Inside eRA for Partners, June 20, 2001

NIH Commons Working Group Meeting Scheduled in Washington on May 16, 2001

Plans are being finalized for the next meeting of the NIH Commons Working Group (CWG). The CWG, comprised of representatives of grantee organizations and NIH staff, studies requirements, performs analysis and makes recommendations for the continued development of the Commons portion of the NIH eRA system.

The May 16 meeting of the CWG will take place in conjunction with the Federal Demonstration Project (FDP) meeting being held in Washington DC. The daylong CWG meeting will be divided into two sessions. The morning will be devoted to a discussion of the NIH Commons interface specifications including an update on the status of the architecture for the next version of the Commons and an assessment of plans for development and deployment. This assessment will provide a basis for further discussion of functional requirements for future versions of the Commons. The afternoon will be devoted to an analysis of changes to policy and procedures for noncompeting applications over the past ten years. CWG members will suggest ways to further improve noncompeting progress reporting such that future versions of the Commons will incorporate a more streamlined business process.

The meeting is open to all interested parties. Contact George Stone for further details.

New Architecture for NIH Commons

Plans for a NIH Commons Architecture Tool were recently vetted through the shared design team, Information Technology Management Board (ITMC), and the Extramural Program Management Committee (EPMC) and the eRA Project Team. The draft calls for a migration from a standard client/server technology to an N- tiered application architecture, and is due to be finalized soon. This multi-tiered architecture includes a Java-based platform and technologies utilizing Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Two draft documents are available online: the J2EE technology overview and the platform and tools recommendations.

The draft plan was recently shared with the Commons Work Group. Comments from the Commons Work Group have been supportive and favorable:

"The two documents regarding NIH's proposed J2EE architecture are very good documents. I learned a thing or two by reading them."

"I have read the documents and think that you are on a good path."

"We have read them over and agree... trying to use vendor independent solutions and modularizing the components offers the most flexibility as we move forward."

"The Platform and Tool Recommendations paper made reference to trying to keep things 'vendor independent'. I believe that this is very important..."

Additional comments should be directed to Dr. George Stone, stoneg@od.nih.gov.

The Federal Commons: An Internet-Based Grants Management Portal

The Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-107) requires federal grant-making agencies to adopt common forms and processes for electronic grant administration. These legislative requirements will be met by creating an Internet-based grants management portal for the Federal government. This portal, called the Federal Commons, will become a single point of entry for all grantees, providing general information on Federal grant programs and funding opportunities, as well as a common application and reporting system allowing grantees to transact grant-related business securely across the Federal government.

Work on the Federal Commons began in early 1999. This initiative, which was funded by the General Services Administration (GSA), established connectivity between the Federal Commons and two agencies (NSF and NIH). Several pilots were deployed enabling: 

• organizations to register with the Federal Commons and with agencies;   
• users to manage (e.g., create, update, etc.) accounts for logging into the Federal Commons and agency systems;   
• organizations to create and maintain a government-wide Organizational Profile;   
• individuals to create and maintain biographic information in a government-wide Professional Profile;   
• users to query the status of pending applications at multiple agencies.

The majority of Federal Commons services are still in the design phase. There are two pilots currently underway. The first pilot allows users to search for grant funding opportunities across the Federal government. The second pilot will enable users to apply for a grant by completing and submitting a Web form. The grant application pilot is particularly challenging because the Web-based application must be "form-independent"; i.e., must fulfill government-wide data requirements rather than recreate agency paper forms for a browser screen. At present, the Pre-Award Workgroup is in the process of streamlining the grant application.

Although the Federal Commons has been recognized as a significant e-government initiative, project resources remain scarce. Work to date on the Federal Commons has been accomplished by financial contributions from various departments and agencies and by volunteer work groups. To fully meet the electronic grant administration requirements of P.L. 106-107, a more formal approach is needed. Progress on the Federal Commons, consistent with the legislative mandate, will require both an established, multi-year funding authority and federal ownership at a lead department/agency. Although these issues have been discussed, their resolution for fiscal year 2001 remains uncertain. Efforts are underway at relatively high levels of the executive branch to ensure progress on this grants administration portal system being designed to support a very diverse population of awardees: state and local governments, universities, tribal governments, non-profit organizations, and individuals supported through hundreds of programs within 33 federal agencies.

Scanning: An Essential Step Toward Handling e-Grants

NIH currently scans into digital format millions of pieces of paper associated with the grant application and funding process. More scanning prototypes are in the works. One impetus driving the use of scanning technology is to reduce storage space and filing costs. Another is to work through the issues of handling and storage of digital files in anticipation of the mandated requirement to begin receiving e-grants by FY2003. Taking advantage of scanning technology now will enable NIH to develop a phased approach and facilitate the development of business practices for receiving e-grants in the future.

NIH currently scans into digital format millions of pieces of paper associated with the grant application and funding process. More scanning prototypes are in the works. Taking advantage of scanning technology now will enable NIH to develop a phased approach and facilitate the development of business practices for receiving e-grants in the future.

What is happening now?

The NIH community has been scanning documents into digital formats for several years.

• One of the first successful production scanning activities was CRISP (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects), a project of the Office of Extramural Research (OER). CRISP is a searchable database of federally funded biomedical research projects conducted at universities, hospitals, and other research institutions. Integral parts of the grant applications are scanned into a digital format that populates the CRISP database.
  
• The Extramural Inventions and Technology Resources Branch of OPeRA within OER has been scanning invention reports since 1997. By so doing all paper-based reports are now rendered fully electronic. The scanned images are linked to information entered into an invention reporting database fed by the Interagency Edison web-based interfaces being used by nearly 300 extramural grantee and contractor organizations. Since its roll out over 15, 000 invention reports have been scanned using this system.
  
• The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has scanned over three and a half million pages of funded grant applications into digital format and populated a searchable web-enabled database covering the past two years. The entire grant application is scanned into the database. Grants Management and Program staff have real-time access to this database. This application has allowed NCI to reduce file room size and speed information to those in need. The response from all participants has been extremely positive.
  
• The NIH Biomedical Engineering Consortium (BECON), in conjunction with OER, launched a scanning pilot project in the March 1999. To date, over three hundred grant applications from two Program Announcements have been scanned into digital format and placed on compact discs (CDs). An optical character recognition (OCR) technique was applied to the scanned images, allowing for basic text searching capabilities. The CDs have been made available to BECON members and to peer reviewers. Thus far the response to this pilot has been positive.
  
• The National Institute on Aging (NIA) began a limited pilot in September 1999 to scan all of its Small Grant applications into digital format and place them on CDs. NIA followed the BECON model in applying OCR/searchable text format to the scanned image on each CD. As in the BECON pilot, responses from internal staff and peer reviewers have been very positive. NIA would like to expand this process to include hosting all grant applications on a central secure web-server to reduce file room storage and make more efficient use of human resources.
  
• The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) began scanning the second page (the application abstract) of each application received by the Center in June 2000. These scanned images are placed in an internal database accessible by CSR staff only. The CSR process includes OCR to generate ASCII text so that the abstracts can be edited for Summary Statement preparation purposes. This highly successful pilot is now in production stage. The use of scanning has saved re-keying over ten thousand pieces of paper to date.

Lessons Learned

The main lesson learned from NIH's scanning efforts thus far is that scanning is very doable. The technology is mature and inexpensive. Inserting scanning into the workflow is manageable and can bring immediate, palpable benefits. Other lessons:

• Scanning conveys different benefits to different people, which leads to a desire to scan the entire application.
  
• A contractor can do scanning at 8 cents per page. OCR and indexing are more expensive but are attractive because they add functionality that mere scanning lacks.
  
• There is a need for designing the PHS 398 form to be scanner-friendly. Two desiderata are: last name first (for identification) and gray-scale images. It is also important to ensure that applicants do not alter the forms.
  
• Accuracy rates are estimated at 95 to 99 percent. It is not clear where the errors are occurring. They might be in places such as special text characters-i.e., the kind we can live with. CDs can providing excellent quality in PDF and are searchable.
  
• We need to distinguish between scanning, OCRing, and indexing. Varying levels of value added processing can be performed at different times, depending on the preference of the ICs.

Scanning can convey immediate benefits: instant availability of the application, reduction in paper volume, cost savings, and fostering of collaborative work. The knowledge gained from pilots can lead to reengineering business practices and modifying eRA modules accordingly.

What is next?

At three large ICs, new scanning projects are in preparation.

• NCI is preparing to increase it use of scanning to include all of its grant applications--approximately 9,000 directly received applications annually. NCI will scan these applications into the existing web-enabled database now housing the Institute's funded grants. Lessons learned from the first production database will be applied to the new effort.
  
• The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is designing a pilot that will feature electronic receipt of responses to a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Program Announcement. NIAID will scan all the applications not received in electronic format. The electronic form will be received in interactive portable document format (IPDF). The scanned image will be in the same IPDF. The digital forms of these applications will be housed in an NIAID web-enabled database.
  
• The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is planning to scan all of its funded grants and current grant applications, along the model of NCI. It is not clear at this time if NHLBI will OCR the documents as well. Like NCI, NHLBI is concerned with file room space and the labor-intensive processes of filing and retrieving documents and records. Work could begin later this fall.

What is missing?

Though nothing has been done at the NIH enterprise level, change is on the way. None of the pilots or production processes has been integrated into the CSR role in NIH, nor have any of the data populated the IMPAC II databases. All of the pilot and production programs are in ICs.

The first pilot project designed to shift to an NIH-wide approach to scanning is on the drawing board. NIA and OER have agreed to enter into a pilot project that will scan the next receipt of NIA's Small Grant applications into digital form. The same criteria NIA has used in the past will be applied to this pilot. The Institute will continue to receive CDs to be distributed to internal staff and peer reviewers. The major paradigm shift will be that the image of the entire grant application will be stored as a binary large object (BLOB) electronically linked to the IMPAC II database. Lessons learned from this pilot will fuel other pilots and prototypes in this area.

It is crucial to help set NIH-wide standards for scanning and e-grants soon so ICs will have a framework for establishing procedures for specific IC needs. An example of NIH-wide standard setting is the effort to factor into the redesign of PHS 398 means of ensuring that the form will be scanner-friendly.

The long run

Cradle-to-grave electronic processing of all grant applications by NIH is the ultimate goal. Prototyping is not a panacea for all the issues e-grants will raise since prototyping requires the scarce resources of time and money. Some of the lessons prototypes teach never translate into the reality of the final system. However, scanning affords very realistic prototypes for e-grants, and learning by doing in this way is vastly preferable to mere theoretical musings or to simply ignoring complex issues of technology and organizational change until the fateful day when the first e-grant applications show up.

Even after e-grants become a reality, for many years to come NIH will continue to receive a diminishing number of grant applications in paper form. Those grants will have to be scanned so that they can be merged into the digital grant application document repository. So, quite aside from its great utility for prototyping, scanning will be with NIH for a long time.

How eRA Develops Software

For eRA, developing software is a mission-critical business. eRA's software development process relies on a modular approach and seeks to involve users at every step. A new report--"How eRA Develops Software"--provides a step-by-step discussion and analysis (you will need Acrobat Reader). Here is the Executive Summary:

In an organized, iterative, carefully documented manner, eRA has built a dense infrastructure of methodology, standards, and procedures to underpin the development of a reliable enterprise system for electronic research administration.

For software development and quality assurance, NIH has relied thus far solely on contractors. Now the retirement of the legacy IMPAC system is freeing up NIH programmers to join the development team.

eRA's methodology combines the classical Waterfall method and the prototype-oriented Spiral method. It proceeds in three phases:

1. Definition Phase: systems analysis and software development analysis;
   
2. Development Phase: software design, code generation, and testing; and
   
3. Maintenance Phase: perfective maintenance and other kinds of maintenance, documentation, and training.

Shared Design Team Encourages Technical Collaboration Between OER, CIT and ICs

The shared design team provides a forum for technical experts from the Office of Extramural Research (OER), the Center for Information Technology (CIT) and the Institutes and Centers (ICs) to come together to discuss information system design issues from a variety of perspectives. The shared design team strives to provide a collaborative environment where participants share information on development efforts and provide feedback on the ways systems might be designed for use by multiple organizations. This environment serves to reduce redundancy in development, which can help NIH maximize resources. The team also identifies IC solutions that might be suitable for enterprise wide adaptation, thereby benefiting the entire community. Membership on the shared design team is somewhat fluid, with varying IC representatives participating in meetings on topics of particular interest. Currently, the team is assessing a proposal for a NIH Commons Architecture Tool, which will be shared with the general community as soon as the proposal has been vetted through the appropriate technical advisory groups.