Inside eRA for Partners, November 22, 2002 (Volume 2, Issue 5)

Update on NIH eRA Commons 2.0 and New Web-Based Applications

As announced in the October 24 issue, eRA has adopted a phased approach to NIH eRA Commons 2.0 registration. Thus far, 42 NIH eRA Commons 1.0 grantee institutions and 362 active users have re-registered for the new version. Enrollment next will be extended to members of the Federal Demonstration Partnership, and finally to all institutions. Open enrollment, likely to begin in January 2003, represents a major milestone in achieving eRA’s mission of paperless grant administration. Release notes for NIH eRA Commons 2.0 are posted at http://era.nih.gov/docs/Release2Notes.doc.

• eSNAP is a Web interface for the submission of electronic Simplified Non-competing Application Process Type-5 progress reports. Two CWG pilot users already have successfully transmitted progress reports, an achievement that marks eRA’s first fully electronic end-to-end integration of a business process. The pilot soon will be extended to additional users; the target for full deployment is March 2003.    
• FSR enables the electronic submission of Financial Status Reports. The new Web-based FSR system replaces the IMPAC I dial-up/terminal-based program, which is slated to be turned off on December 31, 2002. Due to technical difficulties, the limited pilot will be extended. When functionality has been verified, eRA will open the system to all registered NIH eRA Commons 2.0 users.    
• Status allows Principal Investigators (PIs) to review the current status of all their grant applications, including summary statements, scores, Notices of Grant Award (NGAs) and NIH contact information. Institution Officials (i.e., Signing Officials (SOs) or Administrative Officials (AOs)) are able to access a summary of grant applications, Notices of Grant Award, and pre-populated progress report face pages.

For the latest news on the pilots, visit the NIH eRA Commons support page. For more information about NIH eRA Commons 2.0, contact the NIH eRA Commons Helpdesk at commons@od.nih.gov or 866-504-9552.

Internet Assisted Review (IAR) Pilot Planned for December

Development of an eRA Internet Assisted Review (IAR) system is near completion, with a pilot slated for December 2002. IAR will be used by both NIH internal staff (Scientific Review Administrators and Grants Technical Assistants) as well as by peer reviewers, who will access IAR through the NIH eRA Commons. To access IAR, reviewers must have registered and created an NIH eRA Commons account. This will enable reviewers to maintain their own professional profile information.

IAR will benefit the NIH and its grantees by expediting the scientific review of grant applications and by standardizing the process for the electronic submission of critiques and initial priority scores. More effective review meetings will result when reviewers are able to examine each other’s critiques online prior to meetings and to modify their own critiques after meetings. IAR also will accelerate the grants approval and funding process through more efficient administration of reviews. Critiques will be available immediately after review meetings, allowing automated construction of summary statements.

The December pilot release will be limited to selected members of the Review Users Group (RUG) and their reviewers. Initial functionality will include:

• Control Center for SRAs/GTAs to manage reviewer access during all IAR phases (SUBMIT, READ and optional EDIT)  
• Support for critiques in Word or text format  
• Display of critiques in Adobe PDF format  
• Matrix of initial scores with the option to designate certain applications as lower half  
• After the meeting, support for SRA/GTA view and download of a Word document to be used as the preliminary summary statement body

Future releases will include additional functionality for a broader user base.

NIAID’s Electronic Review system provided the proof of concept for the eRA IAR. Like other new eRA systems, IAR will be Web-based and constructed using Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

For more information about IAR, contact the NIH eRA Commons Helpdesk at commons@od.nih.gov or 866-504-9552.

Havekost Discusses E-Grants Initiatives at eRA Retreat

Charles Havekost, federal E-Grants Program Manager, provided an update on E-Grants on October 10 at the eRA Project Team retreat in Warrenton, Virginia. E-Grants is a government-wide response to Public Law 106-107 and the President’s Management Agenda, both of which mandate improving access to federal grants via the Internet.

Eleven departments and agencies are working together to develop a one-stop electronic grant portal where potential grant recipients will receive full-service electronic grant administration. The Department of Health and Human Services has been designated the managing partner for this project.

E-Grants supersedes the Federal Commons, an initiative of the Inter-Agency Electronic Grant Committee (IEAGC), which previously had begun work on a single Web interface for grantees. The NIH and NSF were active partners in Federal Commons activities. E-Grants has continued with the Federal Commons plan to use GSA’s FedBizOpps system as the unified site for providing central access to all federal grant opportunity information, which now resides in more than 100 locations.

The transition from Federal Commons to E-Grants will have little impact on the progress of the eRA project. Havekost was very enthusiastic about eRA’s use of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program to create solutions (see article in this issue). SBIR awardees will develop tools and services to facilitate grantee electronic interaction with the NIH and E-Grants.

Of key interest to eRA was Havekost’s discussion of the data standards to be used to define interfaces for the electronic exchange of grant documents between grantees and government agencies. In 1994, representatives of grant-making agencies collaborated to develop a data standard for federal grants administration (grant applications and awards). After more than four years of work, this group developed the ANSI, ASC X12 194 Transaction Set (TS194), which became the standard for considerable software development efforts. E-Grants currently is relying on and maintaining these data standards.

E-Grants “core” application data include the widely accepted SF424 form data elements plus the Dun and Bradstreet DUNS number, and use TS194 attributes. The data in the PHS 398 that is outside of the “core” will be collected by NIH as “non-core” (a.k.a. “agency-specific”) data. In this way, NIH solutions can conform to the E-Grants core while still collecting the full complement of information needed to complete the PHS 398.

For more information on the 194 Transaction Set, see “194 for Dummies."

eRA Pilots Program Portfolio Management Interface

On November 1, eRA launched the first phase of the Program Portfolio Management Interface, a customized, consolidated view of information for NIH Program Officials (POs). The initial pilot includes Pre-Submission and General Resources functionality.

The current pilot is a first step in using portal technology to help NIH POs manage their portfolios. Ultimately, the interface will allow POs to monitor and administer each application as it moves through all phases of the grant lifecycle, from pre-submission through post-award. For example, when a PO signs on, his/her current portfolio of work in progress for Type 1, 2 and 5 awards will be displayed, with the ability to access and manage a specific grant through the portal.

Once eRA builds the architecture for the Program interface, this infrastructure can be reused to build similar interfaces for members of other NIH internal and external user communities to track and process their individual grant portfolios.

For more information about the Program Portfolio Management Interface, contact Bud Erickson at 301-435-4913.

Meet eRA’s SBIR Awardees

The six recipients of eRA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards have begun work on new tools for facilitating electronic interaction between grantee institutions and the NIH. At the conclusion of Phase 1, these companies will demonstrate proof-of-concept for software applications and services that can be purchased by or licensed to NIH grantee organizations. Six NIH institutes (NCRR, NIAID, NIAAA, NIBIB, NIDA and NDDK) collectively have allocated $2.5 million this year to support development efforts.

SBIR Awardees

• ERA Software Systems, Inc.—Diane Bozler, PI

ERA Software Systems proposes to enhance their Grants Applications and Management System (GAMS™) with standards-based interfaces for the submission of competing and non-competing proposals using XML data stream submission. During Phase 1, ERA Software Systems plans to deliver accurate XML data streams for competing grant applications and for populating the NIH eRA Commons organizational and professional profiles. They also propose to convert the 194 EDI transaction set to an XML data stream.

• Research & Management Systems (RAMS), Inc.—William Kirby, PI

RAMS proposes to enhance their ecGrant™ product (currently used by 38 institutions) to support optimal creation, submission and tracking of institutional and professional profiles. RAMS will determine the best methods and feasible technology for moving data from the ecGrant databases to NIH and for allowing grantors and other authorized parties to access profile information in local databases.

• InfoEd International—Edward Johnson, Sr., PI

InfoEd International proposes to develop a secure NIH Portal for moving information among the external community, the NIH eRA Commons and IMPAC II. The portal will accept new proposals, continuations, invention reports, etc. and will enable the NIH to communicate back to the originator.

• Cayuse, Inc.—Christian T. Harker, PI

Cayuse proposes to enhance its GrantSlam™ software, currently used by more than 3,000 investigators to create their paper-based NIH grant proposals. During Phase 1, Cayuse will align GrantSlam organizational and professional profiles with NIH definitions, generate and parse XML from and to GrantSlam, and upload GrantSlam proposal data to the NIH eRA Commons through a secure connection.

• Clinical Tools, Inc.—T. Bradley Tanner, PI

Clinical Tools proposes to develop a Web-based solution called HealthProposal.net to enable grant application preparation and submission to the NIH. Investigators will input their research proposal in word processor format at a JPartner Web site; the proposal then will be uploaded to a Clinical Tools server where it will be translated to PDF for the grantee’s online viewing. The finished product will be converted to XML and transmitted to NIH as a data stream.

• Formatta Corporation—David Garver, PI

Formatta proposes to improve their existing electronic forms product line, which enables users to fill out forms online or offline, create electronic signatures, and securely transmit the completed forms over the Internet. The system based on this technology would allow research institutions to utilize FREE, Internet downloadable software to fill out, save, route, encrypt, print, email and submit electronic grant applications to the NIH and other grants-sponsoring organizations.

David Wright Joins eRA Team as Policy Analyst

David Wright, a former member of the Commons Working Group, has joined the eRA team as liaison to the extramural grantee community. To complement George Stone’s role as NIH eRA Commons Advocate, David will gather input from grantees and communicate their functional requirements to eRA technical staff.

David also will serve as Grants Policy Liaison, reporting to Regina White, director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA). In this capacity, David will work closely with his colleagues in OPERA to ensure that NIH grants policy and/or Federal guidelines are accurately and fully represented in eRA functional specifications.

Prior to joining the eRA team, David worked as a computer support specialist for the Office of Sponsored Programs at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and more recently, as the Director of Research Information Systems for the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. With more than eight years of experience in a university setting, David has first-hand knowledge of the needs and concerns of the extramural research community.

Two New Members Join eRA Steering Committee

The eRA Steering Committee, providing broad oversight and advice to the eRA project, welcomes two new members, Dr. Brent Stanfield and Mr. Thomas Murphy.

Dr. Stanfield, Deputy Director of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) replaces Dr. Ellie Ehrenfeld on the committee. Stanfield was formerly Director of the Office of Science Policy and Program Planning at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Before that, he ran the NIMH unit on developmental neuroanatomy in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology.

Dr. Stanfield (stanfieb@csr.nih.gov) received a B.S. with honors from the University of California at Irvine and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Washington University in St. Louis. After postdoctoral training, he was appointed to the faculties of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego. He moved his laborabory to the NIMH intramural program in 1987.

Mr. Thomas Murphy (Tom.Murphy@nih.gov) also was appointed to the Steering Committee by Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH. Murphy serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of the Office of Information Technology of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). In this capacity, Murphy oversees the NIDCR IT infrastructure, plans and coordinates all Internet and Intranet services, and develops and implements IT policies and procedures for his Institute.

Mr. Murphy has been with the NIH for more than 10 years. Before coming to the NIH, he was the Director of Academic Computing Services for the College of Education at the University of Maryland. Prior to that Mr. Murphy was an educational software developer, curriculum development instructor, and high school mathematics and computer science teacher.

Directory of Assistance for the NIH eRA Commons

eRA has several facilities for answering questions and addressing user issues. The table below will help you to direct your inquiries/comments through the most appropriate channel.