"heads up" on Grants.gov activities Bob Beattie 14 Jan 2008 16:28 EST
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") ======================================================================