eRA Project Team Meeting
Date: November 14, 2000
Time: 9:00 am
Location: 6700B Rockledge, Room 2208

Attendees:
John McGowan, Teresa Nesbitt, Belinda Seto, Charles MacKay, Jan Hetterman, Dave Carter, George Stone, Marcia Hahn, Thor Fjellstedt, Bob Moore, Gregory Milman, Sherry Zucker, Zoe-Ann C. Sewell, Claire Benfer, Tim Twomey, Jim Cain, Christopher Beisel, Richard Panniers, Chip Groh, Linda Christoferson, Cassandra Gibbs, Dan Ryabinsky Michael Cox, Kirt Vener, Daniel Fox, Donna J. Frahm, Carla Flora, Jim Tucker, Andy Greenleaf, Carol Alderson, Jay Silverman, Megan Columbus, Carlos Caban, Virginia Van Brunt

Next Meeting: December 12, 2000, 6700B Rockledge, Room 1205
Meetings cancelled for November 28th and December 26th, 2000

Meeting Notes (main items):

1. Presentation: Michael Cox and Andy Greenleaf gave a presentation, "Technical Concept for Grant Application Scanning in eRA/IMPAC II". Kirt Vener raised several issues based on the NCI experience. (PowerPoint presentation attached). Action: The topic will come back for the next meeting to decide whether to accept a phased in approach or do both phase I and II at the same time.
Phase I - would provide a button to view the PDF grant application within each module and allow specific text searches using an OCR back end within the same application.
Phase II - would provide automatic indexing for navigating within the application to specific parts and would have specific tags used most frequently by a community so when the application was viewed those specific pages would be made available first.
Phase III - would involve other features identified in Phase I or II and the chance for business process re-engeneering.

2. Presentation: Greg Milman gave a brief presentation on the form 398 redesign. The redesigned 398 is a PDF form which will make completion of the form easier for universities and research institutions. The 398 package is scheduled to be completed by the end of November. The form will be pilot tested with incoming SBIR applications received by NIAID. Greg requested feedback from attendees on improvements for the form.

3. Presentation: John McGowan presented material on the level of support that can be anticipated from contractors and OER staff. He then asked for a discussion of what level of monitoring and oversight would be appropriate for the group advocates. Several options were discussed from the appointment of team leaders to take on specific business plans to how the management contract could be utilized. Various scenarios for the involvement of group advocates were presented. The concept of committing to a 1 or 2 day retreat to establish realistic expectations of what can be achieved this year for the business plans was agreed upon as a first step, anticipating that the budget would be made available for the project. Action: Group advocates were asked to reflect on the topic. We will have a presentation on Microsoft Project Manager in the next meeting to help show the level of tracking that will be available and to establish what standard milestones will be posted on the web as points to help facilitate project management. Advocates are requested to provide feedback on their views of roles and responsibilities to the ID Workgroup or JAD Group.

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