I'm not sure if this can be helpful to you, but one way we address
some of the issues you note, is through a series of automatic electronic
e-mail notifications that go out from our electronic proposal
development and approval system (developed in house) to targeted
individuals at each step of the proposal development process (i.e., at
Early Notification Form submission, submission for budget review, and
submission of the Internal Routing/Approval Form).

So, for example, when the PI completes and submits the Early
Notification Form, an auto e-mail goes out to appropriate, targeted
chairs, deans, IT, Facilities, and Grant personnel so that they know
early on: (1) that a PI intends to submit a proposal; (2) to what
program and agency (url to application guidelines site included), (3)
expected internal and external collaborations, (4) expected cost share,
it, facilities needs, etc. Our purpose is to encourage early discussion
between PIs, chairs, deans, etc, as needed, in the proposal development
process. It also allows access to the developing budget and later
narrative working drafts to these people if they are interested. They
know when it is their time to approve the proposal when they receive the
specific auto e-mail directing them to do so.

Final approval of the proposal is done in our office. As Charlie noted,
we have defined the specific responsibilities and authorities of each
level of approval.

Angela

On 8/25/2010 3:44 PM, Charlie Hathaway wrote:
> LOTS of questions/issues here.
>
> I suggest that you decide exactly what each step (i.e. office) in an
> approval chain needs to do for their approval and what they will
> actually review. Then limit the required documentation to the minimum.
> For instance, if someone wants to see a full final draft proposal, you
> should ask why. Is it necessary for the institution or simply of
> interest to that individual? Obviously, letting PIs fine tune
> narratives until the last minute may mean better proposals. If your
> institution can really invest the resources for doing pre-submission
> reviews of the substantive parts of applications by qualified
> colleagues, go for it! But who can do that?
>
> On the order of approvals, again, dissect the process and create an
> order that makes sense. I think that Deans and Presidents are still
> often at the end of routing chains because in the past they had to
> physically sign a face page. If that is not the case for the majority
> of your grants, why not figure WHY and (god forbid!) IF they need to
> be involved. For instance, if the role of the Dean is to approve the
> programmatic and personnel issues related to a grant submission, why
> not have that potential veto power EARLY in the process so that the
> few proposals whose submission will not be allowed for special reasons
> can be thrown out early and not waste the time of people doing
> financial and compliance reviews?
>
> On collaborations...questions of participation should be handled by
> the PI outside the institutional review. I may be naive but if people
> need to see final drafts before even agreeing to be on a proposal
> there may be a bit less trust than one would assume is inherent to a
> good collaboration. And if there is such minimal cooperation, wouldn't
> reviewers sense the lack of potential for good partnership?
>
> Charlie
>
>
> At 02:39 PM 8/25/2010, you wrote:
>> Hi,
>> We’re having vigorous discussion among higher level approvers about
>> what constitutes an “approvable” proposal for internal electronic
>> routing, particularly when there are collaborations between multiple
>> departments and there’s a long approval chain.
>>
>> We’ve only required that folks attached the guidelines, reps & certs,
>> internal budgets w/justification, subcontracting documentation and a
>> proposal narrative draft. Some approvers feel that routing shouldn’t
>> occur without a completed application kit (SF424 or other) and a
>> penultimate draft of the narrative. For others, routing may not be as
>> speedy so they want to get started with just the basic requirements
>> including the “draft narrative in progress”.
>>
>> With electronic routings that occur largely in a linear fashion
>> typically, the collaborative units are listed among the first
>> approvers and the PIs Dean is last. The issue for the collaborative
>> proposals is that once those units approve, changes can be made in
>> the interim that they wouldn’t be aware of up to and including the
>> final copy of the narrative. There is also concern about approving a
>> proposal with the rough draft that may never get any better, thus
>> bringing a “quality” of the proposal into question. They want the
>> option to not be included in a proposal if they don’t feel the
>> quality is there, but if they’re only seeing an early draft, they’re
>> opportunity to reject when the final is complete is lost.
>>
>> Have any of you run into this and if so, how are you folks managing
>> such issues?
>> Thanks for the feedback,
>> Maryellen
>>
>>
>> []
>>
>>
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