eRA STEERING COMMITTEE MINUTES
JUNE 28, 2001

Attendees:
Marvin Cassman, Ph.D., NIGMS, Chairperson
Wendy Baldwin, Ph.D., OER
Gahan Breithaupt, NINDS
Yvonne DuBuy, NCDCR
Ellie Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., CSR
Alan Graeff, CIT
Marvin Kalt, Ph.D., NCI
John McGowan, Ph.D., OER
Martha Pine, Executive Secretary

Members absent: Ed Donahue, NHLBI

Guest Present: Cressie de Rose, CIT

Note: Material in italics was added as clarification by Dr. McGowan upon reviewing the minutes of the meeting.

Dr. Cassman welcomed the Committee and thanked them for agreeing to meet on a date different from the normal schedule. He asked Dr. McGowan to proceed with his updates about the project before proceeding to the agenda topics.

Dr. McGowan announced that he was recruiting some key staff to help with major management challenges. First, he explained that Jerry Stuck from the National Science Foundation would be joining the project on an IPA on a part-time trial basis shortly. He has been involved with the early work on the Federal Commons and has established credibility with the research community both because of his extensive work on the Federal Demonstration Partnership and because of his work on establishing the NSF e-grants system known as "Fastlane." He has strong IT and people skills. Dr. McGowan explained that several staff and contractors are already on board working on the Commons effort and that another analyst is soon to be hired. Presently the push is to complete the requirements analysis with input from the Commons Working Group and the NIH Community. The requirements for the design of the module for the non-competing grant application will go to the EPMC in July. The results will be taken to the Commons Working Group in August, in order to try to bring the requirements to closure. Another meeting of the Commons Working Group is scheduled in September to follow up on any unresolved issues and to start examining reengineering the competing application process.

In response to a question about staffing for the project, Dr. McGowan pointed out that recruitment continues to proceed ahead of schedule. (Slide 10) This means that staffing is not a rate-limiting step on the project. The goal is to be fully staffed by December 2001. The issue is how to set up mentoring teams of existing analysts and developers so that they are knowledgeable about the business areas and also function within the framework of development in the contract. This is a major education effort, because existing staff who know the business process are also learning the new rational unified process (RUP) for software development. Dr. McGowan reported that Earl Hodgkins and Nancy Vess, the Budget Officer and Deputy Budget Officer respectively of NIGMS, have agreed to join the project team to serve as group advocates for the budget community and to provide other advice on cross-cutting issues. In addition, they will serve as a link between eRA and the NBS.

Dr. McGowan next explained that he has been in discussions with Logicon (formerly ROW Sciences) about their reorganizing their internal management and organizational structures to reflect the integration of the Commons effort with the IMPAC II effort. (Until recently, the Commons effort was undertaken in partnership with a different contractor.) Mr. Graeff mentioned that senior management in the Department of Health and Human Services is most interested in the Federal Commons effort and its progress toward being a reality. He thinks that DHHS will permit each agency to mount its own eRA effort tailored to its mission, but that all will be expected to link seamlessly to the Federal Commons.

With regard to agenda topic 1, progress on the budget priorities approved by the Steering Committee, Dr. McGowan referred to slides 8 and 9, both of which illustrate how the project plans to publicly track the progress on key tasks and budget priorities. The Committee expressed support for both of these displays, saying that they would be very useful both to the Steering Committee and to the broader NIH community. The Committee suggested that the Gantt chart lines use colors other than those to be used in the Status Column. (These latter "traffic signal-like" designations report on whether the activity is on time and on budget or whether deviations from milestones and budget warrant management attention.) Dr. McGowan agreed to change the colors of the Gantt chart lines to make it clear that the three colors relate only to requirements analysis, development and initial deployment. He further explained that if an asterisk (*) were to appear alongside a Gantt chart line, this would denote a change from plans for any given phase of an effort. Dr. McGowan said that these charts would be posted on the eRA website in July. Dr. Cassman asked that Dr. McGowan notify the Steering Committee when this indeed happens.

Dr. McGowan then used slides 11 through 20 to highlight developments in contract support for the eRA project. Referring to slide 11, Dr. McGowan pointed out that Z-Tech had been engaged in order to help both with moving IMPAC II to Web functionality and with the Commons effort. Two contractors are working on the scanning project, a pilot designed to prepare NIH for electronic receipt of grant applications. The Scanning Group, led by Dr. Hausman, NIAMS, is considering how to ramp up, the next phase toward the eventual goal of scanning all grant applications at NIH. All grants being received by NCI may be the next addition to the pilot, since they already have a scanning capability in place that can perhaps be readily integrated with the eRA effort. At present, in IMPAC II, NIH can use the "grant folder" button on any AIDS grant application currently being received by the NIH to view the scanned in grant application. The work of Denali Associates, referred to in slides 11-17, is primarily focused on performing a short-term risk assessment. The contractor will help define what constitutes "project success," will assess what the barriers and challenges are to achieving success, and will suggest strategies for addressing those. For example, one outcome might be a suggestion that new contractor staff be trained on the fundamentals of extramural NIH so that they quickly gain a big picture view of the NIH's grantmaking goals and processes. With regard to the work of the IV and V contractor, Soza and Company, Limited, this group will assist the project leaders over the long-term with project oversight and management support. Slides 18-20 summarize key tasks for this contractor, including their assessing the costs and schedules for the project and comparing these to industry standards. Both contractor costs and government costs attributed to the eRA project will be scrutinized. The contractor's initial work should help the project establish a baseline for preparing future budget estimates. This group will also facilitate quarterly budget reviews of all projects and tasks, and will facilitate other management-oriented meetings and efforts. Dr. Kalt asked Dr. McGowan how the project would assess whether it is meeting needs broadly, rather than simply meeting the needs of identified groups like grants management, review, and the like. Dr. McGowan said that he thought that Denali and Associates would be looking at such aspects as whether the project is making adjustments to meet new needs or accommodate to new technologies and whether cooperation with the grantee community is evident in making such broad assessments.

Referring to slides 21-23, Dr. McGowan explained that he is using both Creative Approaches Unlimited and the NIH Office of the Ombudsman to help facilitate the change management aspects of the eRA project, especially within the Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS). As the project moves to phase out IMPAC I, on which a number of DEIS staff have been working, these employees will need either to move into roles actively supporting IMPAC II and the Commons or to move into other career paths. There are 53 employees in DEIS affected by these changes on the horizon.

Having addressed the IV and V item on the agenda, Dr. McGowan then moved to the next agenda item, the retirement of the IMPAC I system in favor of IMPAC II functionality. He shared with the Committee a draft memorandum proposed to be sent by the Steering Committee chairperson to the IC Directors, with broad cc distribution. The purpose of the memorandum and attached chart is to send the institutes and centers a strong message of encouragement to move away from reliance on IMPAC I. The accompanying chart will delineate the projected dates of availability of IMPAC II functionality to meet common needs and will clarify the sunset date of IMPAC I. That date is projected to be October 2002. The Committee made a number of suggestions about the wording of the memorandum, largely focused on providing both meaningful examples of the impact of making this transition and a clear date for ending the data dump from IMPAC II to IMPAC I. They thought that the memorandum should offer help to the ICs' staff responsible for making the transition. Dr. McGowan said that his staff had already discussed the transition dates with the IMPAC II tech rep group and that the ICs said that they could meet the projected dates. Dr. Baldwin agreed to prepare another draft of the memorandum. Mr. Breithaupt suggested that this would be like a "mini-Y2K" challenge, with the IT community having to work toward a date certain for ensuring future mission critical IT functionality. Others on the Committee recommended that the Chief Information Officers of the ICs receive a cc and that the IMPAC II tech reps regularly discuss transition issues and successes at their meetings. Dr. Cassman agreed to share the next draft of the memorandum with the Committee. Dr. McGowan said that he plans to send to the IMPAC II tech rep group, to EPMC and to the group advocates a detailed list of everything that it will take to retire IMPAC I. He pointed out that much of this will not be visible to nor will involve the ICs.

With regard to other relevant developments, Mr. Graeff reported that Janet Hale, the CIO designee for DHHS, (also the Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget designee), had attended a meeting of DHHS Chief Information Officers. She appears intent on reframing the Department's push to achieve "one department" with regard to the IT enterprise. Mr. Graeff said that Ms. Hale has had experience with planning large enterprise systems and seems to appreciate how herculean that task is. There undoubtedly will be significant further developments on the DHHS front that may have a bearing on the eRA effort, as Secretary Thompson's vision of the future of IT in the Department takes shape. Dr. McGowan reported that he personally has not heard from DHHS about any interest in accelerating or altering the eRA project.

Mr. Graeff then distributed to the Committee the Funding Advisory Review Board's (FARB) budget recommendation to the IC Directors regarding enterprise system funding for FY2002. The FARB had recommended a 5% reduction from the original BoG submission. This was discussed at the IC Directors June 25 budget retreat. Mr. Graeff thought that Mr. Itteilag might urge Dr. Kirschstein, the Acting Director, NIH, to restore the 5% reduction, since he had expressed some reservations at the budget retreat.

Next Mr. Graeff explained that one of his staff, Perry Plexico and some contractor personnel, are developing an issue paper regarding portal technology and other aspects relevant to both the NIH Business System and eRA efforts. There are infrastructure and knowledge management issues, among others, that need to be addressed. This issue paper will be developed in the near term and will help the NIH and the enterprise project managers define next steps.

Dr. Ehrenfeld asked Dr. McGowan if "pre-review" functionality would be part of the Commons or would be developed separately from that effort. Dr. McGowan reported that work on "pre-review" would begin later this fiscal year.

Dr. McGowan then gave a brief demonstration of the "grant folder" functionality that included the scanned in image of an AIDS application. He reminded the Committee that the goal is to have all applications scanned into IMPAC II 15 months from now. Some committee members asked if Dr. McGowan had security concerns about making grant applications so readily available to the entire NIH community. Dr. McGowan replied that this is an important IC internal control issue and that extramural staff must be educated about the importance of this "privileged" information. Heretofore, extramural staff did not have access to all applications across the NIH; however, in the future they will. Dr. Cassman mentioned that overall the benefits of having IMPAC II information available to extramural NIH staff outweigh the risks, but that attention to the risks is extremely important.

Dr. McGowan said that at the next meeting he plans to provide the Committee with a more in-depth explanation of how the group advocates and project team work on the various aspects of the eRA project. He said that he might also have more information about some aspects of the budget for the project.