The list below will grow as we continue to push on the system.

1. Decreased the time from peer review to proposal status notification.
2. Increased the number of four year grant programs
3. Adopted new policy to invite limited number of researchers who have recently received their Ph.D's and established researchers without prior panel experience to observe at panel reviews to gain experience
4. Adopted new policy to send regular email updates regarding program status
5. Streamlining constraints which inhibited financial processes (ongoing)
6. Reduced unnecessary internal NASA reporting requirements
7. Improved NSSC requests for annual progress reports
8. Removed the bottleneck in No-Cost Extensions
9. Broadened Jupiter Data Analysis Program

Accomplishment Details

1. Selection notification: All Divisions have agreed to notify proposers within 8 weeks of peer review that they are either "selected," "not selected" or "selectable." The last category is for proposals awaiting budget decisions. This has been very effective. See the bar graph of time elapsed between proposal submission and award announcement, which demonstrates that on average we are making decisions at least a month faster than we were before.
   
   
2. Four year grants: Longer award periods can provide greater stability and therefore maximize the science return on investment. There are several programs where it will no longer be considered an oddity to request four year grants. Many program elements in ROSES 08 now permit proposers to request longer awards. See the write-ups of the individual program elements to find out if you can ask for a longer award.
   
   
3. Proposal Review Panel: Putting together review panels takes a lot of time for the program officers and thus makes the whole proposal evaluation process longer. Please add your name to a possible pool of reviewers here. This is good for the community and also for those who are new to the field; there is no better way to improve one's writing skills than to serve on a proposal review panel. In an effort to better prepare our postdoctoral fellows to excel in the peer review process, we would like to incorporate them into the competitive system as soon as possible. Please send an E-mail to sara@nasa.gov with a short description of your area(s) of expertise (and or the names of panels on which you might like to serve) and attach a curriculum vitae and or publication list. You wont regret it.
   
   
4. Program officer updates: SARA has made contacting your Program Officer easier. Please visit the program officer list to find names, email addresses and phone numbers for your program officers. Go ahead, don't be afraid.
   
   
5. Financial flow: It is important to decrease the time it takes to get money to the investigator, and currently there are many cumbersome steps. A recent example of an improvement: Before April 23rd it took nearly 70 days for the NASA shared services center NSSC to process 90% of our grants. Since then its dropped to 46 days. This improvement can be directly attributed to changes made by the folks at NSSC as a result of feed back from HQ and the community on how they handled grants. The major source of delay was caused by them devoting an inordinate amount of time and scrutiny to travel budgets in grants that had already been reviewed by panels and approved by the program officer. Now they only follow up on travel if the amount requested is above a reasonable threshold (the amount it costs to travel to the furthest point in the US).
   
   
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6. Reporting requirements: NF 1676 requirements for reporting sensitive material have been modified to accommodate the fundamental research covered under most ROSES elements for civil servant scientists (and a similar modification has been established for researchers at JPL). View Block 5 - Blanket Availability Authorization - of the NF-1676 for more information.
   
   
7. Improved NSSC requests for annual progress reports: PI complaints regarding the requests from the NSSC for annual progress reports motivated discussion and the adoption of a new letter the PI will get 10 days before their progress report is due.
   
   Improvements include: friendlier tone, electronic progress report rather than hard copy, Grant/Cooperative Agreement Handbook link with progress report details, and a clear listing of the grant anniversary date, NASA technical officer, NSSC grant officer, grant and grant number.
   
   To learn more about the form of your progress report, visit the How To Guide.
   
   
8. Removed the bottleneck in No-Cost Extensions: The GSFC Procurement Office now has someone devoted to the No-Cost Extension problem and the backlog of several hundred has been eliminated! The person in charge of these is Ellen Harden (301) 286-2749.
   
   
9. Broadened Jupiter Data Analysis Program
   
   At the recent DPS meeting it was announced that the New Horizons Jupiter Data Analysis Program (NHJDAP) would be broadened to include the analysis of older data in the Jupiter system, not just from the New Horizons mission. This is appropriate in that the Galileo mission data returned after calendar year 2000 was never open to a Data Analysis Program. Furthermore the planetary community has been greatly stimulated by the new Flagship studies in the Jupiter system and this provides a perfect opportunity to support further mission studies in this area.
   
   In order to have the Planetary Data System nodes prepare for analysis of the older data and complete the ingesting of all the recent New Horizons Jupiter system encounter data our plan is to release both the Cassini DAP and the revised JDAP calls in ROSES 2008 as early in the year as possible (February 2008). The due dates will be separated by 2-4 weeks to facilitate PIs proposing to both. The due dates will be in the May timeframe with a review panel meeting in the summer. Please carefully check the upcoming NSPIRES announcements and program calls for additional details or contact James Green (james.greenATnasa.gov) or Denis Bogan (dboganATnasa.gov).
   
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