eRA Project Team Meeting
Date: February 6, 2001
Time: 9:00 am
Location: 6700B Rockledge, Room 1205

Next Meeting: February 27, 2001, 6700B Rockledge, Room 1205 at 9:00 a.m.

John McGowan presented an overview of the expanded agenda and briefly mentioned the items to be covered (see attached Powerpoint file).

Announcements: A new Office of the Federal Commons, under Paul Markovitz will coordinate NIH and Federal Commons activities. A new Office for Planning, Analysis and Evaluation (OPAE), under Megan Columbus will coordinate outreach products, group advocate support and eRA reporting and documentation. A Memo of Understanding (MOU) is being developed to enable CIT staff to assist eRA.

Status Reports: In future meetings, regular project implementation status reports will be included on the agenda. Jim Cain reported the current focus is preparing for the migration of the database to Oracle 8i and the migration of tools to Oracle 6i, over the holiday weekend of February 16th. Efforts are also focused on server and equipment upgrades, developing system architecture for the new Commons (to be presented at the next meeting), and working with ORS, CSR, and Steve Hausman on the scanning initiative. Bobbi Spitzberg reported on 3 system failures experienced during January, two of which were related to power failures and the third a software bug that was fixed with a patch. As a result, power supplies have been reconfigured, voltage monitors installed and other measures are being considered to ensure a more stable environment. Disaster tolerance/recovery plans are being tested on the new test platform. Thor encouraged publicizing remedial plans to the user community since reliability is a key factor and customers need system reliability. Jim Cain pointed out that system maintenance and upgrades are scheduled around the main calendar to ensure system availability at critical times. All desktops will be upgraded in conjunction with migration to Oracle 8i.

Budget: Group Advocates are not required to complete the budget paperwork previously distributed. The Group Advocates are to work with Functional Teams to think about FY2002 budget so everything is ready when the format is fixed. Group Advocates were advised to map priority expectations to reality. FY2000 is the year to regroup; FY2001 is the year to ramp up; FY2002 the year to role out.

Roles and Responsibilities: The Group Advocates are to work through Functional Implementation Teams to articulate a vision, identify priorities, propose design changes, and communicate/coordinate with project team and other relevant groups. Plans must be vetted through the Project Team to link to priorities and budgets. Issues: How much granularity to track (Project Team to be prepared to discuss/decide at next meeting). What about cross-functional areas? How to achieve buy-in? Need to budget for culture change?

Action Items:

• Project team members should review roles and responsibilities for both the project and implementation teams. (see attached "Priority Setting for eRA Projects and Evaluation Criteria")
• Group advocates should be confirming 2001 priorities with their communities and developing FY 2002 prioritizations.
• Chip Groh will contact project team members about getting group advocates registered to use Microsoft Project.
• Advocates need to identify key decision points as they decide how to monitor the project and notify Chip Groh (grohn@od.nih.gov ) to have these decision points built into Microsoft Project.
• Microsoft Project cannot run on Netscape. Project Team members will need Explorer in order to use Project for monitoring.
• OER will provide advocates with a fact sheet for the prioritization process (see two attachments "Guidance for Developing Implementation Plans" and "Priority Setting for eRA Projects & Evaluation Criteria").
• Technical Advisors from OER will be assigned to each advocate by the next meeting.

Other: Meeting schedule is changed. Project Team will meet the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month. Next meeting is February 27th.

Attendees:
John McGowan, Eileen Bradley, Carlos Caban, Jim Cain, Dave Carter, Cathy Coleman, Megan Columbus, Zoe Ann C Sewell, Michael Cox, Bud Erickson, Vickie Fadeley, Larry Fanning, Thor Fjellstedt, Carla Flora, Donna Frahm, Ali Ghassemzadeh, Cassandra Gibbs, Andy Greenleaf, Marcia Hahn, Maria Kosky, Carol Martin, Greg Milman, Bob Moore, Pete Morton, Carl Newcomer, Richard Panniers, Bob Reifsnider, Belinda Seto, Mark Siegert, Jay Silverman, Richard Somwaru, Bobbi Spitzberg, George Stone, Derrick Tabor, Jim Tucker, Tim Twomey, Virginia Van Brunt, Sherry Zucker

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