The Odyssey of Online Grant-Making

Grant proposal writing for the life scientist may get easier in 2002 with the filing of a uniform electronic application for noncompetitive grants, but technical and bureaucratic tie-ups delay attempts to bring science funding into the computer age. The National Science Foundation has made strides in this direction by receiving applications electronically via a system called Fastlane, but the agency prints and circulates paper rather than electronic copies once the applications arrive. At the National Institutes of Health, system-wide electronic grants administration remains a distant dream. Yet, some academic institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are at least on the way to submitting proposals online. Courtesy Pamela WebbPamela Webb Electronic NIH grant application submissions are at least another year away, says Pamela Webb, director of research and sponsored programs at the Chicago Campus of Northwestern University. Webb is one of 16 members of an NIH advisory committee that is assisting in a $33 million, one-year NIH electronic grants administration initiative. But the project is turning out to be more complex than the agency predicted. Not only does the agency have to work out a seamless electronic filing process, but it must also create online systems for the multiple reviews, awards, and reports required in grant making. "Once you start looking under the hood, it's an incredibly complex process," explains Webb. "It's much more complex than it appears to be on the surface. There are so many pieces of data in the life cycle of a process." NIH expects to bring a pilot electronic streamlined non-competing application process (ESNAP) online at the end of 2002, after a previous attempt failed to meet expectations. During a recent conference in Washington, D.C., the agency also announced its intention to bring Small Business Innovation Resource grants online. "When it comes to total electronic grants administration, we are still just getting our toes wet," Webb observes. Electronic Filing: An Early Challenge In the late 1980s, NIH and NSF took steps to automate the grant-making process. Proponents of the change asserted that online computer submission would help busy researchers, reduce paper work, and streamline the review process so that scientists could get their funding faster. But getting an agency as large and diverse as NIH to fit into a uniform system has been difficult. Initially NIH worked on a limited, diskette-based submission of proposals.1 But nothing much happened until the increasing use of computers and the popularization of the Internet led to the idea of transferring all grant application and administration online. NSF began to develop the precursor to Fastlane while NIH labored on a massive plan termed Project EGAD (Electronic Grant Application Development) that aimed ultimately to permit submission of applications and support all aspects of proposal processing by electronic means. In February 1994, NIH decided to drop Project EGAD and concentrate on development of internal standards. As NIH intensified its commitment to electronic research administration, the agency began to broaden its focus into a coordinated venture among the major government research funding agencies (NIH, NSF, and the departments of Defense and Energy) to develop an electronic data interchange standard for submission and receipt of federal grant applications. By 1996, the standard (TS 194) was supposedly ready for use, but it had many problems. In November 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act (Public Law 106-107). This act aims "to improve delivery of services to the public and the effectiveness and performance of Federal grant programs." Federal funding agencies, in conjunction with the Office of Management and Budget, are now working to develop a uniform application and reporting system, replace paper with electronic processing in administration of grant programs, and identify statutory impediments to grant program simplification. MIT is a leading player in electronic grants administration. The school has developed system software, Coeus, that allows people to prepare any proposal for any sponsor, route it internally to obtain proper approvals, and submit it to the sponsor--all in electronic form. Initial efforts have concentrated on routine NSF and NIH proposals. Julie Norris, director of the office of sponsored research at MIT, has pioneered electronic grants submission. Since October 2000, she says, all NSF proposals have had to be submitted using Fastlane. MIT is not yet submitting grants electronically to NIH because of a "glitch at the NIH end," she says. "We expect to be able to submit the complete NIH applications by early 2002." Many private funding organizations are developing their own electronic grants administration systems, but the proliferation means that university grants officers have to learn a different system for each organization. Because of the technical challenges involved, many systems do not require the institution business official to electronically review and endorse the faculty member's proposal before it is submitted. This can increase the number of errors in submitted proposals. Common Computer Access The NIH system, which is supposed to "go live" in 2002, is intended to put the entire grants administration process in a common database that will permit NIH to maintain timely, fully electronic communication with extramural grantees. Authorized persons will be able to determine the status of active and pending grants (including review dates, scores, and application critiques) electronically. The system will have state-of-the-art encryption methodology and have an information interface known as 'NIH Commons' where NIH and grantees can interact online. To maintain flexibility and accommodate a range of grantee organizations with disparate information technology infrastructures, the Commons will support computer-to-computer transmissions using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and Extended Hypertext Markup Language (XML). Standard Web browser technology (HTML files) will also be used. Webb says the NSF's successful campaign to accept all proposals electronically proves it can be done. NIH has a more difficult task, she observes, because the agency diverse and geographically spread out. Some other government agencies appear reluctant to "'play ball' until things are perfect," she says. "Meanwhile they are doing their own thing." Liane Reif-Lehrer is a freelance writer in Belmont, Mass. 1. L. Reif-Lehrer, "Technological and cultural impediments slow electronic NIH grant submission," The Scientist, 9[7]:1, April 3, 1995. Grant Writing Aids Below are a sampling of Internet sites that can help ease the grant proposal writers' cramp. InfoEd (www.infoed.org) provides a Web-based, solution for the identification and management of Sponsored Funds. With most federal forms included and updated (including NIH and NSF), a module called Proposal Development features the ability to create multi-year requested budgets, and generates sponsor and institutional checklists. The software also helps proposal writers manage the review process online, and much more. Pricing is determined per module, based on an institution's R&D expenditures. ScienceWise (http://content.sciencewise.com/pc/) hosts, among other services, a Web-based proposal management application called "Proposal Central" for nonprofit firms that enables electronic submission and review of grant proposals to foundations, private companies, government agencies, and other grant makers. To date, ScienceWise has processed over 3,500 proposals and about 6,000 peer reviews online. It also lets grant seekers search for specific announcements and forms. Grant makers, including federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations, can post forms. GrantForms, (www.grantforms.com) is a Web-based program that allows users to download software and get a demo license for 30 days with full support. GrantForms creates a database for each grant. A Macintosh version may be developed in the future, but it is not yet planned; the program costs $300. GrantSlam, (Cayuse Software), is available both on CD and as a download from www.cayuse.com. The program is also a database and comes in both Native Mac and PC versions. GrantSlam allows multiple users to share proposals across a campus network and permits departmental and central office review of proposals, even when both Mac and PC users are involved. The program costs $200-$400. The TRAM server, initially developed for Texas Research Administrators Group and housed and maintained by Rice University, provides access to a set of grant application forms from various sources and to information about funding opportunities. The current URL for TRAM, which was moved to Arizona State University East in January 1999, is: http://tram.east.asu.edu/ The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Purdue University maintain a Website (www.epa.gov/seahome/grants/src/msieopen.htm) with a tutorial for practicing, and getting pointers about proposal preparation. --Liane Reif-Lehrer

The Odyssey of Online Grant-Making

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