Inside eRA, March 24, 2003 (Volume 4, Issue 4)

3rd Annual eRA Symposium To Focus on NIH Program Community

The 3^rd Annual eRA Symposium is planned for April 30 in the Natcher Auditorium. Dedicated to updating Program Officials (POs) on the impact of new eRA technology on NIH business processes, the symposium will introduce POs to the new Web-based Program module (PGM), which will debut in pilot mode on or about April 4.

The vision for the PGM is to enable POs to conduct NIH research administration using the paperless processes mandated by Congress. To accomplish this goal, the PGM will serve as a gateway to biomedical research and eRA information. In addition, the PGM interface will allow POs to monitor and administer their assigned grant applications as they move through all phases of the grant lifecycle from pre-submission to post-award.

The PGM interface will be customized so that when a PO signs on, his/her current portfolio of work-in-progress grants in the Pending SRG, Pre-Council, Post-Council, Pre-Award, Post-Award, and Withdrawn stages of the grant lifecycle will display. Once eRA builds the architecture for this capability, it will be reused to build similar interfaces for members of other NIH internal and external user communities, enabling users to track and process their individual workloads.

To accommodate the responsibilities of Program staff, the PGM will have the following functions and features:

• Default PO Portfolios (Spring 2003 Release)––Four default portfolios at the Pending SRG, Pre-Council, Post-Council, and Post-Award/Pending Type 5 stages of a grant application's lifecycle. In July, two additional default portfolios: Pre-Award and Withdrawn/Other.    
• Review of eSNAP Progress Reports (Spring 2003 Release)––Support for processing electronic progress reports.    
• Access to Scientific Resources (Spring 2003 Release)––Links to scientific resources will be provided in the Spring 2003 release. Ability to select, search and save material from online journals and to do research on prospective PIs will be available in a future release.    
• Portfolio Management (July 2003 Release)––Support for functions such as adding and removing grants.    
• Customizable Checklists (July 2003 Release)––New module for completing checklists. A new Program Approval module will be available in a future release.    
• Integration with MS Outlook Calendar (Future Release)––Ability to download eRA dates (SRG meeting dates, council dates, etc.) to Microsoft Outlook    
• Interface with Shared Systems (Future Release)––Access to e-Notification, e-Requests and other modules.    
• Division of Extramural Activities (DEA) and Council Functions (Future Release)––These features will be part of a Program Administration module.

The April symposium also will introduce the concept of knowledge management (KM) and how eRA plans to take advantage of this new data-mining technology to identify trends and to support executive decision-making. Attendees will have the opportunity to preview Web Query Tool (QT), a multi-purpose, Web-based search and reporting interface that is currently under development.

Address questions about the symposium to Patty Austin. Contact Bud Erickson regarding the new PGM and Sherry Zucker about Web QT.

Development of Electronic CGAP Continues on Schedule

The Competitive Grant Application Process (CGAP) Project Team has been designing the process flow and technical prototypes for the receipt and processing of electronic applications. The technical team also has evaluated technologies and methods of communication. By next fall, eRA plans to build a system to accept the equivalent of the PHS 398 application in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file, created and transmitted by grantee institutions, their service providers, and the federal E-Grants electronic application system.

The team recently published a draft document, The eRA CGAP Information Exchange: Functional Description and Technologies, outlining the challenges and proposing solutions to the receipt of applications as XML files with attachments. This document describes the process flow for how an application is packaged by a service provider or an institution, how the request for submission is transmitted to the NIH, how the application file itself is transferred to NIH, how it is validated and processed, and how the NIH acknowledges receipt of the application. The methodology is based on a business-to-business (B2B) exchange concept whereby NIH systems and external partners communicate system-to-system according to predefined protocols.

The CGAP team also addressed the issue of peak load of application submissions (99 percent of applications arrive within 12 hours of the deadline), which occurs three times a year. They designed an e-ticket system to control the load by queuing submission requests.

The team also considered the requirement for flexible application packaging using XML technology. Based on the E-Grants initiative's concepts of “core data” (needed by all agencies) and “non-core elements” (NIH-specific), the team proposed a strategy and designed an XML schema to satisfy these requirements. The draft XML schema, mapping the Form 398 fields and components, is available online.

The Receipt and Referral (R&R) Steering Group, comprising representatives of R&R management, the NIH Extramural Policy Office, and the eRA Project Team, has spent many hours discussing the business issues associated with the receipt of electronic applications. Issues include:

• How will the signatures of the PI and the Signing Official be represented in the electronic application?      
• How will NIH formatting rules be applied to an electronic receipt, given that XML does not convey formatting information?      
• How will the grantee make changes to an application after it has been received?      
• What constitutes receipt?      
• How will the appendices be handled?      
• How will NIH deal with late applications?

Development of a prototype for some of the core components of the exchange is underway. These components will be designed to test the receipt and basic processing of the application files. The project team also is developing a more detailed plan and technical architecture for the subsequent phases of the project. NIH is coordinating all eRA CGAP efforts with the federal E-Grants initiative, and the two teams are meeting regularly.

The CGAP team welcomes suggestions and comments on its draft documents. Contact askera@od.nih.gov for more information about eRA CGAP goals, project plans, schedules and accomplishments.

BOG Approves eRA Budget Increase for FY 2003

The NIH IT Board of Governors (BOG) has approved the increase in funding requested by eRA Project Manager John McGowan on January 29. For FY 2003, eRA will receive an increment of $6.56 million to raise its approved budget to a total of $40.960 million. 

The original five-year eRA budget, established in 2000, provided the same level of support for each year. Until now, the project has managed to succeed with existing funding of approximately $34 million per year. At this point, however, it is evident that eRA cannot meet its obligations on schedule without additional dollars.

The BOG’s approval of additional resources is based on the fact that Information Technology (IT) is growing more complex each year. The cost of the migration to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, now crucial to providing state-of-the art Web services, was not factored into the original estimate.

eRA’s workload has experienced significant growth. For example, over the past three years, the number of grant applications received by the NIH has increased by about 30 percent; over the past three months, the number of eRA user sessions has risen from a conservative estimate of 42,000 in December 2002 to 60,000 in February 2003.

While overall, NIH and NIH extramural budgets have grown dramatically since FY 2001, eRA’s budget has remained static. eRA has lost 10-15 percent of its purchasing power because its funding has been flat relative to the rate of inflation.

For FY 2004, eRA will request an additional $6 million, which will bring eRA’s allocation to $39.086 million. For FY 2005, eRA will seek a permanent adjustment of $6.865 million to its base budget plus $4.123 million in contingency funds. If approved, these increases will result in total funding of $45.037 million for FY 2005.

Direct questions about the eRA budget to Zoe-Ann Copeland, eRA Budget Officer and Chief, Administrative Services Branch, Office of Extramural Research (OER).

eRA Deploys System and Application Upgrades

eRA systems were down over the weekend to enable Operations staff to accomplish the system conversion to Oracle 9i, to merge the NIH eRA Commons and IMPAC II databases, and to install upgrades to eRA applications.

As part of the deployment, eRA migrated the production environment to Oracle 9i Database (Oracle 9i/DB) and Oracle 9i Application Server (Oracle 9i/AS). Oracle 9iAS establishes a complete Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform for building enterprise business applications for the Web. eRA decided to postpone implementing some of the new performance features such as load balancing. These features will be added later in the spring.

This weekend’s deployment also accomplished the integration of the IMPAC II and NIH eRA Commons databases. This merger is a step toward realizing the vision of combining the internal-facing and the external-facing systems into one integrated eRA system.

Among IMPAC II modules that were upgraded are Committee Management, the Grant Folder, the Grants Closeout System, Grants Management, Peer Review, Receipt and Referral and Scanning. Committee Management Web (formerly called FastTrack) will be available in pilot mode on April 4. The NIH eRA Commons and its eSNAP, Financial Status Report and Internet Assisted Review interfaces also were enhanced. The releases of a J2EE version of iEdison and a new Program module have been delayed for several weeks.

Release notes are posted on the IMPAC II Web site. See http://impac2.nih.gov/tools/system/system_oltp_schema_list.cfm for schema changes. Send questions about the deployment to the eRA Helpdesk.

eRA Realizes Return on Investment

As IT projects throughout the federal government come under intense financial scrutiny by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the eRA Project continues to establish a strong business case for each of its major initiatives. According to a recent statement by OMB director Mitch Daniels, which appeared in GovExec.com on February 3, “part of making sense is you get a good return on the dollar…” Well before reaching its goal of end-to-end electronic grants administration, eRA has begun realizing a measurable return on its investment.

During 2002, the first year of scanning all incoming competitive applications received by the NIH Center for Scientific Review (CSR), eRA saved an estimated $5 million. The eRA scanning process virtually eliminated the costs of reproducing and distributing the year’s 60,000 incoming paper applications to NIH staff and peer reviewers. As a by-product of scanning, some Scientific Review Administrators (SRAs) began mailing CDs instead of paper applications to members of their study sections. In 2003, NIH expects to save $15 million. See “Capture Images, Capture Savings,”  (Adobe .pdf format, 1.47 MB) an article about NIH that appeared in the December 2002 issue of Integrated Solutions magazine.

There are additional savings in space and time that are harder to quantify. Due to the new technology, the PDF version of the application shows up in the online Grant Folder within days of its arrival at CSR. Prior to scanning, grant applications typically would take three to four weeks to be processed before delivery to extramural staff. Furthermore, users can retrieve applications more rapidly, search the database by many different variables, and access the information concurrently. Given that professionals generally spend 50 percent of their time looking for pertinent data, scanning leads to much greater productivity.

Internet Assisted Review (IAR), a recent eRA innovation, also yields a significant return on investment. The purpose of this software is to facilitate the scientific review of applications by standardizing the electronic submission of critiques and initial priority scores and enabling reviewers to examine each other’s critiques online prior to review meetings. Among pilot users, IAR reduced the time spent in review meetings by 33 percent, greatly cutting NIH labor costs. The automated generation of summary statements, made possible by the IAR module, reduced summary statement cycle time from eight weeks to three days. eRA expects to realize similar savings from its other new Web-based applications.

At his presentation to Institute and Center (IC) Executive Officers earlier this year, John McGowan, eRA Project Manager, offered suggestions to ICs for increasing eRA’s return on investment next year. 

• Notify IC grantees via email about registering for the NIH eRA Commons to take advantage of Status, eSNAP, FSR and other new Web-based systems for interacting electronically with the NIH.       
• Do not email summary statements. Instead notify grantees that they can retrieve summary statements and other documents through the Status module.       
• Collapse the application file to a correspondence folder. Use the grant application and other document images in the Grant Folder. Move paper documents to off-site storage. An e-file annotation capability, planned for later this year, will further reduce the need for paper.       
• Re-engineer other business processes to take advantage of eRA.       
• Do not invest in new IC extension systems. Eliminate existing extension systems once processing requirements are met by the eRA enterprise system.

Direct questions about eRA’s return on investment to Dr. John McGowan.

eRA System Utilization Continues to Rise

eRA utilization continues to rise dramatically as both NIH extramural staff and external grantee users establish more online sessions. Over the past three months, IMPAC II logons grew by about 25 percent and NIH eRA Commons logons by about 175 percent, increasing the overall number of sessions from 42,000 in December to 60,000 in February. See line graph.

Since the deployment of the NIH eRA Commons last October, approximately 180 active grantee organizations, representing 60 percent of all funded institutions, have registered for the new system. Usage is expected to continue to increase as the NIH eRA Commons progresses toward full production and as new capabilities are added. By 2006, when grantees routinely will be submitting electronic competing and non-competing grant applications through the NIH eRA Commons interface, a conservative estimate of the total number of yearly sessions is almost 400,000. This number does not include connections to Internet Assisted Review (IAR), Financial Status Report (FSR) and other modules accessed through the NIH eRA Commons. An online graph shows detailed projections.

As reported in the December 2002 issue, overall IMPAC II usage in FY 2002 was 32 percent higher than the previous year. So far, the first five months of FY 2003 have shown the same rate of growth when compared to October 2001 through February 2002. eRA attributes the rise in IMPAC II logons to the usefulness of new features such as Summary Statements, grant images and the Grant Folder. The new Program module, being designed to enable Program Officials to perform their research administration tasks in an electronic environment, is expected to generate a large number of sessions beginning later this year. See full article in this issue.

In the future, eRA plans to combine the NIH eRA Commons (current external-facing system) with IMPAC II (current internal-facing system) into one integrated eRA system. Although references to “IMPAC II” will disappear, eRA will continue to track and report on NIH staff and grantee usage.

eRA Launches Improved NIH eRA Commons Training Site

On March 30, eRA deployed an improved NIH eRA Commons 2 demonstration site that provides a much more realistic user experience. The demo is accessible from the NIH eRA Commons home page at http://commons.era.nih.gov.

After logging on, the user will create a unique training ID and password and select a role (PI or SO) to emulate. During account creation, data for the IPF, PPF, FSR and several grants will be populated with seed data stored in the system. At this point, the user can perform all actions permissible for the chosen role, such as creating other accounts, editing the IPF and PPF, and creating FSRs and eSNAPs. It will be possible to simulate the entire eSNAP process, from initiation through final submission by an SO (Signing Official).

The training account will remain active for 180 days, after which time it will be deleted. The demo system was specifically designed to accommodate hands-on training sessions. Each account is unique, but all accounts are populated with copies of the same data. As a result, if an instructor walks a class through a training exercise, each student should see the same data on his/her screen. The system also allows individuals to update the data without impacting other users or corrupting the seed data.

eRA Project Manager Shares Vision at February 13 Workshop

As 175 NIH staff attended in person, more than 1,000 others tuned into the videocast of the NIH eRA Commons orientation session held on February 13 in the Natcher Building. Sponsored by the Office of Extramural Research (OER), the training demonstrated current eRA capabilities and revealed future plans. 

In his address to NIH staff, John McGowan, eRA Project Manager, emphasized that the NIH eRA Commons now is a reality, with usage expected to grow dramatically over the next few years as capabilities are added. See utilization projections graph. It is therefore incumbent on NIH extramural staff to become familiar with the NIH eRA Commons to interact effectively with the grantee community and to perform grants administrative tasks in the new electronic environment.

The vision for the future includes combining the NIH eRA Commons (current external-facing system) with IMPAC II (current internal-facing system) into one integrated eRA system. Two of Dr. McGowan’s presentation slides show the interrelationships and flow of the NIH eRA Commons and IMPAC II modules from grant submission through close out. eRA’s objective is to combine these two systems into a single system with customized interfaces. All users (i.e., NIH grants management personnel, budget officers, program officials and external grantees) will share a system with a consistent look and feel that will be tailored according to their unique responsibilities. 

Dr. McGowan also encouraged Institute and Center (IC) leadership to take advantage of opportunities to reduce the need for paper. For example, this year, ICs should cease conventional mailing of summary statements since PIs can display these documents in the Status module of the NIH eRA Commons. Beginning in FY 2004, all progress reports should be submitted electronically.

The agenda also included:

Opening and Welcome                            Patty Austin

Commons Working Group Update          George Stone

NIH eRA Commons 101                          Dan Hall, Tim Twomey

Internet Assisted Review                         Tracy Soto, Everett Sinnett, Scarlett Gibb

DEIS Announces Staffing Changes

James Cain, director of the Extramural Information Systems Division (DEIS) in the Office of Extramural Research (OER), announced role changes for three key persons effective February 18. These reassignments were made to best address current DEIS challenges, which include the recompetition of its principal software development contract, preparation of comprehensive system documentation, expanded outreach efforts for the NIH eRA Commons and the new Program module, and the improvement of deployment processes. DEIS is responsible for the implementation and daily operation of all eRA systems. 

To address the contract and documentation issues, as well as to improve communication and interaction among eRA advocates, Carla Flora has moved to the Office of Project Management (OPM). This office establishes project management processes, controls the eRA budget, and oversees information resource management planning and reporting.

To expand eRA’s outreach efforts, Scarlett Gibb took over the Communications and Outreach Branch (COB), which is responsible for documenting and communicating eRA goals, issues and achievements through newsletters, the eRA Web site, and other vehicles. COB also promotes the eRA mission by planning and implementing special events, such as symposia, workshops, retreats, and training sessions.

Scheduled Downtime for System Maintenance

Beginning in March, eRA has scheduled an 8-hour window during the second weekend of each month to perform routine system maintenance. On these weekends, all NIH eRA systems will be down from approximately 10:00 p.m. EST on Saturday night until approximately 6:00 a.m. EST on Sunday morning.

Regular maintenance of servers, databases and other system components helps to ensure the smooth operation of eRA services. Normal maintenance procedures include the installation of service packs, “hotfixes” and security patches. The periodic reorganization of databases, which reclaims fragmented space, checks the integrity of database structures, and organizes tablespaces and indexes, is a proactive approach to ensuring the optimal availability and performance of critical applications.

eRA Training Opportunities for March

The Center for Information Technology (CIT) will offer the following eRA class this month. For further information, go to http://training.cit.nih.gov/.