Grantopedia

Moving toward a National Web-based Grants System

In late March, NIH issued a Sources Sought Notice (SSN) looking for info on a Web-based solution capable of handling electronic submission proposals for the complex mechanisms.  These are funding mechanisms such as Program Projects which have not been converted to PureEdge or Adobe and are still submitted on paper using the PHS398 forms.

Cayuse responded enthusiastically to the SSN this week because it is aligned perfectly with what we do: eliminate paper and downloadable forms from the grants process. 

My humble personal opinion is that the PDF-based approach is an interim solution.  People collaborate and do business on the Web, and the Web is the way Grants.gov has to go. It's also how Cayuse424 works today, by the way. I'm happy to see NIH taking a serious look at leveraging this technology more fully.

Forms? How about a Web app?

We did a little survey of participants in the RESADM-L listserv, an email discussion list that serves the community of research administrators (RAs) at universities and colleges in the US. (The listserv archives are here.)

Grants.gov will soon be releasing a new set of downloadable forms based on Adobe technology. We wanted to gauge the impact on the RAs who are responsible for preparing and submitting proposals. This is a non-scientific survey, but it supports what we hear anecdotally all the time: that downloadable forms are inherently difficult to work with. The results of the survey are available here in PDF format.

As I've said before, Cayuse customers don't have to worry about downloadable forms nearly as much as institutions that insist on using them exclusively. There is definitely a better way.

PureEdge NOT required

The Dept. of Energy is one of many agencies that offer funding opportunities that can be completed and submitted with Cayuse424. Some of their opportunities are listed on this page along with some not quite entirely accurate information.

In fact:
- Though Grants.gov "utilizes PureEdge software", it also accepts proposals from other tools.
- Grants.gov does NOT require you to download the PureEdge Viewer to submit grant proposals.

You can use, for example, a 100% Web-based, hosted proposal development platform.

We make this point repeatedly with the agencies and prospective customers.

PureEdge to Adobe conversion: Update from Grants.gov

If you thought you were going to get some relief when the Adobe forms come out later this year, the latest news isn't too encouraging. Based on the latest briefing at the FDP meetings, it looks like the Adobe forms will be a lot like the PureEdge forms, but with a new set of problems.

A few serious issues remain on the table. Here are a few of the more painful ones:

• Using the forms will require strict adherence to version 8.1.1 of the Reader. Open a form in Acrobat Pro or a different version of Reader, and the submission is likely to fail. Enforcing absolute uniformity across the institution seems daunting so this issue may be a big one.
• A number of clunky UI conventions exist, due in part to the attempt to make the PDF forms mimic the older PureEdge version. Part of the news here is that they're different from the conventions your audience is already familiar with so a lot of people will have to start thinking about training.
• Attachments are going to be a big challenge. You can make attachments by using Acrobat Pro and other apps. But be careful! Don't use Pro for the form itself, or it won't submit properly.
• They are, of course, still just a set of downloadable forms, lacking the many features available via a Web-based solution.

Hopefully these and other issues will be worked out before the PureEdge license expires in June but right now things look a bit nasty. All in all, if you were waiting for the Adobe forms to improve workflow or smooth communication with Grants.gov, plan on more waiting. And while you wait, gear up for what looks like a fairly cantankerous transition.

83% of federal grant opportunities covered

Last month, we did a survey of all the federal grant opportunities posted on Grants.gov. At that time, Cayuse424 supported 83% of the unexpired opportunities. Of the 10,964 form instances posted along with those opportunities, Cayuse424 covered 96% of them.

The mix of opportunities and forms posted on Grants.gov changes from day to day. But it's clear that we have support for a solid majority of them. In future releases, this will only improve.   

Cayuse customers don't have to worry about this

With the NIH tightening the "oops" window from 5 days to 2 days, Cayuse customers can rest easy. Since Cayuse424 validates and error-checks proposals before submission, researchers can know that their proposals are clean and accurate before sending. Just one more way Cayuse stays out in front of the curve for our customers.

This is also interesting:

Over 93% of applicants submitting to the November 5, 2007 R01 receipt date successfully completed the process within two submission attempts.

Over 99% of proposals submitted with Cayuse424 are successful on the first attempt. Cayuse customers don't have to submit multiple times.

A Tale of Two Servers

Winning research funding is hard work. Sometimes, there are additional hurdles, beyond the complexities of the science, that make the process even harder. The Cayuse mission is to eliminate those hurdles, where we can.

A case in point is this "little" notice that ends up having large impact on an increasingly large audience of researchers and research administrators in the US research community. It's technical and you probably don't need to know the details. In short, the Adobe forms conversion is likely to cause some real headaches in the printing process. (You need an NIH Listserv account to view this link.)

..the image generated for those applications will look different than any that come in S2S from the 2007 system - even for the same Funding Opportunity Announcement...

Cayuse engineers went to work on this, because we knew it would cause problems. The end result is that we are going to make an adjustment in Cayuse424 that will insulate our customers from this. I point this out in part to thank the Cayuse technical and support staff for knowing how to solve this before it's a problem for our customers. I also want to illustrate a small example of what customers have come to expect from us.

Why it's important to get everything right in proposal development

Competition is up for federal research grant funding, as everyone in the research field will tell you.  The authors of a report entitled Why Funding Cuts At The NIH Are So Painful have assembled important information on research funding from the NIH and its impact on the US research community.

In 2003, NIH spent $2.4 billion on competing R01 grants, its principal mechanism for supporting the investigator-initiated research projects that have been the primary source of progress in the biomedical sciences. By 2006, after three years of steady declines, NIH spent $2.1 billion on competing grants, a loss of 11.1 percent before factoring in the effects of inflation. With the increased cost of research grants, this funding shortfall translates into a sizeable decline in the number of awards for new or renewed grants (figures included in source).

Against this backdrop,

Medical schools, universities, teaching hospitals and other research organizations have embarked upon major, long-term programs of expansion of biomedical research, building new laboratories and renovating existing facilities.

Science research is intrinsically important to the US in many dimensions. That's why it's important to use every advantage you have to succeed in proposal development and submission.

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.

Update from the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) and Commons Working Group (CWG) meetings.

Part I: Adobe update

Last week I spent three days at the FDP and CWG meetings in Washington. These sessions are almost always interesting and this latest round continued that record. 

Not surprisingly, one of the most anticipated topics was news on the Adobe Acrobat-based version of the SF424 forms. What we heard was that most of the 424R&R family of forms are “finished” and ready to be used. However, six of the forms in this family are either not yet built or have not yet passed through the G.g testing regimen and that seriously limits the utility of those that are “finished”. G.g did promise that all of these forms would be ready for use by the end of this month.

Before getting too excited about this, we’d be wise to consider the comments of some of the agency people. Their feedback was basically along the lines of “yes, we’ve been hearing this for a while.”  I was also told that once the forms are approved and released by G.g they still need to go into testing and review by NIH. 

All of which led the NIH people at the CWG meeting to say it was almost certain that the Adobe forms would not be used for the February and March ’08 submission dates. It sounds very likely that many people will be forced to continue working with the PureEdge system until (at least) June of 2008, S2Sers excluded.

For those who want to see more of what went on at the meeting, all or most of the slide presentations may (or will) be found here.