FDP/CWG Update

Part II: System-to-System (S2S)

My last post was about the status of the program to convert the PureEdge forms over to Adobe and I wrapped up by saying the NIH people made it clear that no one should plan on using the Adobe-based forms until at least June or July. You can imagine how thrilled people were to hear that. 

Those who have a S2S solution in place are largely insulated from these changes but everyone else will be using PureEdge for at least the next four big NIH deadlines (Oct, Nov, Feb and Mar), not to mention all their smaller deadlines and those at the rest of the agencies. That being true, here are some of the words and numbers people used when talking about S2S.

Between 10/01/06 – 09/02/07, Grants.gov processed around 180,000 submissions. NIH is the biggest customer with Defense being a distant second at ~9,000 submissions. Note that the number of proposals submitted is significantly lower than this because most of them have to be submitted more than once due to errors not caught by the software being used to submit them. I heard once again that people using PureEdge are needing to submit each proposal far more times than those using an S2S approach. 

This fits perfectly with what we’ve heard from a number of institutions. While they can get the job done with PureEdge, it just takes so much time. Some pre-award people said the time their staff spend reviewing, submitting, and re-submitting with PureEdge is averaging two hours per proposal at their institutions. This is one the biggest hidden costs of the clunky free-ware and it is causing major heartburn and straining budgets around the country. Two words I heard several times in this context were “unfunded mandate”.

The multiple submissions with PureEdge cause problems for Grants.gov as well as for the applicants and there are only five Grants.gov employees! All of which is just part of why Grants.gov would be very happy if everyone were to start using an S2S solution. S2S proposals are approved more quickly and have far fewer support calls. Hearing that reminded me of what I’d heard at these meetings before: the free solutions were not designed for research institutions. The investment in a S2S solution can bring big savings, “especially for those submitting applications regularly to Grants.gov”, to quote Jen Flach.