Pat,

This a late reply to your message but I've experienced your problem.  It is very difficult to charge for computer use or memory.  If you charge a federal grant for one user's storage, you have to charge for everyone's storage, even educational use.  We asked the investigator to buy memory or share in the cost for new memory for the system they were using.  Even though the memory that was being purchased would not be
dedicated to the faculty member's grant, we documented it as enhancing the investigator's ability to work and that the additional memory was a direct result of demand on the system by investigators doing research.  The charges have never been questioned.

Ruth Tallman
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
Lehigh University
526 Brodhead Avenue
Bethlehem, PA  18015
Phone:   (610)758-3024
FAX:    (610)758-5994
E-mail:   xxxxxx@lehigh.edu

"Kaufman, Patrick" wrote:

> Do any of your institutions/universities charge your investigator's research budgets (either grant or institutional) with IT costs?  We are looking at ways to incent our investigators to manage their use of disk storage (hard drive) space, and are considering using a chargeback mechanism to do this (based on amount of usage).  If you do, please reply, and briefly comment on your chargeback methodology and rate structure.
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> Pat Kaufman
> Director of Accounting and Grants Admin.
> Stowers Institute for Medical Research
> Kansas City, MO
> xxxxxx@stowers-institute.org
> 816-926-4027
>
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