While the article is not as positive as it should be, given the actual whelming (not over and not over) success of the program, it is not all that bad. There are problems in it. For one thing the whole "Find" component of Grants.gov is not mentioned. Something with capability to find and then download any Federal grant application with a fairly standard form seems like a pretty good system. I also dislike words such as "maze," "anxiety," "dole out grants," "stymied," "cumbersome." Nothing was more cumbersome than typing up an application, checking by eyeball, making 20 copies (are all the pages done right), boxing it up, carrying it to the FedEx pick up, filling out the labels (and hoping the truck was not in an accident). I find that most of our UM user community, typically admin staff, and not PIs (who should be doing science, not data entry) like the system. Our grants office staff are happy with it too. Especially so, now that we have the new IBM viewer for our Macs to do submissions. The Mac viewer is terrific, well only in so far as it does what the original Pure Edge program did. And we all know there are some problems there :) Counting pages is a poor metric for measuring success. The NIH guide need not be printed in all 202 pages but is best kept as an online Word file for each searching. Likewise the other Guides. Recall there was once an NIH 398 Guide and application kit that arrive in our office, at least, by the carton load. The real paper waster, is of course, printing an application. An equal number of wasted pages for each good 424 page. This is on our list of things to be fixed (and the problems with multi-year budgets) But then do we need to print applications? Not mentioned in the article is the fact that months will be cut from the review process by NIH. Getting results a grant cycle earlier seems well worth the effort to learn the system. Also, a positive aspect is that we no longer, or at least should no longer, have to deal with 26 different agency formats and procedures. Yes there are those that want extra paper, and extra processing, or do not want to give up all their applications to the new system, but can this just be attributed to those agencies only maturing slowly, or not appreciating how their users suffer at their whims. We certainly do not want 26 different systems, even if they are as good, but in their own way, as FastLane. One form, one system, one portal is a motto I like. We will still have to deal with 26 different post-submission systems. Grants.gov is 3 years old but people have only been paying attention for about a year -- When NIH Talks Universities Listen. So much progress in that one year. NIH has made many concession in how they are using the system. Note the deadline change time, the removal of the PI/SO verification, the stretching out of the deadline in a month, removing many things that caused errors. This whole electronic submission process cannot be done without a little compromise by both agencies and users. Someone said it was like beta testing, well who better to be testing this but all of us. If Grants.gov and the agencies will listen to our suggestions, we should soon be able to expect system which, if not perfect, should be at least excellent. Bob xxxxxx@umich.edu On Jan 31, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Molly Daniel wrote: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i22/22a02501.htm The link above is to an article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education about the underwhelming success of Grants.gov. The article cites a claim by NIH that the electronic submission process will save an estimated "200 million sheets of paper." We haven't really saved a forest yet, though, because those 200 million pages are likely offset by the 500 million printed in a several hundred offices of applicant organizations around the country who are trying to figure out how to use the system. Grants.gov Applicant User Guide - 90 pages NIH eRA Commonts System Users Guide - 104 pages Grants.gov Application Guide for the SF424 (R&R) (version 2) - 202 pages NIH ERA Exchange Services Notes, Tips and Validations for Grants.gov components - 74 pages This of course does not include the RFA/RFP, the sample completed SF424 R&R application or the many drafts of the "completed" form pages we spit out as we develop the drafts. Sure, we always have printed those documents, but now it seems as though the parts are broken up into to even more separate sheets of paper. ---------------------------------------------------- Molly Daniel Grants Specialist Planning Department Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center 1000 Health Center Drive Mattoon, IL 61938 tel. 217.258.2195 fax 217.258.4135 email: xxxxxx@sblhs.org http://www.sarahbush.org ====================================================================== I nstructions 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") ======================================================================
