eRA STEERING COMMITTEE MINUTES
August 16, 2001

Attendees:
Marvin Cassman, Ph.D., NIGMS, Chairperson
John McGowan, Ph.D., OER
Yvonne duBuy, NIDCR
Marvin Kalt, Ph.D., NCI
Al Graeff, CIT
Martha Pine, NIGMS, Executive Secretary

Guests:
Brent Stanfield, Ph.D., CSR, attending for Ellie Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., CSR
Jack Dennis, representing the eRA contractor Denali Associates

Absent:
Wendy Baldwin, Ph.D., OER
Gahan Breithaupt, NINDS
Ed Donahue, NHLBI

Dr. Cassman welcomed those in attendance and remarked that absences during the summer vacation months seemed to be unavoidable. He turned to Al Graeff to provide an update on IT issues in which the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) leadership has expressed an interest, especially those that might affect the eRA project. Mr. Graeff explained that DHHS was in the final stages of drafting a five-year plan for IT at DHHS that focuses on administrative IT concerns. Hence, the plan speaks to security, network standards, administrative enterprise IT systems (such as the EHRP and the financials in the NBS), and computer assets management, including inventory control. The DHHS envisions a 10% reduction in servers each year. They also are proposing an electronic IT management tool that would allow DHHS to know what is running on each desktop in DHHS. Mr. Graeff pointed out that eRA was not among the administrative systems included in the draft five-year DHHS IT plan. He noted, however, that the proposed annual reduction in servers might have an impact on the eRA project. Committee members asked whether NIH could demonstrate linkage between the progress toward e-grants that eRA affords and the number of servers available to the project. Mr. Graeff assured the Committee that he had been making such arguments in discussions with DHHS. He said that if NIH has to make server reductions or take other steps to conform to DHHS plans, he will make a top priority protecting NIH's core business systems.

With regard to IT management officials at DHHS, Mr. Graeff explained that Janet Hale, the nominee for Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget (ASMB), has not yet won confirmation. In the past the person in the ASMB role has been the DHHS CIO. It is not clear if this will continue. With regard to the FY2003 budget, it is also not clear what the DHHS focus on administrative costs and positions will mean for IT.

Dr. Cassman then asked Dr. McGowan to provide an update on the eRA project, to comment on reaction to the memorandum from the Steering Committee that had outlined IMPAC I sunset dates, and to discuss the rollout in July of new eRA software. Dr. McGowan used a series of slides as he discussed these points. (Slides are attached below.) Showing Slide 3, Dr. McGowan mentioned that an eRA presentation was on the agenda for the visit of DHHS Secretary Thompson to NIH the week of August 20. He planned to demonstrate CRISP on the Web, electronic Council books, and e-grant folders and to offer estimates to the savings that might accrue from NIH movement to eRA in these functional areas. Referring to Slide 4, he then reported that the memorandum from the Steering Committee to the IC Directors that presented the sunset dates for IMPAC I functionality had generated positive comments. In his informal discussions with staff in ICs, Dr. McGowan has heard that staff welcomed the clarity and specificity of the memorandum and thought that the encouragement to ICs to work toward the dates in the memorandum was important. He also mentioned that a "memory leak," caused by a problem with the Oracle software, is causing some problems with IMPAC II. The project team has informed the IC community and asked that ad hoc queries against the production database be limited for the time being. The project team is trying patches and exploring other ways to address the problem. Slide 5 shows a steady increase in use of IMPAC II, largely driven by increased use of the grants management and review modules. Poor use of the ICO module persists.

Dr. McGowan noted that recruitment onto the project continues to run ahead of schedule. Slide 6 illustrates this. Project Management is looking to bringing to the eRA team a full-time consultant from an IC. (Slide 9) His/her role will be both to facilitate IC use of eRA and to learn the functionality of the ICs' extension systems in order to gather ideas about requirements for future modifications to eRA modules. Dr. McGowan indicated that some in the NIH community have expressed an interest in extending database capabilities in QVR to support ICs' ability to capture scientific coding. A team consisting of members of the ECB, STARS, and other coding groups is being assembled to look at various IC coding systems, including NCI's and NIAID's, in order to begin building NIH consensus about how to approach developing coding capability. This will be a topic of discussion at the November retreat of the project team at which FY2002 budget priorities will be identified. Some Committee members cautioned that a number of ICs are presently exploring refinements to their current coding systems and/or adoption of entirely new systems and that it is important that both the ICs and the project team know what is currently being contemplated regarding coding. Dr. McGowan said that he envisioned an eRA coding tool that would allow the ICs a good deal of flexibility in how they code projects and what they code for. Mr. Graeff pointed out that CIT is about to bring on board a business intelligence staff member who will be charged with proposing how NIH might develop reporting tools that would draw on all enterprise systems, rather than having each enterprise system build its own unique reporting tools. Similarly, the business intelligence staff person will try to make sure that all enterprise systems draw on the same information submitted once by external sources, rather than having members of the external community submit information multiple times to the NIH. For example, an entity doing both contract and grant business with the NIH should not have to submit common information to the NIH more than once. Returning to the coding issue, several members of the Committee asked if anyone is exploring whether artificial intelligence (AI) software can be effectively used, for example, at grant application intake, instead of having NIH staff code projects. Dr. McGowan reported that both NCI and NIAID have conducted pilot experiments using AI software. They have learned that AI software achieves about a 80-90% match with staff coding. He noted that AI software is very expensive and that it appears premature to bring AI into an enterprise system such as IMPAC II.

Slides 10, 11, and 12 represent the Rational Unified Process (RUP) that the eRA project will be using to design, develop and deploy eRA functionality. Slide 11 is perhaps the best illustration of the fact that this is an iterative process. That slide also points out that change management and configuration management are important factors in the success of the project. Dr. McGowan suspects that these are presently areas where the project is weaker than it should be. Slides 13 and 14 illustrate tools that are used internally on the project to document and monitor progress on moving to the J2EE architecture.

Next Dr. McGowan discussed the status of the joint workshop that NIH and NSF will sponsor and that is being organized by the Center for Technology in Government. The meeting is intended to have a visionary focus, that is, to offer views of what IT and organizational approaches might be needed in order to evaluate and manage research proposals in the future. (Slides 16 - 19) Members of the extramural community as well as NSF and NIH staff will participate in this effort. Dr. Kalt expressed some concern that this effort not try to design a "one size fits all" process. He noted that there are real differences among research efforts in science that warrant varied evaluation and management approaches and that NIH must be sure that government administration of funded research does not drive the process. Dr. McGowan acknowledged that there will always be a dynamic tension between the needs of the scientists and their institutions and the needs of the federal entity funding the research. Dr. McGowan said that the aim is not to collapse the process into one mechanism. Instead the project plans to do a technical analysis of the over 50 funding mechanisms at NIH to determine how many electronic application variations will be needed to accommodate to their requirements. A preliminary workshop will be held this fall with a second meeting envisioned for some time during the winter months. It is hoped that the results of these meetings will help shape the Federal Commons effort a few years out. Dr. McGowan reiterated that eRA is first going to tackle the submission of basic grant applications, such as the Type 5 application, prior to moving toward a visionary system. Dr. McGowan said that he is also contemplating using the Center for Technology in Government to conduct two evaluations. One would examine whether NIH's eRA has potential value across the DHHS and the second would evaluate whether NIH's progress toward integrating with the Federal Commons is or is not good.

Referring to Slides 20 and 21, Dr. McGowan proposed that the Steering Committee send out another memorandum to the IC Directors. This memorandum would ask them to consider whether those from their IC who presently serve on the eRA users or technical groups are the appropriate persons. It is critical that the IC representatives truly reflect the interests of their ICs and that they be empowered to speak for the ICs. Furthermore, Dr. McGowan wishes these IC representatives to communicate well back to the ICs, so that appropriate staff in the ICs are aware of eRA plans and developments. The goal would be to have each IC director inform Dr. McGowan of the official designees for the IC on each group. Tailored memorandums will need to be sent to each IC director, with a list of the current IC participants and the eRA groups on which they sit. ICs will be free to designate new representatives to groups on which they presently have none and to change representatives, if they wish, to eRA groups on which IC staff now serve.

Mr. Graeff asked Dr. McGowan and Dr. Cassman when the eRA project would be presenting an update to the IC Directors. Dr. Cassman said that his preference would be for Dr. McGowan to
make such reports at those points in time when major milestones have been achieved, so that significant progress can be showcased. A discussion ensued about whether the "grant folder" capability and other new functionality, such as QVR, warranted Dr. McGowan's making a presentation this fall to the IC Directors. Dr. Cassman and Mr. Graeff agreed that it is helpful to make the IC Directors aware of the significant strides being made on the eRA project.

In response to a question about training on or outreach concerning the new functionality of IMPAC II, Dr. McGowan said that in 2002, the eRA project will have "training" CDs available to help users learn new functionality, such as QVR.

Dr. McGowan reminded the Committee that the meeting of the Commons Working Group was being held on August 16 and 17 on the West Coast. He was confident that the proposals concerning Type 5 grants and progress reports would be accepted by the working group. He agreed to briefly touch on this at the next meeting of the Steering Committee. At that meeting, he also plans to explain "Project Central."

NOTE: The eRA website now includes information on the status of each eRA budget priority at the following url: http://era.nih.gov/projectmgnt/implementation/index.cfm
Once you click on this, you will view a page containing the "legend" that explains each aspect of the Gantt chart. The page offers you options for viewing the project tasks in various ways. If you wish to see how the budget priorities are proceeding, select the option titled "Sorted by priority number."