Responses dated September 6, 2006
- 1. Do you believe that your institution has adequately addressed
the training needs for faculty and administrators submitting
via Grants.gov?
- Yes. We submit regularly to Grants.gov. Our institution provided
full preparation services prior to Grants.gov submittals and
continues to provide this service to all faculty and administrators
wanting to submit applications that utilize the Grant.gov portal.
The definition for "full preparation services" for our purposes
is that our office completes most forms on line for the Principal
Investigators, we complete budgets, assist with formatting,
uploading and final submission; we are the review and approval
process for the Sponsored Research Office.
- 2. Do you find agency specific Grants.gov instructions consistent
and/or clear?
- No. Our understanding was that the Grants.gov portal would
eliminate the various types of forms and formats that grantee
institutions would be required to know and understand. At this
point each agency has simply incorporated their questions and
requirements into the Grants.gov portal. We are still having
to learn each separate type of submission, the requirements
of different agencies and how each agency interprets the forms
differently. Often there are 2-3 sets of instructions for a
single submission. Many times these solicitations/instructions
are contradictory or do not coincide with the information that
is being seen on the Grants.gov portal.
- 3. Do you find agency specific forms readily available on
Grants.gov?
- No. Often times we are having to look multiple times to
find when the forms are "made available" at Grants.gov. Many
times there seems to be disconnect between the agency contact
and the Grants.gov portal.
- 4. Do you find the applications easy to complete and upload?
- No. Because each agency has their own interpretation of
how the forms should be completed, we are still learning each
distinct agency format or how to complete fields when they
are interpreted differently by various agencies. In some instances,
multiple sets of instructions are available for one submission,
and it is unclear which set of instructions should be followed.
- 5. Do you find you need to consult more than one web site
for instructions to submit applications?
- Yes. Typically there are multiple sets of instructions.
NIH has their set of instructions for the SF 424 RR, NSF has
their interpretation and then NASA theirs. Even within an agency,
many times the types of proposals that can or should be submitted
via Grants.gov varies. To gain this knowledge and expertise
requires many hours of research to read and interpret the agency's
expectations.
- 6. Do you find you the number and variety of agency specific
requirements sufficiently complex to hinder your ability to
meet grant deadlines?
- Yes. We have a large staff that is solely committed to assisting
our faculty and administrators to meet these requirements.
We have come close but have not missed deadlines, but it's
just a matter of time before it happens. Also, the multiple
requirements mentioned above and just trying to find out how
each agency is requiring information is a substantial hindrance
and very time consuming. This additional time commitment has
increased our workload for these types of submissions. Most
the forms in Grants.gov need to be keyed by hand and do not
automatically populate--this is also an additional time constraint
on our staff.
- 7. Is your institution able to adequately track the proposal
as it is accepted and validated by Grants.gov and the funding
agency?
- Yes. We have had a couple instances when this was a problem
- we were sent information from Grants.gov showing that the
proposal was validated, etc. Then the agency sent an email
that indicated the proposal had been rejected but we did not
receive this email until 2am the next morning. Because it was
not clear an email would be forthcoming from the agency we
were not expecting this follow up email. With NIH it is clear
that there will be notification and 2 business days to correct
errors. Because we are waiting at our end to verify that the
proposal has been submitted and error free, it would be helpful
if it were consistent from agency to agency on the number & types
of emails that will be following the 2 Grants.gov emails.
- 8. Is the ability to view the final application package
for completeness or proper assembly positive agency-specific
attribute for Grants.gov and helpful in grants submission?
- Yes. We would like to have a function that would allow us
to view and print the application package as the agency will
view at the time of the review process. This function at the
Grants.gov level of submission would be very helpful.
- 9. Is your institution planning to use the Grants.gov PureEdge
product or implement system to system solution?
- PureEdge viewer.
- 10. When will the system to system solution be available
to your investigators?
- Not applicable. PeopleSoft Grants Module does not have system
to system capabilities at this time.
- 11. How will you handle deadlines with a significant volume
of proposals, e.g. the NIH February R01 2007, if they occur
before your S2S solution is available?
- Currently, we are working to ensure all our staff and administrators
throughout campus are adequately trained and have the appropriate
software and hardware to meet our campus needs. Along with
our central staff, we have several Centers on our campus who
work directly with the Principal Investigators to prepare the
Grants.gov submissions.
- 12. Are you experiencing problems with the development of
proposals utilizing shared access to electronic files?
- No. To date, our Proposal Services department and Centers
across campus work together in both a review capacity and full
preparation services. Typically, experienced grant specialists
are working in the Grants.gov system with the PureEdge forms
and submitting the files across campus via email or via a shared
folder system that was already in place prior to utilizing
it for this purpose.
- 13. Has your institution adequately addressed any issues
related to internal transmission due to electronic file size?
- Yes. At this time we have the shared folder system and we
have yet to have an instance where this was inadequate. However,
with increased volume we are concerned this may be an issue
in the future.
- 14. What method of transmitting PureEdge files has your
institution initiated (email or Digital drop box? FTP server?
Web upload? Other?) Please describe.
- Email and Shared Folder system as mentioned in questions
13 & 14.
- 15. Are you satisfied with agency-specific solutions to
address utilization by non-Windows operating system (e.g. Mac)
users?
- No. Most of our campus utilizes a PC based format, because
of the difficulty for Mac users. Currently, to our Mac Users,
Citrix seems cumbersome and not user friendly. We have resorted
to changing files in house and uploading & working with them
as PC files in order to submit to Grants.gov.
- 16. Has your institution developed its own capabilities
(Citrix Server) for Mac users? If so, please describe the type
of solution implemented. (Utilize the NIH CITRIX server institute
your own CITRIX server, virtual PC on the MAC, system to system
capability bypassing PureEdge.)
- No.
- 17. Is your institution's readiness for Grants.gov dependent
upon a Grants.gov Mac solution?
- No. Our Sponsored Research Office is PC Based.
- 18. What do you find to be the biggest obstacle with using
Grants.gov?
- We are still required to learn each agency's use of the
forms available. It doesn't seem to be the standardized set
of forms that was indicated when Grants.gov was first discussed.
- 19. If all agencies, including NSF and NIH required submission
through Grants.gov by January/February 2007, how ready would
your institution be to meet this requirement?
- Although it is always difficult to anticipate every electronic
and technical situation, our staff is constantly working to
try to stay updated on the latest technology. We rely heavily
on our own experienced staff, helpdesks at Grants.gov and the
grantor agencies and the manuals provided by each agency to
explain their forms. However, that is why it is so important
to full preparation service entities like ourselves that these
services from the agencies be accurate, up-to-date and contain
NON-contradictory information.
Questions? Please contact:
Suzanne Henderson
785-864-7403 | shenders@ku.edu
Senior Grant Specialist | Proposal Services
Email
page
Print
page
