On-Line Grant Information: Different Approaches

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies are opening their computer lines to provide scientists with easier and quicker access to information about grants. But even though the Bush administration generally wants its research agencies to coordinate their efforts, each agency has taken a different approach. The result is a smorgasbord of services. At least three agencies - the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Energy - are setting up grants-by-electronic-mail systems. This month NSF began offering program notices by modem. FEDIX, an on-line service for DOE, is about to add programs from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And NIH is getting ready to evaluate a year-old test of an e-mail version of its Guide For Grants and Contracts with the hope that investigators will also soon be able to access guidelines directly. University officials praise these electronic systems for their time-saving features. But they wonder when and if there will be any effort to standardize them. "We don't want to have to know a dozen computer systems," says Tricia Cole, a grants coordinator at the University of Georgia in Athens. "It makes it more complicated." But the systems will not become simpler any time soon. There are even multiple on-line services evolving independently within each agency, as well as among different agencies. NIH's Guide For Grants and Contracts has been sent electronically to volunteers since last spring. That effort is in addition to its Grants Inquiries Online, which provides updated guidelines to about 600 e-mail addresses and handles some 10 requests per week for information. About 140 institutions are getting the Guide, with few glitches, according to Janet Newburgh, who coordinates the NIH program. She is seeking more volunteers to use and comment on this system, and plans a meeting later this year to discuss the effort. To keep networks from getting clogged, NIH limits electronic mail recipients to one per institution. That single recipient must make the guide available to colleagues throughout the institution. That's the challenge facing universities. "We're capturing it fine," says Celia Walker in the Office of Research Initiation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Walker enjoys getting the Guide one week ahead of the cover date. But she's not sure how adept Colorado's scientists are at accessing the Guide over the computer network. They are much more accustomed to leafing through the printed version. NSF plans to put its Bulletin on-line, as well as abstracts, program guides, and its phone directory. Although a year behind NIH, its Science and Technology Information System (STIS) will be more comprehensive, according to Ruta Godwin, project leader in information systems at NSF. Last month, 100 volunteer institutions finally got instructions about how to sign onto the system, which uses a Sun386(i) that will eventually accommodate 20 callers at once and will work at a rate up to 9600 baud. This computer can be accessed through a networking system known as INTERNET, or by phoning into the NSF computer directly. NSF could also tie into BITNET, but prefers INTERNET. "It's a lot friendlier," says Godwin. Also, this interactive system does not require that people register to use it. That gives the public free access - just as it has to printed publications. The only cost might be the long-distance call. In addition to program announcements, press releases, the Bulletin, and reports on congressional activities on-line, NSF plans to make available reports from its International Office of Science and Technology. Walker says that she's looking forward to "being able to get the most current, most detailed information." Neither Godwin nor Newburgh has worked very closely with other federal on-line programs. But that could be changing. "We are interested in learning from each other," says Godwin. At the same time, she adds, devising compatible systems doesn't come cheaply. At first, NSF did consider linking up with FEDIX, one of the agency's older electronic sources of grant information. In the early 1980s, DOE created an on-line database of surplus equipment that it wanted to donate to universities. Since 1988, that monthly catalog has been expanded into a guide to funding of about 90 programs. Last year, NASA and the Office of Naval Research decided to join in. "The schools like the idea of having a central point and being able to cross-search," says Mike Mon-gan, who runs Federal Information Exchange Inc., the Germantown, Md., company contracted to set up and run FEDIX through 1995 for $500,000 a year. FEDIX is quite popular. About 800 regular users at 450 universities can reach the service - a group of linked microcomputers, which Mon- gan says is a less expensive approach than using bigger computers - through four telephone lines. Once connected to the service, the scientists follow instructions on their screens to access different files that can then be downloaded. The average call is less than eight minutes. But FEDIX also has drawbacks. Investigators need these sources to be complete and up to date. Even though pertinent announcements from the Federal Register and from Commerce Business Daily are added daily to FEDIX, "there's no predefined method for us to get the information [from the programs]," says Mongan. "We must work with the program managers to gather the information in whatever way we can." Inevitably, some announcements become outdated while others never make it into the system. The electronic systems also reflect the different goals, priorities, and logistical preferences of each agency. "It's important that each agency maintain its own level of information," says Bruce Furino, grants development manager at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He says, eventually "there's going to be such a massive amount of information that to try to put it in one location would be an absolute nightmare." For example, Walker notes that FEDIX is set up for use by calls from personal computers, and its files are not easily transferred onto the larger mainframes that most universities use. FEDIX reviews and indexes its material, something that NSF did not want to have to take the time to do with its system. With STIS, says Godwin, "we just load the full text." Each caller must select a keyword or indexing system. NSF provides users with a so-called smart retrieval program called Topic. "The person doesn't have to remember individual thesauruses or know a classification scheme," says Godwin. At the University of Central Florida, Furino has developed his own retrieval system, so he just downloads everything being offered. Furino is very excited about e-mail and about NSF's STIS in particular. In the past, his office would call and request particular announcements. These would arrive three to 10 days later, depending on the mail, and were then copied and distributed on campus. "Each step on the way is eating into the amount of time a faculty member gets to work on a proposal," he says.

On-Line Grant Information: Different Approaches

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