Inside eRA, July 11, 2001

New Group Advocates for the Budget Community

Earl Hodgkins and Nancy Vess, Chief and Deputy Chief of NIGMS's Financial Management Branch, have recently joined the eRA Project Management Team as Group Advocates for Budget. In this capacity, they will represent the interests of the NIH budget community as they participate in guiding and monitoring eRA project initiatives.

IMPAC II is a critical resource for NIH budget staff who are responsible for tracking current-year obligations and preparing future-year projections for submission to DHHS, OMB and Congress. Accurate forecasting requires a detailed cost analysis of extramural grant data in order to predict the impact of grant policy changes on future-year costs.

Since the budget community must also report on all extramural support dollars, it is vital that they have standard query capability for grant categories that are recurring requests. Equally important is Budget's need to perform ad hoc queries of IMPAC II data to assess the impact of proposed policy changes and to identify new areas of research for funding.

The new Budget Advocates will also facilitate coordination between eRA and the NIH Business System (NBS) project that is concurrently underway. Nancy Vess is a member of the NBS Financial Management Working Group. The goal of NBS is to integrate the core administrative functions of financial management, property, travel, service and supply fund, R&D contracts and acquisition into one enterprise system.

In their role as liaisons for both eRA and NBS, the new Advocates for Budget will support Secretary Thompson's objective of achieving an optimal level of integration and consolidation of cross-functional and administrative systems across HHS.

IMPAC II Percentiling Slated for August Deployment

Effective August 17 with the release of Peer Review Version 2.1.0.0, all scores must be entered and released in IMPAC II for percentile calculation. Legacy system scoring and percentiling functionality will be disabled at that time. SRAs and GTAs have been able to enter scores in IMPAC II since 1999.

Informal workshops to introduce SRAs and GTAs to the new IMPAC II percentiling function are planned for late July/early August. Basic Peer Review training is recommended for GTAs and SRAs who are unfamiliar with entering scores in IMPAC II. Classes are available through the Human Resource Development Division (HRDD). Procedures for entering scores are also available online in the IMPAC II Peer Review User's Guide.

Although the logic for determining percentiles will not change, several new capabilities will be introduced. Most significantly, authorized users (one percentile administrator and one alternate per IC) will be able to use REV module screens to define and refine their IC's rules for percentiling. At present, Office of Extramural Research (OER) computer specialists make program code changes to effectuate IC requests.

Most ICs have already identified one or two of their staff to assume the percentile administrator role. Half day, hands-on training classes have been scheduled on July 25 and August 14 for these designated individuals. OER will cover the tuition for two administrators from each IC. Contact the Help Desk for more information.

Detailed Release Notes for Peer Review 2.1.0.0 will be available on the IMPAC II web site. The following draft screen shots provide a preview of the new percentiling definition capabilities (NIH Access Only). 

• From the Define SRG tab of the Base Administration screen, the designated IC administrator will be able to establish percentiling base parameters for new and existing chartered Scientific Review Groups (SRGs).   
• To establish the rules for and to create a base lookup table for percentiling a Special Emphasis Panel (SEP), the IC administrator will use the Create IC Base tab.   
• The Percentile Application Administration screen is used to define percentile assignment rules, i.e., which applications are to be percentiled, which percentiles are to be suppressed, and which meetings will use which base.   
• Navigation has been added to facilitate the generation of Percentile Base reports. These reports will also be available to chartered study sections for use in orienting reviewers of a member conflict SEP, for example.   
• SRAs and GTAs will have access to the administration screens in "view only" mode. Percentiling for chartered study sections will be automatic with score release in IMPAC II and requires no user intervention. With the release of scores from a SEP, however, an Enter SRG Percentile Base window will appear to allow user entry of the appropriate base.

Please refer any questions to the IMPAC II Helpdesk at helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

QVR -- New Query and Reporting Tool for IMPAC II

All IMPAC II users will soon have access to QVR, a web-based extension system to "Query, View and Report" on extramural grant information in the IMPAC II database. With deployment planned later this month, QVR represents a collaborative endeavor of the ECB-QVR Steering Committee, the Center for Information Technology (CIT) and the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER). Improved query and reporting rank at the top of eRA's list of priorities for this fiscal year.

Originally conceived as a reporting tool for the Electronic Council Book (ECB), QVR was quickly recognized to have great potential for the entire community. Planning and development have been spearheaded by the ECB-QVR Steering Committee, led by Dr. Thorsten Fjellstedt and composed of representatives of most ICs. Questions and comments about this initial release should be directed to Dr. Fjellstedt.

Screen shot links restricted to NIH access only.

QVR Search Capability

The QVR Search screens present clear and easy-to-use interfaces for establishing selection criteria. Features include: 

• Direct navigation to each section of the search form   
• Drop-down lists (e.g., for fiscal years) to facilitate specification(s)   
• Partial specification of text (e.g., "Principal Investigator Starts With") and wild cards permitted   
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT) supported   
• Save query functionality to repeat search.

Output Specification and Manipulation of Search Results

Once search criteria have been established, the user can navigate to the Sort section to order the resulting "hit" list. Multiple levels of sorting are possible. From the Output option section, users can choose from among several types of lists, or they can opt for a standard or customized report. For each hit, the basic list provides links to a QVR snapshot, the summary statement and the abstract. The ability to "tag" and "untag" items on the hit list allows users to further tailor the list for download or printing. QVR's custom download feature provides for the selection of IMPAC II data items from a "pick list". The resulting data elements are then displayed in tabular form in HTML or, alternatively in a format easily imported into Excel. The print facility supports four different means of retrieving one or more summary statements: 

• a single PDF file for download   
• a zip file for download   
• central printing at CIT   
• view in a web browser.

NIMH Grant Closeout System (GCS) under Consideration for eRA

A Grants Management (GM) Working Group led by Mike Loewe (NIAMS) is currently studying the feasibility of incorporating the NIMH Grant Close-Out System (GCS) into the enterprise IMPAC II system. According to Marcia Hahn, GM Advocate, automating the close-out process is a top priority of the IMPAC II GM Lead Users Group.

The NIMH extension system presentation (MS PowerPoint 2000 format, 2 megabytes) was very favorably received at the recent NIH Enterprise and Extension Systems Workshop on May 10. Unlike GM and other IMPAC II modules, GCS was developed in Cold Fusion. The Working Group will consider this technical issue among several criteria in their evaluation of GCS and other IC-developed close-out extension systems as they begin the requirements analysis phase of the project.

As a first step toward achieving a solution, several members of the Working Group met with Carol Tippery, Acting Director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, to discuss policy issues relating to mandatory use, integration with the Commons and minimal data requirements. Implementing a grants close-out system ranks twelfth on the overall list of this year's eRA priorities. Unused FY 2001 dollars will be available to continue this effort in FY 2002.

For additional information, please contact Marcia Hahn or Mike Loewe at loewem@mail.nih.gov.

New Common Subproject Module for ICO

Effective May 18 with the deployment of ICO Version 2.7.4.0, ICs are able to enter, validate and approve subproject information in IMPAC II. A common Subproject module now available to ICO, Peer Review and CRISP Plus accommodates the new NIH policy regarding subproject maintenance. This policy implements the recommendations of EPMC and states that ICs (and not CRISP staff) will be responsible for maintaining subproject data in the enterprise system.

The transfer of subproject responsibility to the ICs will result in an improvement in the quality of principal investigator (PI), financial and human subjects data. Prior to the new policy, subproject records were often entered in Peer Review without verifying the "permanent person" status of the PI (i.e., the existence of a professional profile in the IMPAC II database). Under new business rules, before a subproject can be marked "awarded", the PI must be selected using a Person search. Direct costs for all project years must also be entered. In addition, the new Human Subjects status box will enable the planned Population Tracking module to collect data at the subproject level.

Once the new policy is fully implemented in FY2002, OER's Division of Research Documentation will only index subprojects with IC-Approved status. Therefore, until approved, subproject information will not be publicly available in CRISP.

For more information, please see the ICO Subprojects User Guide for Version 2.7.4.0. Refer questions to the Help Desk.

Single Point of Data Ownership Endorsed by Commons Working Group

At its May 16th meeting, the Commons Working Group joined the eRA Project Team in endorsing the concept of Single Point of Ownership for the Professional Profile. This profile, composed of vital identifier information for key personnel associated with each grant, includes name, address, expertise, employment record, education, publications and funding record.

Single Point of Ownership dictates that only the individual whose personal information is contained in the specific profile has the ability to change that profile. This concept as it relates to NIH grants administration was first introduced in 1996, but has never been adopted. Heretofore, NIH staff members have been able to modify and change the profiles of grantees. With this new concept established, only the grantee will be able to determine how they wish to be identified and what information is in their profile.

There are several benefits in implementing a single point of ownership. Better data accuracy is achieved since the owner of the profile is the primary source of the information. Timeliness of data is also improved; the owner will always be the first to know of changes. In addition, single point of ownership will resolve the dilemma of multiple profile records for the same individual in the IMPAC II database. Once the Commons user creates the most current and accurate profile, it will enable the deletion of all duplicates generated over time by NIH staff. (See June 7 article on Data Improvement Quality Contract and the April 4 article on Professional Profile Data.) Finally, exchange of profile-related information between the NIH Commons and the Federal Commons will be more reliable with uniform, singly-owned profiles.

Considering that IMPAC II and the Commons will soon be fully integrated, the Commons Working Group proposed that the Single Point of Ownership concept be incorporated into the design of NIH Commons Version 2.0. Although the official professional profile will be created and maintained by the owner, associated role records will continue to be generated by NIH. For historical purposes, these records capture identifier information at a given point in time.

For further information on the concept of Single Point of Ownership, please contact Dr. George Stone.

IMPAC II Software Release Schedule as of July 11, 2001

In response to user requests for advance notification, the IMPAC II Software Release Schedule (NIH Access Only) for the next six months is now available on the IMPAC web site. This schedule will be updated every month to show planned maintenance and enhancements to each business module. Please email questions about the schedule to the IMPAC II Helpdesk at helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

IMPAC II Training Opportunities

The Human Resource Development Division (HRDD) will offer a class in Quick View for the first time on July 25. Available to all IMPAC II users, Quick View provides basic query and selection features to retrieve comprehensive data associated with individual grants. See below for a complete list of IMPAC II courses scheduled for the 4th quarter of FY 2001.

For more information, visit the HRDD website at http://learningsource.od.nih.gov/ or contact Mr. Ajoy Gadhok at gadhoka@od.nih.gov or 301-402-3384.