Hi All,
I am just back from the Federal Demonstration Partnership meeting,
and also a session with NIH ERA Commons Working Group. I thought I
would pass on a couple of items that might be of interest.
The Adobe Forms transition is coming sooner than some of us thought.
I was predicting October, but it looks like it will be June. On Jan
16 there will be a Grants.gov Stakeholder Webcast
http://www.grants.gov/resources/stakeholder_communications.jsp
The details of the time line for Grants.gov will be there, plus other
useful info, just about the same program as they showed at the FDP.
NIH leadership will be announcing some Adobe Forms applications
between now and the June deadline. They expect to use Adobe for the
R01 deadline then, assuming all works out. At the suggestion of one
of our other listserv members who attended, Tom Drinane, Dartmouth,
they said they would give us an up dated time line with both the
Adobe transition and the new programs going electronic.
So you might consider beginning your campus wide info blast on what
is coming. Especially the need for using Adobe Reader 8.1.1 for
filling out the forms. Get your browsers ready to open files with
Reader, not Professional or Acrobat. You still need programs to
create .pdf attachment files so it is important to get all the Adobe
programs in sync. If a PI uses something other than the correct
version of Reader to fill out the form, you cannot tell this when you
try to submit, until you get an error message from G.g.
Also there will be the problem of old PureEdge files that might still
be around, downloaded prior to their being replaced with the new
Adobe version. There is no way to convert PureEdge to Adobe, nor can
you convert a wrong Adobe file to the correct one. Grants office
staff will need to keep up to date on what is acceptable. You need to
make this problem part of your info campaign.
Time too, to start Adobe training. If people know PureEdge already,
then you might well get by with a 90 minute session. I had two hours
scheduled and it took less time. The original test group was small,
so maybe with more people, there will be more questions. In any
event I think 2 hours should work.
Good news, Grants.gov developers say they will re-format the 4
messages to begin the subject line with the tracking number to make
it possible to sort on that number to see if all 4 are in hand. They
also heard from the group that we want all AOR's in the office to be
able to view all submissions from the office, under control of eBiz POC.
The FDP is now hosting a Wiki about Grants.gov, where you can see
problems and also send those you find. Especially they want to know
agency specific problems. There is the start of a Matrix of Agency
by Problem. Also nice info on System to System problems.
http://wiki.research.colostate.edu/index.php?title=Main_Page
---------
Lastly, on another topic. Have you all gone to the new FFATA
reporting site to see what your institution is reported to have
received.
http://fedspending.gov/
I have not checked our total yet because there are 6 different
University of Michigans, and sub units listed. Well, at least
someone can tell how much money went to the state as a whole.
---------
Watch the webcast Grants.gov webcast tomorrow, and post questions you
have to our group so we can get collective help.
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/
======================================================================
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")
======================================================================
