverbial waters part and we’re able to  
slip through. Out here in the west, Grants.Gov has advised us to try  
to submit after 7:00 p.m. and I suppose the west coast universities  
try after 8:00 p.m. I’ve gotten the same error messages as listed by  
other people, and found the same error messages disappear when the  
grants.gov system clears out. Last night (yippee) I submitted two  
proposals between 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. with the second one going  
through finally about two hours after the first, and the proposal  
numbering indicating that some 60 to 70 other proposals had been  
submitted in the interim. Since the proposals were due at 4:30  
Wasington time today, there was no way we would have been successful  
this morning.

Because of the capacity issues at Grants.Gov, even if we (try to)  
submit our proposal days prior to the deadline we are likely to be  
cross deadlines with some other program and be unable to submit. THIS  
IS INSANE AND WE CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS!!! The collective cost to our  
universities is horrendous both in wasted time and in time not  
available for other projects.

So, it seems to me we need to develop new rules institutionally and  
within the community:

(1)    We will try no more than X (3?) number of times to submit one  
proposal
(2)    Upon failure, if due to capacity issues at Grants.Gov, we will  
write via e-mail to the Grants.Gov help desk and the Agency program  
officer, explaining the problem and requesting an extension to submit  
the proposal.
(3)    There will be a consensus among sponsors that exceptions will  
be provided in all these cases so that our proposals may be submitted.
(4)    If granted, we will try again to submit within regular  
business hours.  If we fail, fall back to (2) above.

Comments welcomed.

Winnie

P.S., I particularly appreciate that certain message from grants.gov  
that I’ve exceeded the cap of three times that I can try to enter my  
user name and password! Oh the irony!

Wilma G. (Winnie) Ennenga
Director, Office of Grant and Contract Services
Northern Arizona University
Applied Research and Development Bldg. #56, Suite 240
1298 South Knoles Drive
Flagstaff, AZ 86011-4130

Telephone: 928/523-8319
Fax: 928/523-1075

P Please consider the environment before printing this email


From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On  
Behalf Of Lisa Williams
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 9:18 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Trouble with Grants.gov

Hi -

I was having the same problem last night between 8:30 p.m.  and 10  
p.m. Mountain - G.gov wasn't recognizing user credentials.  I reset  
passwords a couple of times, to no avail.  Finally, for no apparent  
reason, the system accepted my user credentials and allowed to me log  
in.  Submission took less than a minute, and validation came within 5  
minutes.  I did ask a colleague I called in a frustrated panic to  
breakdance to generate some good luck and I managed to log in moments  
afterward - though I'd like to believe that it was that simple to  
fix, I think there was something else going on - either some nightly  
job or update or whatever.  It would be nice to know, if that were  
the case, the schedule of such things.  You can't submit anything  
during working hours, and apparently if you hit the wrong window  
after hours you can't submit then either.

Anyone know what the G.gov maintenance schedule is?

Lisa Williams, CRA
ph 208-426-1425
cell 530-867-6727


>>> Balvinder Kumar <xxxxxx@CSUEASTBAY.EDU> 3/2/2009 9:21  
PM >>>
I’ve been trying to submit an application to the NEH since this AM  
and the latest is that grants.gov does not recognize us as a user in  
the system.  Is anyone else experiencing this?  I was able to submit  
one of our NEH applications last night.
Thanks for any help!
Balvinder Kumar
ORSP-California State University, East Bay

From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On  
Behalf Of schauerap
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 8:09 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Trouble with Grants.gov

I too am able to submit almost immediately in the mornings before  
11am and then again, from home in the evenings after 7pm...but during  
the day after 11am, nothing goes at all.  This has been the pattern  
for at least the past month.  I am in Cincinnati, OH, eastern time zone.

I have also noticed that the few PureEdge packages I have had to  
submit go through immediately, regardless of what time I submit.  It  
only seems to be the Adobe packages that will not go.


On Mar 2, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Robert R Beattie 1 wrote:

We submitted 14 applications on Monday between 7am and 11am.  Then  
nothing.
We are in the eastern time zone, far western side.   I note that  
those who
are not having success are central zone or further west.

Have people in the eastern zone been able to submit in the morning?

If so there seems to be enough capacity to deal with just a partial  
group
of submitters, but as new zones come to work, there is sluggishness.  We
are not getting those pesky false errors now.  We are just not getting
connected.  Maybe people can report their inability to connect on the
Grants.gov blog.  There needs to be a systematic accounting of the  
problem.

Regarding the JavaScript warning.  This is an Adobe generated message
telling users that they are using Javascript to make the submission.
Everyone one gets this message, it does not indicate a problem.  
Don't turn
Javascript off.

I will get to work early to get all of ours submitted early so there  
will
be some band width for our western colleagues  :)

Bob

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009 15:23:58 -0800, Deborah Hofer <xxxxxx@SOU.EDU> wrote:
Yes!! I press save and submit, enter id and p/w. The box thinks a minute
and closes.

Question, at the bottom of the box it says Warning: JavaScript  
Window. Do
you know what that means?


Deborah d'Este Hofer MM
Grants & Sponsored Programs
Institutional Review Board Administrator
Southern Oregon University
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
Ashland, OR 97520
Churchill #205
541.552.8662
xxxxxx@sou.edu


"Sandra D. Garcia" <xxxxxx@TAMUK.EDU> 3/1/2009 2:48 PM >>>
Is anyone having trouble with G.g right now we cannot get it to submit
our
proposals? And we are trying to get out three.

Thanks,
Sandra


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_____________________________________________
Anne P. Schauer, M.A., CRA
Assistant Director for Research
Miami University
Office for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship
Roudebush Hall, Room 102
Oxford, OH 45056-4125
Phone:  (513) 529-3735
FAX:  (513) 529-3762
email:  xxxxxx@muohio.edu




The mission of the Office for the Advancement of Research &  
Scholarship (OARS) is to encourage, facilitate, and support the Miami  
University community in its effort to obtain external funding for all  
forms of research, education, scholarly, creative, service, and  
outreach activities.




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nstructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including  
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subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available  
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subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
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