Who's Who and Can Do What is a crucial question people using
Grants.gov need to consider.

SO = signing official, a NIH Commons term for the person who signs
the PHS 398 in the lower right side and who, in the Commons, has
highest authority and can do anything except see PI reviews.

AOR = authorized organizational representative, a Grants.gov term for
a person authorized by the EbizPOC to submit proposals.

One person can have both roles and the roles can have the same or
different people.  That is to say, an institution can assign both
jobs to a person and to many people.  University business rules
should dictate who can do the tasks allotted to each role.  For
example a person can be given SO rights for the Commons but not be
authorized by the university to approve proposals.  So the person can
work on Commons projects as an SO but not do approvals because that
is not the person's job at the institution.

Likewise,  you can consider actually pushing the button to "submit"
an application via Grants.gov to be akin to putting it in the FedEx
box if the application has been APPROVED by an institutionally
authorized person.  Thus a person who does not have the institutional
right to approve a proposal can still "submit" it, once it is
approved.  I have spoken to folks at some universities who seem to
think that the government agencies understand the roles and rights of
people in universities and have assigned system roles and rights
based on this knowledge.  Thus, a Vice Provost for Research who is
authorized by the Governing Board to approve proposals seems to be
the only one who  can "submit" them through a system.  Consider
differentiating between University business rules and submission
system business rules.

Grants.gov recognizes as the submitter, the person whose sign-on and
password is used to make the submission.  There is an email address
for this person in the system and that person gets the 4 Grants.gov
messages.

NIH says it sends messages to the "Person to be contacted" (section
6) and to the SO,  the  person listed in section 19.  If this person
is not an SO then I do not know, because our "official" AOR is also
an SO.  Sending to both people may explain why some people got two
messages, as both the contact person and the SO/AOR.  The contact
person for us is the person who would have been in the lower left
section of of the PHS 398 and she did not get NIH messages.

So Grants.gov notifies the submitter only.  We have a group email
address for this "person" and so all people who have AOR status get
the message.  NIH notifies the person in section 19 and maybe the
person in section 6.  In any event, any one with the SO rights in the
Commons can verify, whether that person "submitted" the application
or not.  It would really be nice if NIH sent their messages to all
SO's.  In so far as the PI is concerned, folks might consider using a
group email if the PI is difficult to contact.  All people in the
research team, or the department management staff could be in this
group.

Charlie, am I getting to an answer to your question?

Bob Beattie
UM Grants.gov Liaison
xxxxxx@umich.edu   936-1283
Learn more about Grants.gov @ UMICH
http://www.research.umich.edu/era/grants_gov/

On Feb 28, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Charlie Hathaway wrote:

Just when I think I am understanding Grants.gov/NIH eRA, my brain
stumbles.

Question:  What is the relationship between a Grants.gov "AOR" and an
NIH "SO"?

My assumption was that AORs submit to Gg and deal with Gg issues,
that SOs deal with NIH Commons issues, and that an AOR may or may not
be an SO.

Now I come across Gg tutorials mentioning SOs and some NIH tutorials
talking about AORs.

And if you have multiple SOs and AORs, who gets notified about errors
and who needs to do the verification?

Help?  Thanks.

Charlie

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