Bob Beattie:

Thank you, finally someone with a wider vision and lots of common sense
who is articulate too!

Paula Cull
Grants & Sponsored Programs
Montana State University-Billings

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On
Behalf Of Robert Beattie
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 2:21 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] another article in the Chronicle on grants.gov

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

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 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
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