Inside eRA, October 13, 2000

Why Inside eRA?

NIH used hundreds of millions of pieces of paper to deal with some 60,000 competing and non-competing grant applications in FY 2000. Additional funding for extramural research means that these figures will inevitably mount.

According to the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, the inefficiency and cost of handling this paper workload have become unacceptable. NIH is mandated to shift by 2003 to an electronic system that can ensure speedy, high-quality processing and storage of information.

Since 1996 the IMPAC II and NIH Commons database systems have been built to the point that now they handle some 576,000,000 transactions annually. The eRA (electronic Research Administration) Project is combining these systems with the goal of developing an end-to-end electronic information environment for NIH extramural activities.

Processing e-grants will significantly change the way NIH staff and the extramural community work. eRA offers an opportunity to revise business principles and practices. It can lighten workloads, reduce waste, boost quality, and open up fresh opportunities.

That's why we are starting Inside eRA. It will be a way of entering into a dialogue with you about current issues, informing you about deployment plans, providing new sources of information, and soliciting your input. We plan, for instance, to put up tipsheets on the eRA Websites that will provide quick reference for key functions of the various modules and query tools. We would like to include a Module Report with each issue of Inside eRA to keep you up-to-date on what is going on with the modules and query tools you use.

Inside eRA is in experimental mode. Please, let us know what you would like to see in it. What have you always wanted to know about the planning and priority process of NIH e-business? What approaches do you think readers would appreciate? Do you prefer news or tips, or a bit of both? Are you interested in our plans for the future, including technological innovations? Are developments outside of the module(s) you usually work with of interest to you? How can we make format and distribution more helpful to you?

This is a chance for you to contribute to shaping your work environment and to participate in the development of a cutting-edge U.S. Government information system.

eRA Management Structure Open to Maximum User Input

Successful information systems are defined by users and built to suit their needs. That's why we put together an eRA Project Management Team that is structured to enable users at all levels to give input and be heard.

The foundation of the Project Management Team are the advocates. Group advocates are IC staff members who have volunteered to consolidate and prioritize wish lists for module requirements proposed by IMPAC II and Commons groups and functional committees, develop business plans, and represent their groups. The advocates, who are engaged in a consultative process with their constituencies, come together in biweekly Project Management Team meetings to develop a consolidated view of current requirements and future visions and directions. The eRA Steering Committee, comprised of upper level NIH managers, reviews the activities of the Project Team, deals with broader issues, and provides general guidance, while the IT Board of Governors (the "BOG") makes recommendations to the CIO and NIH.

You are strongly encouraged to provide input through your user group to the group advocate or to any Project Team member directly, if you have suggestions or concerns that are not addressed in the current plans for development. The more clearly the Project Team understands your needs, the more quickly and cost effectively improvements can be made.

Federal Demonstration Project Reacts to eRA Priorities

At the September 18 and 19 national meeting of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), a collaboration between 11 federal agencies and 65 universities and research centers, institutional officials voiced concerns over the perceived lack of NIH movement toward further development of eRA. FDP members have expressed increasing frustration with the inability to submit and process grant applications electronically. The April decision to stop work on the NIH Commons as well as the lack of financial support for it in FY 2000 have heightened their concerns.

The eRA update met with a cool reception from the audience of federal agencies, grantee organizational officials, and principal investigators. The presentation made clear that if funding does not increase there can be no new development of eRA systems.

The FDP concerns are multifold. Just a year ago NIH was viewed by federal agencies and the extramural community as one of the lead agencies in electronic research administration. On the current trajectory, there are serious doubts that NIH will be able to meet the Public Law 106-107 and Government Paperwork Elimination Act requirements that federal agencies provide electronic options for application submission by 2003. Concerns were expressed that the Federal Commons effort may also stall without continued NIH leadership.

The situation poses problems for NIH's academic partners. Some institutions which have been holding back on development of their own systems to assure compatibility with NIH are reluctant to continue to wait. As expressed by one FDP participant, the greatest concern is that, although the grantee institutions and their faculty and staff represent by far the largest number of eRA users, since they have no physical presence on the NIH campus their issues are clearly not being heard. FDP leadership will take formal steps to register their support of eRA as well as to their constituency understand the need to support eRA.

The eRA presentation explained that well-documented priorities and business plans are now being submitted to the NIH IT Board of Governors in keeping with the NIH effort to plan enterprise-wide systems such as eRA in an integrated fashion so that they may be fully and regularly funded.