Bob - I think many of us have been too busy to respond but I too have experienced multiple problems with Grants.gov. Like others, our fingers are crossed in hopes that FastLane can somehow be modified to accommodate all submissions and satisfy the internal needs of our institutions. Here are just a handful of the problems that I experienced and documented during my last submission on Grants.gov 1. No way to ensure that the Office of Sponsored Programs can submit on behalf of the institution prior to the PI clicking submit - NSF has solved this problem by making certain that the institution registers itself and submits on behalf of their school 2. No clear indication in the guidelines or on Grants.gov as to where certain supplementary documentation should be loaded (I had to send 2 emails to the program officer to get this information) 3. No clear indication as to how page numbers/table of contents should recorded - again I emailed the program officer and I think we were told to leave off the page numbers 4. Our PI wrote her proposal according to the technical/cost outline stated in the guidelines but then had to rearrange all her sections in order to fit properly into Grant.gov's modules These are just a few . . . ____________________________ Annemarie Delgado, M.A. Senior Grants Administrator Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) 212 E. L. Hamm FAB Building Norfolk State University Norfolk, VA 23504 (757) 823-9053 Voice (757) 823-2823 Fax xxxxxx@nsu.edu www.nsu.edu/research_tech/spon_prog -----Original Message----- From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG] On Behalf Of Robert Beattie Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:37 AM To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Let's mobilize to fight electronic proposal submission SNAFU 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 =================================================================== ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ====================================================================== ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ====================================================================== ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ======================================================================
