Some of the points below are well taken and should be rectified, especially regarding HRSA. They need to be reported to OMB and others for their terrible service. I do, however, suggest that some of the comments about the NIH procedures are not correct. 1. The eRA Commons existed many years prior to Grants.gov and is the repository of all NIH applications. The Commons allows PI's and research administrators to manage applications and awards in quite a simple manner. Progress reports, Just-in-Time actions, No Cost Time Extensions, Internet Assisted Reviews, soon Xtrain, and other procedures are all done through eCommons. This system is well worth learning. 2. The eCommons has to be connected to Grants.gov because applications to NIH must go somewhere. The applications go into the eCommons for management by both the NIH staff and University staff. 3. A person does not need to log into the eCommons to find if there are warnings or errors. The PI (and others if a group email is used) and the SO get a message from NIH stating that there are warnings or errors. Then these people can go into eCommons to read the warnings and errors. Perhaps in the future, these messages could contain the text of the warnings and errors. In the meantime, it takes but a few minutes to look them up. 4. Yes people must learn two systems. Indeed, they must learn many systems in order to use electronic submission -- a word processing program, a .pdf creation program, a web browser, an email system, a computer. Research enterprise personnel need to know the eRA Commons for many other functions than just looking at the status of submitted applications. Is the letter below a call for a return to the paper submission world -- xeroxing multiple copies, sending and tracking by FedEx, getting letters with questions, waiting months for receipts, missing deadlines due to mistakes in applications that are discovered too late to fix. If you send by FedEx you would also get a tracking number and also a number from NIH. The Grants.gov tracking number is nothing to keep after the application arrives. 5. We have submitted some 300 NIH applications and only once did we get a second error message about a problem that did not show among the first errors. We have needed to submit 2-3 applications because the PI did not actually fix the original error. It was still an error even with a second try. 6. I would argue that NIH (NOT HRSA) is the one agency that is indeed following the Grants.gov principles. One Form, One System, One Portal for submission. Once a grant is submitted then you need to turn to another system. NIH has promised that all applications will come through Grants.gov soon. Other agencies are not following the basic Grants.gov principle and are allowing paper and other system submissions. These are the agencies that need to be taken to task. Do not allow NRSA in the barrel to spoil NIH. Chastise NRSA to COGR, to OBM, to Secretary of HHS. But praise NIH for what it is doing. I have been working on electronic proposal management and submission systems since 1985. Now we are making progress, some agencies are at last meeting the needs of research administrators. Some are not. Grants.gov staff are working hard to meet the needs of its stakeholders who are not just grant submitters, but are both the individual submitters, the S2S submitters, the agency folks who make the applications and the agency people who then receive the applications. If this whole effort is to succeed we must target very specifically those problems that need to be fixed and not criticize with a "broad brush." Bob ------------------------------ Robert Beattie UMich Grants.gov Liaison Managing Senior Project Representative for Electronic Research Administration Division of Research Development and Administration University of Michigan xxxxxx@umich.edu (734) 936-1283 Learn more about Grants.gov @ UMICH http://www.research.umich.edu/era/grants_gov/ On Feb 23, 2007, at 9:59 AM, Peterson, Nancy K wrote: Winona State University is not a member of COGR. I represent a small, one-and-a-half person mid-sized teaching-focused institution. Still I’m dealing with the same problems that major research universities are experiencing. If anyone could forward this message on to Council on Government Relations (COGR) – or to any other individual or organization you can think of that might be of help - feel free to do so. ----------------------------------------- The Department of Health and Human Services is violating the basic principle behind creating grants.gov. First, NIH came up with their ERA Commons System. You must be registered in the ERA system to apply. To apply, you submit an application through grants.gov, then you have to login to the ERA Commons to verify you have no warnings or errors that must be corrected. If you do, you have to re-apply through grants.gov, then go to ERA to check for warnings and errors (which may not be the ones you were informed about previously), then you have to re-apply through grants.gov, and so on and so on. Applying to NIH means research administrators, authorizing officials and principal investigators all have to learn two systems. (Oh, you also end up with a grants.gov tracking number and a different ERA number.) Now HRSA is requiring electronic submission and has an Electronic Handbook (EHB) system. A recent deadline was an absolute nightmare. Again, the authorizing official and principal investigator must be registered with EHB. (Oh, by the way, anybody can register and designate themselves to be an authorizing official.) Again, to apply, you submit an application through grants.gov, then you have to login to EHB to complete your application. I have a PI with multiple registrations because he received poor instructions from the help desk (on hold wait time for every call was 20-25 minutes) and there does not appear to be any way to delete the extra ones. And of course, your application has one tracking number for grants.gov and another one for HRSA. Using grants.gov was supposed to simplify things, because applicants would use one application system and not have to learn separate ones. With HHS, we're using grants.gov and needing to register and learn different electronic systems for each funding source within the department...systems that are incredibly un-user-friendly and have woefully inadequate support services. As I said, HHS is violating the basic principle behind having grants.gov in the first place. All they are doing is adding on a grants.gov requirement in addition to each funding source’s own application system. It seems the result of the paperwork reduction act is an electric work explosion. Any assistance you could provide to initiate changes in this multiple application systems practice would be greatly appreciated. ------------------------------------------------------- Nancy Kay Peterson, Director Grants & Sponsored Projects (G&SP) Winona State University Somsen Hall 212 Winona, MN 55987 Phone: 507.457.5519 Fax: 507.457.5586 http://www.winona.edu/grants ====================================================================== 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") ======================================================================
