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

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