Franci Farnsworth askes a very important question about the extent to
which campuses have developed means for electronic routing and signatures.
I assume she was referring primarily to pre-award approvals.

Since we should all be thinking about the prospect of electronic grant
submission and how to implement it, it makes sense to incorporate planning
for on-campus electronic grant handling at the same time.

A number of problems have held us at LSU back from attempting electronic
routing for preaward forms.

1. Highly variable degrees of connectivity and familiarity with on-line
operations among faculty and at the administrative level.

2. The grant application usually has to be routed along with the form, so
that sign-offs can be based on an informed knowledge of the proposal. It is
much more difficult to organize electronic routing of whole proposals, than
just a form. In addition, it is difficult to review a complex
document like an application in its electronic format, or print it out at
each stop.

3. Special software is needed to manage FORM objects and add electronic
signatures on-line. Does the readership think that a form handled as an e-
mail message FORWARDED to each of the authorizing offices and thence to the
final campus destination (Sponsored Programs office) acquires sufficient
documentation along the way in its header to validate the authenticity of
the approvals (since it is not usually possible with e-mail to incorporate
electronic signatures)?

I hope we will have some on-line discussion on this topic, and I look
forward to seeing Franci's summary.

Charlie.
.
 *********************************************************************
 Charles E. Graham, PhD.,                     xxxxxx@UNIX1.SNCC.LSU.EDU
 Director, Office of Sponsored Research                   504-388-8692
 117D David Boyd Hall, Louisiana State University         FAX 388-6792
 Baton Rouge, LA 70810
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