eRA Steering Committee Minutes
April 19, 2001

Attendees:
Marvin Cassman, Ph.D., NIGMS, Chair
Wendy Baldwin, Ph.D., OER
Gahan Breithaupt, NINDS
Ed Donohue, NHLBI
Ellie Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., CSR
Alan Graeff, CIT
Marvin Kalt, Ph.D., NCI
John McGowan, Ph.D., NIAID/OER
Martha Pine, NIGMS, Executive Secretary

Member absent: Yvonne duBuy, NIDCR

Dr. Cassman immediately turned the meeting over to Dr. McGowan, acknowledging that the agenda had been essentially shaped by Dr. McGowan's suggestions.

Dr. McGowan prefaced his informational items by reminding the Committee that the current fiscal year is one to ramp up, with next fiscal year being an opportunity to begin to see some activities paying off and rolling out into production. His informational announcements included:

Dr. Baldwin, after discussions with Dr. McGowan, has formed a Policy Group, led by Carol Tippery of OER, who will serve in an advisory role to the Project.

Dr. McGowan explained that this group will serve as a sounding board and
brainstorming venue when options need to be considered that might have
consequences for grant business rules and processes. Among other things, this group will advise the Project Team about the appropriate NIH forums in which further advice about project directions should be sought before decisions are made.

Dr. McGowan has arranged for a "snapshot" evaluation of the eRA project that will be conducted by Denali Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in planning, performance management, information technology, and organizational development. This evaluation will examine the challenges and risks presently facing this project effort, the key decisions that face the project as the eRA Commons is built while IMPAC II is enhanced, the project management implications of these, the development and operational factors that should be examined, the strategies to be considered for enhancing and maintaining the eRA infrastructure, and dimensions of project oversight. Denali Associates characterizes the product of this effort as an assessment of the "overall project health." Dr. McGowan explained that he thought this evaluation would be invaluable, both to the eRA Independent Validation and Verification (I V and V) effort that will be procured under contract later this summer and to the Project Management team itself. He applied part of the funds set aside for the I V and V activity to fund this contract.

The National Science Foundation will host a workshop on the future of electronic grants business. (The preliminary issue paper that will shape the agenda of that meeting had been shared with the Steering Committee prior to the meeting.) NIH will be participating in the meeting due to its common interest in the topic. No date has been set yet for the workshop.

A website, "Inside eRA for Partners," has been developed in order to offer current information on the project of interest to the grantee and broader community. The feedback the site has received to date has been very positive.

The early reaction to the NIH announcement of plans to move to a new architecture for the Commons has also been positive.

On May 10, an all day "Enterprise eRA Workshop" will be held in the Natcher Conference Center. The workshop is intended to highlight many enhanced features of IMPAC II, including the new Electronic Council Book Query and Reporting tool, as well as some of the IC extension systems that may be of broad interest.

The Commons Advisory Working Group will meet next on May 16. The morning session will be devoted to a discussion of the NIH Commons interface specifications, an update on J2EE architecture for the next version of the Commons, and a review of timelines for development and deployment. The group will provide feedback on current Commons screens (registration, administration and status) and suggest enhancements for future versions. Using the DUNS number as an identifier for institutions will be revisited. The afternoon session will be devoted to an analysis of the Type 5 noncompeting policy and process. The group will discuss ways to further streamline the process in order to reduce the burden for both the extramural community and the NIH. A certification program for grantee institutions will be considered.

The eRA Website will be enhanced over the course of the next few months to provide much more information about the status of each major project effort. Dr. McGowan showed some mock-ups of the envisioned expanded content of the website. (Slides 5-12) These will include subpages for each functional area on which reports for what is happening, key changes to expect and when, etc. will be posted. The functional groups' subpage content will be prepared and maintained by each group, assisted by project "staff." This will ensure some consistency in format, content, richness of detail, and the like. Megan Columbus, the chief of the eRA Office of Planning, Analysis, and Evaluation will direct the staff in this effort. They will take notes at functional group meetings, capture other relevant information between meetings, and prepare material for posting on the website. The NIH community will be able to learn about the eRA project effort in much greater detail once these subpages are added to the http://era.nih.govwebsite. The goal is to have this enriched website up in September 2001.

Slide 13 shows that recruitment onto the project is proceeding ahead of schedule.

The project is employing a greater number of contractors this year. These are listed on Slide 14.

Slides 15 and 16 capture the priorities established for key aspects of the eRA/IMPAC II project. Dr. McGowan pointed out that the slides show that some new efforts will be undertaken, while reengineering of and improvements to modules developed in the past will also need to occur. He also reminded the group that funding for a priority activity in a given fiscal year will not match the roll-out date of that particular effort. Slide 16 illustrates this point.

Dr. McGowan then explained the Project Team's proposal for how to approach designing the eRA Commons and IMPAC II. The proposal is aimed at building in flexibility for NIH institutes and centers and our partner institutions so that they can adapt the system to their own internal business practices and rules. He feels that ensuring this flexibility will minimize resistance to embracing the IMPAC II and eRA tools and may also minimize the need for institutions to build their own "extension" systems. The illustrative example (in Slides 18-27) of an NIH Request to Transfer a Grant shows that an institute/center would be allowed to specify who can perform the needed roles, as long as the NIH business rules of separating the initiator and the official vested with approval authority are honored. In each case, the module would be programmed around the central NIH business rules, and then the ICs and universities would have the flexibility to specify how those rules will be applied in the IC/university. The sample also includes an important feature of room for comments. The comments would become a part of the grant file and its history.

Dr. McGowan then proceeded to highlight on Slide 28 some other planned benefits of the new architecture. These include:

• one log in that both provides access to all modules and defines which "permissions" have been granted to the particular user; and
• building both reports and other interactions on the transaction database. NIH employees will be able to see what tasks they need to tend to and will be able to engage in the necessary transactions to do those tasks. They will then also be able to generate reports reflecting their work. Slides 29-33 illustrate how this might work.

Dr. McGowan is hoping to generate discussion of this plan for the eRA/IMPAC II architecture in the NIH community and has begun sharing it in various forums.

Dr. McGowan then turned the Committee's attention to near term plans. Starting next month, the Peer Review module will include a new feature that will allow the user easily to pull up information related to particular grants/applications, including the summary statement, the history of the principal investigator, the grant history, etc. This same feature will also be programmed in the future into other IMPAC II modules. (Slides 35-43) Some of this same information will be available to principal investigators, who will be able to see their summary statement, Notice of Grant award, and their own and their grant's history. The timeline for doing this in the commons will be late 2002 or early 2003.

With regard to the scanning efforts that are a pilot for electronic grants administration, the project team is presently working with BECON applications and AIDS grants, in the hope of having grant images generally available in 15 months. (Slides 44-46) There are some challenges remaining before this can become a reality. One of them is that bandwidth needs to be upgraded. Another is figuring out how to roll this out into production so that people will accept the electronic images as the "way to do work." The Committee indicated that training is an issue and asked how the project team proposes to train staff on these new functionalities so that they will be routinely used. Some members of the Steering Committee expressed the view that strong IC leadership will be needed. Each IC Director and others in positions of influence will need to emphasize that the IC expects staff to learn to use the IMPAC II tools and that the IC will use them as part of their standard business practice.

These announcements about future IMPAC II capability generated discussion about the potential for "mischief" of granting broad access to a wealth of grant-related information to many people. Much of the information is sensitive and/or privileged in nature. While acknowledging this, the Committee generally agreed that the benefits of having the wealth of information at the desktop are significant. Real thought about the implications of having the information available to so many people should be done up front and ICs must come to grips with the management challenges that they may confront.

Another IMPAC II feature in its early stage of development is a "grant folder." This is the feature that will allow staff to access summary statements, grant history, Notice of Grant Award, the grant abstract, and eventually other information as well. (Slide 47) As noted earlier, the principal investigator will also be able to access much of this information.

On slides 51-56, Dr. McGowan displayed the projected timelines for the priority project areas that have been incorporated into the eRA plans and budget. Because time did not permit a careful examination of these Gant charts, the members agreed to look at them carefully prior to the next meeting. At that time, further discussion of these charts and the Project Management Matrices (attached here) will occur. The Committee agreed that the NIH community will be eager to know if these priority areas are on track and within budget. Dr. McGowan reminded the group that the parameters on Slide 51 will alert the Project Team, the Steering Committee and the NIH community to any efforts that are not on track. A variance of 5% from the budget or 10% from the schedule will raise a caution flag, while a variance of 10% from budget or 20% from schedule will require additional oversight and review.

The Steering Committee then turned its attention to a proposal to add a new capability to IMPAC II, namely a Population Tracking module. This module would replace a deficient COBOL-based program that has been used to fill a Congressional mandate that NIH collect data on the inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research. The Office of Research on Women's Health has funded a Critical Design Review of such a module. This defines most of the specifications for the module. The Deputy Director of NIH has agreed to find the funds to support the development of this module if the Steering Committee agrees with this approach. Members of the Steering Committee asked Dr. McGowan if there would be signficant project trade-offs if this module were indeed undertaken. Dr. McGowan was confident that this effort, which would involve 2-3 programmers and would cost about $250,000, could readily be undertaken without jeopardizing other priority efforts. He thought that one benefit of tackling this module is that it will be a precursor of a capability that will need to exist in the eRA Commons. Other committee members asked about the potential impact of this module on the ICs, including the intramural program. Dr. McGowan explained that a group with broad IC representation had recently worked on the Critical Design Review. He hoped that their input as well as their communication back to their own ICs would have clarified the potential impact of the module on the ICs' staff. (Note: The Critical Design Review document addresses how intramural staff could enter data into the database.) Al Graeff explained that, as of now, there is no CIO contingency fund with which to support requirements such as this that arise outside of the regular planning process. He said that he hoped to present a proposal for such a fund to the IT Board of Governors at its next meeting. He said that the size of the request for this fund was still being refined. He reminded the Committee that the NBS project had built such a contingency fund into its budget, but that other projects had not. Given the assurances received from Dr. McGowan, the Committee agreed that the effort could proceed if funded by the OD, NIH. (Note: This is the first bulleted option under "Options at this point" on Slide 59.)

With regard to the idea that other enterprise IT managers be invited to eRA Steering Committee meetings, Dr. Cassman said that he would ask them should particular matters that might concern them be on the agenda. The Committee agreed with this approach.

Dr. McGowan then reminded the Committee that at the May meeting he would like to have a discussion about the Project's plans to move toward sunsetting uploading of summary statements into IMPAC I to move to exclusively upload into IMPAC II. At the May meeting, a more detailed plan for this and draft guidance to the ICs will be shared. Dr. McGowan and Dr. Baldwin suggested that a note to IC Directors in support of this plan may be required in order to marshall sufficient leadership energy to make this happen.

Dr. Cassman requested that Committee members send him suggested agenda topics for the next meeting. He then asked the Committee if it wished to continue receiving the Project Team materials that Dr. McGowan has begun to regularly share with the members. They agreed that they would prefer to get them and may elect to read some but not all of the materials, as their interest and time permit.