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Re: Lessons Learned from Grants.gov Implementation Glenn Krell 13 Feb 2009 16:56 EST

Thanks Bob and all others who responded with so many thoughful ideas!

A related issue in the news is a plan to spend something like $19
billion--$2 billion in grants to create a national system of computerized
health records, and $17 billion in higher Medicare and Medicaid
reimbursements for doctors and hospitals to adopt the new technology.

Perhaps the Government Accounting Office's report on what went wrong with
grants.gov will be completed in time, so that some of the grants.gov lessons
will benefit this new federal, nationwide technology project...?

Just sign me,
Addicted to Hope

=======================
Glenn Krell MPA, CRA
Director, Research Compliance
and Proposal Development
Illinois Institute of Technology
http://www.iit.edu/research/services/orcpd/
3300 South Federal Street
Main Building, Suite 301
Chicago, Illinois 60616
312-567-7141 (telephone)
312-567-7517 (fax)
IIT Research: Transforming Lives, Inventing the Future
http://gradweb.iit.edu/gradresearch/searchengine.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On Behalf Of
Bob Beattie
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 12:26 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

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