As one who has yet to use g.g I have to say that the information being
shared on this list is absolutely invaluable.  Bob, perhaps it is time
for the grantee community to put together a document to supplement The
National Grants Partnership Presidential Transition Report (November
2008) http://www.thengp.org/index.html  This document addressed
grants.gov in general as well as other issues raised by the Transparency
Act, etc.

Perhaps this could be presented through organizations like SRA and
NCURA.  Maybe I am way off base here, but it seems that unless we start
making some noise (which I am sure many already have) the powers that be
will hum along thinking everything is fine and dandy.  I agree with Bob
that we need to tell them what works, what doesn't work and what we want
to have.

Counting my blessings in Florida......

Lesley S. Zajac
Director, Research Administration
Jaeb Center for Health Research
15310 Amberly Drive
Suite 350
Tampa, FL 33647
Tel: 813.975.8690
Fax: 813.975.8761
www.jaeb.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On
Behalf Of Bob Beattie
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 1:26 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Lessons Learned from Grants.gov Implementation

Glenn,
good ideas.  As I mentioned a while back, the GAO is doing a study of
Grants.gov.  It is a government study, but the Legislature studying
the Executive.  This report is due in May.  Plenty of time for us to
have input.

We need to keep in mind that Grants.gov has had a number of problems
over its tenure.  First, it was supposed to be part of a cooperative
effort between granting
agencies and grantee organization, brought together through PL106-107
to improve the grants submission process,
and to streamline and improve the process.  Some agencies abandoned
their own internal systems, such as NIH, to give full effort to
 implement Grants.gov.  Other agencies keep their own systems,
encourage use of that system and thus are not participating fully
in the effort to provide a single portal for submissions.  Grants.gov
has a half dozen overseers, including the HHS hierarchy that knows
 little about the grantee needs, the Grants Executive Board made up
of reps from each granting agency , and OMB that
gives directives, yet still exists in the world of "forms" not data
streams.

Moreover, there has been high turnover at the leadership positions in
Grants.gov.  Since Charlie Havekost was the first director, I think I
can count 6 directors.
 Only the current director Eban Trevino has thought of himself as
more than just a caretaker.  No previous director
has taken much effort to seek information from the Grantee
Community.  Indeed, others have tried to avoid such input.
Grants.gov was set up with no grantee user input until it was ready
to be released (and it was discovered that it did not work with
Macs).  No user input was
sought on whether PureEdge was actually any good for the purpose
intended.  No user input was sought as to whether problems would be
solved by
Adobe, when General Dynamics took over as the integrator.  Almost no
user suggestions were implemented, until
recently.  A clear example of Grants Colonialism -- the government
knows what's best for us in the Grantee community, and we need to
take it or else.

So the current Grants.gov leadership is stuck seeking funding by
going hat in hand to the various granting agencies (some of whom
would rather
spend the money on their own systems, instead of helping to improve
G.g).  The current leadership is
stuck with the software accepted by leadership 3 years ago, stuck
with a multi-headed management environment, stuck managing hardware
when it should be dealing with data.  The 8 or so members of the
staff have good intentions, want to help the grantee community,
but must answer to the grantor community that wants more and
different forms, more data items, and wants to pay less money.  Does
anyone
 recall any grantor agency reducing the burden on us by eliminating
forms or data requirements.  NIH has made many
improvements and reduced burdens in response to user input.  They are
the only agency I know of that has an actual users advisory group --
and listens to it.

What happened to the heady principles of 8 years ago of Grantor and
Grantee working together to make like easier for all of us, reducing
administrative burden by having fewer forms, fewer data, fewer
problems?  We are now at the end point of a struggle by Grants.gov
staff in the last year or so to correct the many problems that were
initiated when the system was set up.  I think all of us in the
grantee community want
a simple way to submit grant applications -- one form, one system,
one portal.  We want some input on how those should work.  Perhaps we
might put
energy into creating the process that we want.   We have learned may
lessons from the way Grants.gov was imposed on us; can we now use
those lessons
to propose a better system?

Bob
------------------------------

On Feb 11, 2009, at 12:39 PM, Glenn Krell wrote:

Hi Resadmr's,
Into the textbooks on Public Administration go some of the great
screw-ups
from which students try to learn: the Challenger disaster, the ValuJet
tragedy, the Centralia Mine Disaster.  Academic scholars try to describe
what went wrong, where the ball got dropped, what functionary or
government
quality control inspector did only his/her job and not a whit more.

After so many lugubrious tales of woe on the Grants.gov saga, I am
curious
as to whether any academic or layperson has put together a comprehensive
article on what went so terribly wrong despite so many good intentions,
millions of dollars, and years (decades?) of planning.  I would
imagine that
there are at least several papers and/or poster presentations on this
topic
by now.  The grants.gov saga could have numerous lessons for many
activities
and plans we launch at our home institutions. How wonderful to think
that
the research administration community, including the agency planners,
might
learn from this.

All best regards,
Glenn

=======================
Glenn Krell MPA, CRA
Director, Research Compliance
and Proposal Development
Illinois Institute of Technology
Main Building, Suite 301
3300 South Federal Street
Chicago, Illinois 60616

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