Post-Award Accounting Operations Questions Eric D. Carter 20 Jul 1994 13:12 EST

I am gathering information to help my analysis of staffing,
work allocation, quality assurance, and improvement of post-award
accounting at the University of Maryland, College Park.

I'm looking for feedback from post-award offices which may be similar to mine
in some ways.  I realize that our external environments (State regulations
for public institutions, for example) may be quite different, but still
your feedback would be interesting and very helpful.  If anyone is interested,
I'll share whatever feedback I receive from members of this discussion
group or other contributors.

UMCP has approximately $120M in sponsored projects (there is no medical
school).  Our largest sponsors are NASA and NSF.  Since we're located
"inside the beltway," we have many other federal sponsors.  In addition,
we have significant award volume with the state of Maryland and many
private corporations, institutions, foundations and others.

I am primarily interested in hearing from institutions with the following
attributes:

1. Awards outstanding >$75M  (FTE student body size-not important)
2. No medical school on campus
3. Multiple sponsor sources, both Federal and Non-federal
4. Public institutions (or private, if the characteristics are similar to
UMCP).

Would you provide information regarding resources and characteristics
listed below:

1. Staffing--#'s of accountants, clerks, other specialists. General duties,
 work allocation per staff member, etc.
2. Post award management systems--manual, automated, combination of both.
3. Ongoing "TQM" or other improvement initiatives.

If there is any particular post-award management system, or method of
operations that you found to be very successful, I would be interested
in your comments.

Thank you all very much.

Eric Carter, Manager                   Internet: xxxxxx@umdacc.umd.edu
Contract & Grant Accounting, UMCP      Mail:  UMCP Contract and Grant Acctg.
Tel. 1-301-405-2614                           Room 1410B, Service Building
Fax  1-301-314-9889                           College Park, MD  20742-6015