Inside eRA, October 10, 2003 (Volume 4, Issue 10)

eRA to Accept Competing Electronic Applications This Fall

eRA currently is working with grantee volunteers who will take part in the first round of electronic submission of live, competitive applications. The eRA pilot, scheduled to coincide with NIH’s October and November receipt dates, will be conducted on a production-level system designed to accept applications through Grants.gov or from commercial vendors participating in the project. See the article in last month’s Inside eRA for information about submission methods.

In preparation for the pilot, eRA has been working with six eRA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awardees who are collaborating with the NIH to build tools to assist grantees with the creation and submission of electronic applications. Electronic Competitive Grant Application Process (CGAP) project staff has established a test/pilot site, successfully registered and built the computer-to-computer communications infrastructure, and processed transactions to and from the participating systems. Currently, the team is focusing on the implementation of business rules and validations inherent in the PHS 398 application as stipulated in the NIH application kit and as required by eRA data structures.

eRA also continues to upgrade internal systems to be able to route the electronic applications through the NIH Receipt and Referral process without reverting to paper at any point. Modifications to support paperless NIH systems are scheduled to be completed in time for the November pilot.

To transmit an electronic application, volunteer institutions will work with a service provider (SBIR awardee) to prepare and submit a PHS 398. Alternatively, volunteers can download, complete and submit their 398’s through Grants.gov. Finally, institutions can choose to enable their own systems to meet the specifications of the CGAP interface. For these institutions, NIH will issue an information kit with sample code and details of the technology needed to communicate electronically with eRA.

When the XML-formatted applications arrive at the NIH, they will be received by the eRA Exchange. The Exchange checks for viruses, validates the format, maps the XML to the eRA database, notifies the service provider or Grants.gov, and routes the application data to the eRA system. The Principal Investigator and Signing Official then will examine and verify the application via the Commons Status interface. Status has been upgraded to provide a new inquiry function that will allow submitters to track the progress of their electronic applications through the system. 

The NIH will manage the applications of all volunteer participants to eliminate the risk of missed deadlines and to protect applicants from any possible “glitches.” The CGAP team will assist applicant institutions and grantees with each step of the electronic submission.

Following is the planned schedule for accepting electronic applications this fall.

The vision of Grants.gov and the NIH eRA CGAP project extends well beyond support for the receipt of electronic grant applications. The notion of implementing an end-to-end, electronic grants administration business process is at the heart of all development efforts. The benefits of the new technology also include post-receipt transactions such as automated notifications, corrections to applications, and renewals. Both grantors and grantees will profit. For example, the NIH plans to develop a transaction for the Notice of Grant Award that will enable the awardee to download the budget and terms as an XML-based file. The receipt of this structured data would make it possible for submitters to load this information directly into their institution’s grants management systems, resulting in improved data quality and considerable savings in time and effort.

Highlights of Deployment on November 7

Following are highlights of eRA enhancements that will be implemented on November 7. For most business modules, this will be a maintenance release.

• Financial Status Report (FSR) 
  • Improved functionality for annual SNAP grants to foreign institutions. 
  • Support for two Award Document Number formats in the competitive grant segment.
• Grant Closeout Module (GCM) 
  • When a grant is added to GCM, if the activity code is F%, T%, R13, R25, or U13, the Final Invention Statement value will default to “Not Applicable.” 
  • Specialist name will link to contact information on the Institution Report. 
  • Authorized user will be able to query on any IC, service center or OPDIV by changing the default IC. User must have a GCM role for the designated IC.
• Grant Folder 
  • J2EE grant folder will replace client/server folder in all client/server applications. 
  • “Reports” section will be added to user interface to provide access to dynamic reports. 
  • Addition of hyperlink from grant number to new Grant Snapshot report.
• Grants Management (GM) 
  • Ability to create a Type 6 or 7 for Type 8s. 
  • Addition of checklist items to the GM worksheet. 
  • Correction of edit checks for gender and minority codes on training grants. 
  • Correction of eSNAP flag on the Type Received Date Workload screen. 
  • Minor changes to the Notice of Grant Award (NGA) to accommodate CDC requirements, to correct inconsistent grant numbers and alignment problem with F&A costs.
• Internet Assisted Review (IAR) 
  • Improved performance on the List of Applications. 
  • Expansion of Active Account Y and N fields to indicate precise status of account (waiting for reviewer to complete account create and validate roles form, waiting for NIH Data Quality to activate account, active, declined). 
  • Implementation of demo facility to train reviewers. 
• Program (PGM) 
  • New J2EE Program Approvals page to replace ICO Approvals page. 
  • Read-only access to all portfolios. 
  • Program assistant/analyst access to PGM. 
  • Display of past, current and future FY grants (default) on Pre-Council, Post Council, Pending Type 5s and Other/Withdrawn portfolio pages.
• Receipt and Referral (R&R) 
  • Addition of Group Code Extension to Referral Audit screen. 
  • Assignment mailers generated for applications assigned to Special Cluster IRGs containing Group Codes. 
  • Expansion of Delivery and Folder Label address fields to accept 25 characters. 
  • Table Reports 6, 12, 30 and 31 to run in under ten minutes. 
  • Expansion of Committee Members field to display over 30 committees on Enter Referral Data Screen.
• Subprojects 
  • Changes to support the new FY 2004 Subprojects policy. ICs now must assume responsibility for creating and approving subprojects; CRISP staff no longer will be responsible for creating subproject records post-award. As a general rule, CRISP staff will process only those subprojects that already have been created and approved by the IC.  
  • By default, CRISP Plus users only will view subprojects which have been awarded and approved. Indexers can toggle to see ALL subprojects on demand. 
  • The ability of CRISP staff to create subproject records is now restricted to a limited number of DRD staff members; only those with SIR_APPROVER_ROLE will be allowed to create subprojects. No other CRISP staff will be able to create a subproject record. This restriction will not affect the ability of REV users to create or use subprojects in REV.    
  • The IC approval date is recorded as an encumbrance date on the subproject record. The approver also is recorded. 
  • The CRISP subproject ID is for the use of CRISP staff only. This value no longer can be altered using Peer Review, ICO, Population Tracking, or Grants Management. 
  • By default, Population Tracking subprojects are considered awarded and approved when the parent application is awarded. 
  • On the subproject budget screen and in the subproject API, there is a business rule that verifies that the supplied number of direct/total costs does not exceed the number of support years indicated by the subproject start/end dates. The "number of support years" calculation has been modified to take into account the number of support years on the parent application for the same time period.
• Web Query Tool (Web QT)
  • Ability to save customized query parameter definitions. Definitions can be saved as “private” (only accessible to the creator) or ”public” (accessible by the entire IC). There is no limit to the number of definitions a user can save. The default is “private.”         
  • Ability to run a saved query. Ability to modify or delete a query.         
  • Common accounting number (CAN) added to default “expanded” hitlist items. The CAN will be an active hyperlink that will display the CAN portion of the Grant Snapshot Report.         
  • Search parameter to include or exclude eRA sub-projects. Default is to exclude sub-projects.         
  • Addition of page-level help.         
  • Pilot to be expanded.

New eRA Password Policy to Take Effect

Effective November 7, eRA will enforce a more stringent password policy to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to test, development, staging, and production servers and databases. The new eRA policy, issued on July 17, is consistent with NIH password policy and implements guidelines recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 

Following are the highlights of new password requirements for eRA users. To view the complete document, go to http://era.nih.gov/docs/NIH_eRA_Password_Policy.pdf.

• End users must change their passwords at least every 180 days. In November, expiration dates will be set on existing eRA accounts. The expirations will be phased in over a 6-month period with the first set of passwords to expire later in November.  
• Passwords created or changed by IC account administrators must be changed by the user at first login.  
• Password length must be at least eight (8) characters.  
• The password must contain a mixture of alpha, numeric and special characters.  
• The first and last characters must not be numeric.  
• The password cannot contain the user’s login name.  
• Passwords cannot be reused for a period of one year.  
• The account will be locked after several consecutive unsuccessful login attempts. Users should call their IC account administrators to have their accounts unlocked.  
• eRA will delete accounts with passwords expired for more than 45 days.

A J2EE stand-alone Password Change utility also will be deployed on November 7 for changing link account passwords. This utility can be called from IC extension systems for password changes.

NIH Recognizes Electronic Files as Official Record

Effective immediately, NIH will regard electronic documents and data stored in the eRA and Institute databases as legitimate components of the official grant file. This new policy was set forth in an August 15 memorandum from Regina H. White, former director, NIH Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA) to the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management.

NIH’s official acknowledgment of electronic files is in accordance with HHS Grant Policy Directive (GPD) Part 3.06: Post-Award Reports and Records. Section C.2.b.(2).(e) states “Applicable documents must be included in hard copy (including electronic documents, such as e-mail requests for prior approval) or must be referenced to a separate file or repository.” By officially recognizing the eRA enterprise system as an electronic repository, the foundation is set to move forward to a less-paper environment. NIH is in the process of implementing this directive through the NIH Grants Administration Manual (NIHGAM). Part 4.3.06.206 of the NIHGAM will provide specific details on official grant files––both hard copy and electronic records.

Certifying electronic documents and data is a necessary step toward realizing the eRA goal of developing a state-of-the-art, electronic grants-processing system that will substantially reduce the need for paper during every phase of the grant cycle. The new policy also is consistent with the President’s Management Agenda and Public Laws 105-277 and 106-107. Its implementation will result in reducing paper and storage requirements and eliminating duplicative effort and administrative burden.

OPERA also investigated the legal implications of scanned signatures. Senior Attorney Paul Robertson of the NIH Office of the General Counsel referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) guide to federal agencies with respect to the legal considerations of implementing electronic processes. In essence, in order to use electronic or any other records as evidence, the government must establish that the records were generated and maintained by a “trustworthy” and reliable process. The eRA Project Management Team discussed this issue at a recent meeting and concluded that the existing eRA system meets this requirement. However, as a next step, James Cain, director of the Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS), will recommend that the NIH Office of Management Assessment hire an independent contractor to officially certify the “reliability” of the eRA system.

New NBS Travel System Impacts Committee Management Users

The activation of the travel component of the NIH Business System (NBS) on September 1 requires a change in procedures for eRA Committee Management (CM) users who capture travel costs for advisory committee members serving on NIH National Advisory Councils, Boards of Scientific Counselors, and Program Advisory Committees. CM users now must update the eRA CM and NIH travel modules at the time travel orders are initiated.

In the past, CM users received and entered Administrative Data Base (ADB) travel orders for committee members into the eRA CM module at any time prior to or after the travel had taken place. Now, before travel orders are initiated, CM users must create a roster in CM, retrieve the meeting voucher number and send the voucher number to staff entering travel orders into the NBS travel system.

The new NBS Travel System contains three different fields to identify travel expenses for committee members. All are very important for accurate reporting and for bridging travel expense information to the eRA system. When entering a travel authorization (order), the preparer must:

1. Select “Advisory Comm Mtg. Travel” in the TRIP PURPOSE field. 
2. Select “Advisory Comm Mtg. Travel” in the TRIP TYPE field. 
3. Enter the eight-digit meeting voucher number (from eRA CM module) at the beginning of the PURPOSE DESCRIPTION field. Descriptive comments about the meeting can be added after the voucher number. For example:

10489189As a member of the NIAMS Board of Scientific Counselors, he will review the Laboratory of Structural Biology Research at the NIH, Bethesda, MD October 2–3, 2003 (pending availability of funds).

Like eRA, the new NBS travel system, which uses Gelco Travel Manager® software, streamlines an NIH business process and reduces the need for paper. Travel authorizations and expense vouchers are prepared and approved right from the desktop. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use system that gives NIH scientists and administrative staff the functionality they need for more timely and efficient processing of travel documents – from initial authorization to final reimbursement.

Are You Ready for eSNAP?

All grantees who are members of the Federal Demonstration Partnership Phase IV will be able to begin submitting their Streamlined Non-competing Award Process (SNAP) Type 5 progress reports through eSNAP this December. eSNAP is an eRA Commons Web interface for electronically transmitting SNAPs to NIH. Since eSNAP was deployed last November, more than 300 electronic progress reports have been received from pilot users. 

When eSNAP goes into fuller production, the number of users is expected to rise significantly. Currently, 28 institutions are authorized to use eSNAP; more than 75 additional institutions will be eligible to become eSNAP-enabled. For this reason, Institutes and Centers are strongly encouraged to evaluate their business processes and incorporate the electronic receipt of eSNAPs into their policies and procedures. See the article in the May 14 issue for important considerations.

Over the past year, pilot volunteers have played a critical role in shaping and perfecting the new eSNAP application. They communicated their business requirements, suggested improvements to the appearance and usability of the interface, and identified problems and bugs. The dedicated participation of pilot users has enabled eRA to create a better product for all users. Two of the most recent enhancements include a pre-populated form for the entry of minority and gender inclusion data and a quick way to determine if all sections of the eSNAP have been completed (no need to examine each page).

Program Module Offers New Capabilities

New eRA Program Module (PGM) functionality added in August and planned for November improve Program Officials’ ability to search, access, report, and perform transactions on grants in their portfolios. The PGM, which debuted last spring, has matured into a coherent, intuitive Web interface that enables POs to do their work using the paperless business processes mandated by Congress.

At sign-on, the system provides access to the PO’s own portfolio of grant applications and awards. The November deployment adds Program assistant and Program analyst roles and grants all users read access to all portfolios at NIH. This is a step toward accommodating the real-world practices and interactions of the Program community.

Enhancements implemented in the summer release greatly facilitate access to real-time grant information, an important PGM project goal. From a new “search” tab, users can search by PI name and/or grant number. The grants in a portfolio are divided according to position in the grant cycle (e.g., pending SRG, pre-Council, post-Council) with the ability to filter/sort the grant lists by fiscal year, Council date, program class code and subprojects. Sort criteria can be saved for future use and the resulting hitlist exported to Excel. In addition, each grant displayed on the screen links to its eRA Grant Folder, grant Snapshot report, Program checklists, Program approval (sign-off and notes), PO notes and concerns requiring attention. PGM offers canned reports (PO Worksheet, Master List of Applications, SRG Agenda and Order of Review); in the future, users will have the ability to create customized reports when the module is integrated with Web Query Tool.

eRA Forms Advanced Technologies Special Interest Group

Dr. Steven Hausman, eRA advocate for Advanced Technologies, has formed an NIH special interest group to identify advanced and emerging technologies with the potential for improving extramural research business processes. The group plans to disseminate promising ideas through lectures, seminars and a new Web site. The Advanced Technologies Special Interest Group (ATSIG) is one of about 100 NIH inter-Institute interest groups comprising scientists with common interests.

The precursor to ATSIG was the eRA Paperless Business Practices group, also led by Dr. Hausman. This group explored the use of imaging technology and paved the way for the successful scanning of all incoming competitive grant applications. The scanning process virtually eliminated the costs of reproducing and distributing the year’s 60,000 incoming paper applications for NIH staff and peer reviewers. Now, the PDF version of the application shows up in the online Grant Folder within days of its arrival at the Center for Scientific Review. Users can retrieve applications on demand, 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. 

ATSIG, also under eRA auspices, is broader in scope and will explore many ways to change how we will work in the future. For example, the group plans to look at nanotechnology and grid computing. In the area of nanotechnology (i.e., working in the 1-100 billionth of a meter range), IBM has developed a computer chip using “molecule cascade” circuitry that holds 25 million bytes in the space of a postage stamp, 260,000 times smaller than existing circuits. Grid computing refers to the simultaneous use of resources from many computers in a network. This virtual sharing capability may become the backbone of a world-wide infrastructure for communications, research education and commerce.

Project Team Discusses FY 2004 Priorities at eRA Retreat

“Resetting the Vision” is the theme of the FY 2004 eRA Project Team retreat on October 9 and 10 at the Harbourtowne Golf Resort and Conference Center in St. Michaels, MD. During the first day, the team talked about goals for the coming year in light of the growing momentum of the electronic grants project, eRA’s expanding role in the Department, and ongoing efforts to achieve a paperless grants administration environment.

Following opening addresses, retreat attendees participated in work groups that looked at project requirements from four perspectives:

1. New Functionality –– What new capabilities would make the eRA system a more robust enterprise solution to improve the way NIH does extramural grants business? 
2. Policy and Legislative Mandates –– How will eRA accommodate the requirements of political drivers? 
3. Keeping Current with Technology –– What are the most critical client/server to J2EE migration activities? 
4. Maintenance –– What is the proper balance between new development and maintenance of existing systems?

The outcome of each discussion group was a list of ten priorities for FY 2004. Today, the second day of the retreat, group leaders will present their list and ranking justification to all the retreat participants The entire team then will consolidate the separate lists into an overall eRA 2004 project priority list.

eRA Awards New Contracts for Operations and Integration

eRA awarded two critical support contracts on September 15. IBM will begin providing systems integration services, and RNSolutions will take over operations functions. In addition, requests for quotes (RFQs) are out to vendors for user support and software design and development services. eRA expects to make these awards in October.

With its Northrop Grumman Information Technology (NGIT) software development contract about to expire on November 30, eRA decided to terminate its other IT support contracts and issue new solicitations based on current project needs. eRA has developed into a large and complex, high-profile system that requires mature processes and rigorous oversight.

When the IMPAC II project (eRA’s predecessor) began in 1994, there were two contracts, one for development and the other for Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V), and 35-40 contractor staff. By 1999, the required software applications were developed and deployed, and the project progressed to the production stage. As NIH staff moved off the legacy mainframe system and began using the new graphical interfaces on their desktops, they identified problems, demanded more functionality and better accountability. It was at this time that Dr. John McGowan stepped in as project manager. Recognizing that the project was seriously underfunded, he succeeded in obtaining a much greater share of the NIH budget. 

As the project expanded during 2000-2003, eRA solicited support services as they were needed. Contracts were awarded for analysis, architecture, outreach, help desk, data quality, integration, operations and planning; the number of contractors grew to over 200. In some cases, multiple contractors supplied the same services. Facing the upcoming expiration of the NGIT contract, eRA leadership decided to reevaluate the entire support environment and develop an acquisition structure compatible with project status and goals.

The new contract configuration consists of four categories:

Integration	1 contract for analysis, architecture & integration testing.
Operations	1 contract for system, data, & network administration.
User Support	1 contract for Helpdesk services.
Design/ Development	4-5 contracts for specific tasks.

The eRA team has made every effort to minimize the impact on services throughout the transition to the new contracts. There will be a period of overlap during which old and new contractors will work together. For example, the upcoming November 7 deployment will be conducted by the old staff with the new staff observing. Although there will be a change of vendors, eRA architecture, database environment and functionality will remain constant.               

eRA asks for your patience during the upcoming months as we move to a better contract topology. Direct questions about eRA contracts to James Cain, director of the Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS), at cainj@mail.nih.gov or 301-435-0920. Report problems to the Helpdesk.  

DEIS Creates Systems Management and Support Branch

The Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS) recently created the Systems Management and Support Branch (SMSB) by merging the Systems Management and Operations Branch (SMOB) with the User Support Branch (USB). Tim Twomey, former USB chief, will assume leadership of the new branch.

There always has been a great deal of interaction between the two branches. The primary function of the former SMOB (commonly called Operations or Ops) was to manage the eRA technical infrastructure of servers and databases and to provide support for networking, hardware configuration, problem resolution and capacity planning. The SOMB team and USB routinely cooperated in the testing and deployment of new hardware and software releases. Operations also partnered with the Center for Information Technology (CIT), the USB and IC technical staff to ensure that eRA systems worked properly, performed adequately, and continued to meet the needs of the NIH community.

USB and SMOB also worked together to address user problems and requests. As the first line of contact for end users, the USB Helpdesk responded to user calls and email by troubleshooting and resolving problems, if possible. In the case of complex technical issues, the Helpdesk frequently called SMOB for assistance. The merger of the branches is intended to facilitate eRA’s responsiveness to the NIH extramural community.

For more information on the DEIS reorganization, contact Jim Cain, director of the Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS), at cainj@mail.nih.gov or 301-435-0920.