And I've been trying all week, with the same weird results. Yesterday
afternoon I managed to get logged in, only to be stuck in endless
processing limbo, so now I'm back to trying to log in again. It's a lot
of frustration for a small NEA application. Acknowledging the
tribulations of Grants.gov applications, NEA recommends submitting at
least ten days prior to the deadline, but evidently they didn't take
into account NIH's schedule.
Maddened but persistent,
Sally

--

Sally J. Southwick, PhD
Associate Director, Corporate and Foundation Relations
Bates College
2 Andrews Road
Lewiston, ME 04240
(207)-786-6240
Fax (207)-786-8242
xxxxxx@bates.edu

McWhorter,Sharon wrote:
>
> Kathleen:
>
> This also happened to us yesterday! Thanks for the info – guess we’ll
> try and submit again without waiting for a response to our query from
> the “help” desk!
>
> Sharon
>
> Sharon McWhorter
>
> Associate Director
>
> Research Services and Sponsored Programs
>
> The University of Akron
>
> Akron, OH 44325-2102
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Foster, Kathleen C
> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 04, 2009 10:24 AM
> *To:* xxxxxx@hrinet.org
> *Subject:* Re: [RESADM-L] Trouble with Grants.gov
>
> Winnie,
>
> I agree with your impulse to want to find a way to manage a situation
> that seems to be growing increasingly out of control with every large
> deadline we come to. We began seeing serious Grants.gov system issues
> three days before the deadline, which seems to indicate that the
> system upgrade Grants.gov implemented February 7th and 8th hasn't
> fixed the problem in any way. It seems worse than ever. I like your
> suggestions, but I'm not sure we'll be able to convince the agencies
> to see things from our point of view. NIH has been very accommodating,
> but other agencies less so.
>
> I want to relate a particularly frustrating and alarming experience I
> had with the Grants.gov help desk yesterday afternoon. We have been
> experiencing the full range of bizarre error messages and submission
> problems that everyone else has seen (just business as usual, at this
> point), but yesterday afternoon we saw a new one: failure to recognize
> the username and password of our AOR. I called Grants.gov to determine
> if this was just another symptom of system slowness or if something
> was really wrong with our AOR's credentials. The help desk
> representative ran a report and determined that the username and
> credentials were fine, and suggested that I reset the password. I did
> so, and we still received the error.
>
> I called back once more, just in hope of determining whether there was
> actually a problem with the password or not. The help desk
> representative really could't say, and advised me to ask our e-biz
> point of contact to delete our AOR's registration completely and have
> us re-register her under a new user name and password. When I pointed
> out that it seemed a bit unrealistic to take that action just two days
> before the NIH deadline, knowing it can take up to a day to process a
> registration, she indicated that it was my only option. I asked her
> once again if that was really necessary -- was there an actual problem
> that would be solved by taking this action? She would say only that
> they were recommending this action to everyone who was experiencing
> this error.
>
> I sat in my office for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the
> recommendation. We have been submitting successfully to G.g almost
> daily for two years. Since our initial registration, we've never done
> anything to change the username and password of our AOR. Was something
> really wrong with it? Could the re-registration be processed in time
> to allow us to submit the many other applications in queue by Friday?
> Would this just cause more problems that it solved? Did I really want
> to contact our E-Biz POC and ask him to drop everything and deal with
> this? While I was thinking this over, my colleague came to my office
> door and said, triumphantly, that he had just been able to submit two
> applications.
>
> So, there was absolutely _nothing_ wrong with our AOR's credentials at
> all. I was advised by Grants.gov to take a course of action that would
> have been incredibly disruptive and problematic, and might have
> jeopardized our ability to submit for the rest of the week, for
> absolutely no reason. Why would the help desk rep give me such bad
> advice? Why wasn't she able to determine that the error message was
> just a false message, and that the real problem was the same system
> overload that we've encountered at every deadline?
>
> I think what bothers me most of all is that there seems to be a
> failure to acknowledge what is now obvious to all of us: the
> Grants.gov system is not able to handle the thousands of applications
> that hit the system in advance of a major NIH deadline. The help desk
> continues to advise us to try one pointless thing after another, when
> in reality, the only actual solution is to submit at a moment when
> there isn't a bottleneck. Why not save us all the time and energy and
> figure out a way to stagger submission windows by area of the country,
> for example, so each region has a designated time to submit? I'm sure
> there are many other solutions as well, but until the problem is
> acknowledged, it can't be solved.
>
> Kathleen Foster
>
> Director, Research Systems and Funding Information
>
> Office of Sponsored Programs
>
> Boston University
>
> p: 617.353.4365
>
> f: 617.353.6660
>
>

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