As Charlie Graham will attest, electronic proposal submission has been a
"pet project" of mine for several years.  Living and working in Alaska
makes proposal development and processing a real challenge - e.g.,
Kodiak Island, where we have our Technology Center, is approximately
600 miles from the School here in Fairbanks and it is not unusual for them
to be completely cut off physically from us.  When  fog rolls in, the ships
don't sail and the planes don't fly.  Satellites are the only reliable means of
communication during periods of bad weather, i.e., September through
March.  For the past couple of years, I have been using ftp to pass
documents between my office and the PI's in our outlying areas (a circle
about 700 miles in radius, with several points on the circle).  These
documents include the proposal text and agency forms (traditional PC and
MAC applications  - Word, WordPerfect, QuattroPro, Excel) which we
created and maintain here at the School.

Recently, UA adopted, statewide, a new financial accounting system.
Our new software has a fairly comprehensive preaward package that is
integral to the accounting system.  It also has a number of features which
facilitate electronic approval of proposals.  We are presently in the process
of configuring and implementing an electronic proposal approval system
so that all institutional approvals can be electronically handled - IRB's,
institutional rep, waivers, matching funds, etc. The system allows us to
identify special requirements on the proposal record and to send a request
to the correct person(s) for approval for each of those requirements.  Our
plans are to send a single hard copy of the entire proposal to our proposal
processing office and, simultaneously, place an electronic copy of the text
in a single directory at a dedicated ftp site on the UA backbone.  The unit
person, responsible for data entry and proposal processing, will receive a
system message when the proposal has been fully approved and can be
sent to the agency.  (Signature authority has been delegated to the
Dean/Director on the basis of complete electronic approval.  We have
already tried this and the agencies involved didn't question the authority.)

Our software is based on a very powerful, flexible database.   We have
SQL's to bring in previous data so that historical information won't be lost
in the change over and the units can, if they prefer, to continue to use their
own software, e.g., Paradox, Ingres, Excel, etc.  Also, because of the
flexiblity of the database, each unit can add "unsupported"fields to
facilitate preaward functions - reports, data analysis, etc.  We can
also query data and compose and print reports at the unit level quickly and
easily.  Because the accounting system is a decentralized, statewide effort,
all units already have the appropriate hardware to utilize the electronic
preaward components.  Last, but not least, manual account set-ups, which
required the redundant entering of data from preaward, will be a thing of
the past since the proposal screens import directly into the account screens
- minor "tweaking" for end dates, etc. should be all that is required.

This is, of course, a very simplified description of the actual system. I
will be happy to discuss it more fully with anyone who is interested.
Preliminary testing looks very good.  We hope to "go live" with internal
electronic preaward on July 1.  Electronic submission to the agencies is
planned as a future endeavor but we want to get our internal system
working and well tested before we attempt that.  More later if anyone is
interested in our "real life" experiences with the live system.

__________________________________________________________________________
Rosemary Ruff
Proposal Officer
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK  99775-7220
VOICE:  (907)474-6735
FAX:    (907)474-7204