The FDP and NCURA are pleased to sponsor a one day Symposium on Electronic
Routing and Approval Systems (EARS) to be hosted by NSF in Arlington,
Virginia on Thursday, March 26, 1998 (the day before the FDP Steering
Committee Meeting.)

Under the auspices of the joint FDP/NCURA EARS Task Force, this Symposium
will include demonstrations of the electronic routing and approval
solutions implemented or planned by several major institutions, including
MIT, UCLA, and the University of Minnesota, and will address several major
issues associated with defining and creating electronic routing systems.
Some of the topics that will be covered include defining the parameters of
an electronic routing system, addressing potential security solutions for
data access and routing, and beginning the process of defining the points
of interface between the electronic proposal and award systems being
created by the major federal agencies and those being developed by
universities.

The Symposium has been designed to be useful for both research
administrators and their technical professionals.  Ample time for
discussion and information sharing among participants will be provided.

This Symposium is open to all members of the research community.  The cost
for the meeting is $100, and pre-registration is required.  The deadline to
sign up for the meeting is March 13, 1998.  For more details on the
meeting, including hotel accommodations and meeting registration form,
please see:

www.ncura.edu
 or
http://www.dml.georgetown.edu/fdp/

Questions should be addressed to FDP ERA Coordinator Jerry Stuck
(xxxxxx@nsf.gov), or to one of the EARS co-chairs, Nancy Wilkinson
(xxxxxx@osp.emory.edu) or Pamela Webb (xxxxxx@omni.ucsb.edu).

[Please accept our apologies if you receive this message more than once; it
is being cross-posted to several listservers.]