eRA: Project Management Team Meeting Minutes -- August 28, 2001

Project Management Team Meeting Minutes
August 28, 2001

eRA Project Team Meeting
Date: August 28, 2001
Time: 9:00 am
Location: 6700B Rockledge, Room 1202
Chair: John McGowan
Next Meeting: September 11, 2001, 6700B Rockledge, Room 1205, 9:00 am

Action Items

1. (Ramesh Sarma) - Determine whether Oracle database 8.1.7.2 upgrade requires client-side upgrade.

2. (Jim Cain) - Present Oracle 8.1.7.2 implementation plan at next Project Team meeting.

3. (Tim Twomey) - Provide tool for reporting on grants eligible for closeout.

4. (Jim Cain) - Assign system architect to review options for grants closeout system.

5. (Jim Cain/Mike Cox) - Order disk storage for scanned applications.

6. (Jim Cain) - Draft recommendation for Steering Committee regarding who will bear costs of scanning.

7. (Advocates) - Contact Megan Columbus to volunteer to participate in CTG "Granting Agency of the Future" focus groups on September 5-6.

8. (Wally Schaffer) - Discuss SITS redesign at future Project Team meeting.

9. (Krishna Collie) - Explore possibility of holding mini-workshop for program and budget staff.

Presentations and Discussion Topics

1. Report on CWG Meeting of August 16 (See Attachment A) - George Stone

George Stone reported on the 3-hour Commons Working Group session at the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) ERA VI Conference recently held in Portland, Oregon.

a. Commons Development (Slides 2-5)

X-Train Version 1.5 is in final testing; deployment is scheduled for the fall. It was decided to delay the design phase for Version 2.0 until 1.5 has been in production for three months. This will allow adequate time for users to provide feedback. There were many suggestions during the X-Train demo.

eRA is proceeding on schedule with Commons Version 2 development; the CDR was held on August 20. See the Rational Unified Process (RUP) diagram for the development plan. The next step is to draft standards for screens-headings, icons, navigation tools-and present them for discussion at a future meeting.

b. SNAP Reengineering (Slides 6-7)

The CWG endorsed recommendations approved by EPMC on July 18. (See Attachment B). George thanked Katina Jocktane for compiling SNAP business process survey results. (See Attachment C.) This survey was conducted to corroborate opinions expressed at the CWG meeting in May.

There are distinct differences between changes for the paper and e-SNAP, with clear incentives for electronic submission (e.g., later due date). The e-SNAP Version 2.0 pilot, which will incorporate approved business process changes, is targeted for late 2002.

c. Commons Interface Specifications Survey Results (See Attachment D)

Institutional Reporting Requirements - As expected, participants desire the ability to query all fields in the database. The next step is to formalize reporting requirements into specifications. The survey also provided feedback on proposed reports based on roles (PI, AO, AA, SO). The group clearly wants to further limit accessibility to data in the user's own department.

Single Point of Data Ownership - There was consensus that we cannot depend on the PI to update personal profile information. We need to build delegation authority into the system. This capability is available in the NSF system, and Jerry Stuck is sharing the method with Analysts. Pete Morton suggested requiring PI's to authenticate their profile; the NSF system requires this validation for application submission.

Given the feedback from the grantee community, George plans to meet with Bob Moore, Sara Silver and Maria Bukowski to readdress the personal profile and discuss strategies for ensuring people data integrity. They will draft recommendations to NIH staff. Jim Cain stressed the need for introducing standards and rigor to coincide with data cleanup.

The CWG also specified that the NIH Commons profile must allow for interaction with third party software such as Community of Science (COS), ScienceWise and university systems. John McGowan asked whether it was advisable to engage others now regarding API standards. He suggested inviting COS and ScienceWise to participate in a coordination session at the upcoming eRA retreat. It may be possible to use the SBIR U43 mechanism to finance cooperative development.

DUNS Number As Unique Institutional Identifier - The CWG agreed that the DUNS is a good choice; however, the DUNS 9+4 will not work to identify organizational components. Also, since each username will be unique, entering the DUNS will not be required to log on.
Organizational Hierarchy - There are four basic organizational levels: institution; school; division and department. The NIH has developed standards to index by institution and school; however, division and department are in non-standard plain text. We need to develop a method to auto-index these subordinate levels.

Institutional Approvals - It is not feasible to incorporate workflow into the Commons software. The existing approach will be enhanced to enable customization of rights within a role type through the use of a "rights menu".
Next CWG Meeting - The next meeting will most likely be on November 15 in conjunction with the NCURA conference. In preparation, Al D'Amico is drafting GUI screen guidelines. The NIH also needs to formalize plans to implement SNAP changes and develop a method to index by institutional division and department.

2. Oracle 8.1.7.2 Migration Plans - Ali Ghassemzadeh

Ali Ghassemzadeh reported that the "memory leak" problem appears to be fixed by the Oracle patch developed for Version 8.1.7.1. DBAs plan to remove the flushing mechanism next week.

After the end of the fiscal year, the Oracle database will be upgraded to Version 8.1.7.2, which will permanently resolve the memory bug and lesser problems. We recently put up a full replica of the production environment for training. We now have enough space for another full replica to test Version 8.1.7.2 beginning next week. B-file testing will also be conducted.

Jim Cain stated that DEIS is on track to deploy the database upgrade on Veterans' Day weekend. Tools will not be upgraded at that time. There were questions about the need for a client-side upgrade and about the effect on the application release schedule. Staff will research these matters, and Jim Cain will present the Oracle 8.1.7.2 implementation plan at the next meeting.

3. Integrating a Grant Close-Out System (GCS) - Michael Loewe

Marcia Hahn informed the group that integrating a GCS is a funded initiative that ranks 12th on the eRA priority list. The demonstration of the NIMH system at the May 16 Enterprise and Extension Systems Workshop generated a great deal of interest.
Marcia then introduced Mike Loewe (NIAMS) who chairs the GM Lead Users Closeout Working Group. The objective of this group is to identify grants management requirements for an automated GCS that will be a part of IMPAC II. Representatives from OD, NICHD, NCI, NEI, NIAAA, NHGRI, NINR, NIA and NIDDK participate. Mike reported on the group's first meeting on June 29 (see Attachment E for minutes).

Requirements -- There are three known automated systems currently in use at NIH (NCI, NIGMS and NIMH). The NIMH GCS addresses all basic requirements including:

monthly report of grants ending and eligible for closeout;

generation of automatic email to inform grantees of outstanding documents;

status within closeout process (pending closeout, being closed, etc.);

ability to capture the accession number for files sent to the NRC and print a manifest.

Policy Issues -- Pete Morton asked if Mike's group was considering incentives for getting outstanding paperwork from grantees. Bud Erickson said that NCI and NIMH will not fund new grants if the grantee has not fulfilled requirements for closing out previous grants. Carla Flora stated that the issue of holding up awards came up during Population Tracking meetings. There seems to be different practices among the ICs. Marcia explained that she had conferred with Carol Tippery on policy issues prior to convening the GCS Working Group. She added that the NIH has been cited on GAO CFO audits for closeout deficiencies. All agreed that it would be useful to be able to generate a report of outstanding documents by institution.

Marcia Hahn also stressed the importance of the big picture, i.e., cradle to grave electronic grant processing. This includes FSR submission via the Commons and Final Invention Report submission via I-Edison.

Architecture -- Tim Twomey continued with a discussion of the technical challenges of integrating a GCS into IMPAC II. The NIMH system is coded in Cold Fusion and uses the IRDB. This is a reporting database which does not support transaction processing. One option is to add code to the existing GM module or to wrap the GCS into the GM redesign slated for 2002. Another is to create a module modeled on the NIMH screens using J2EE architecture.

Decisions - The Project Team agreed that a GCS satisfying all basic IC requirements will be integrated into eRA. Jim Cain will have a system architect analyze the options. In the interim, Tim Twomey will provide a tool for reporting on grants eligible for closeout. Marcia stressed the need to let the community know that eRA is working on a solution. JJ suggested a GCS discussion at the upcoming eRA retreat.

4. Scanning Update - Steve Hauser

Steve Hauser indicated that pilots (AIDS, BISTI, BECON) have helped disseminate the philosophy of electronic documents and prepare for scanning on a large scale. Spring 2002 is the target date for scanning all incoming applications.

The new Office of Research Services (ORS) digital copiers, scheduled to go online in mid-December, produce TIFF images. Steve proposed capturing scanned images for all January receipt date applications to be reviewed by CSR (about ¾ of all applications.) To accomplish this objective, the following issues need to be addressed:

acquisition of disk space in terabytes to store images for perpetuity;

availability of sufficient bandwidth to transfer images to storage and to retrieve images via the Grant Folder;

ramp up of contractor support to convert the TIFF images to PDF, index and bookmark (Dave Carter indicated that the current contractor is prepared to provide 4-5 full-time staff);

decision from Steering Committee as to who will assume the costs of scanning. CSR has borne the cost of paper reproduction; the cost of the scanning pilots has been charged back to the ICs;

enterprise policy and standards for converting historical paper documents to scanned images.

JJ requested that plans for an accelerated scheduled not be announced at this time.

5. Peer Review Update - Eileen Bradley

Eileen Bradley announced her IRG's plans to increase scanning levels to approximately 1000 applications this fall. Proposals will be sent out to reviewers on CDs (primary reviewers will continue to receive paper copies). Scanned applications will be available to SRAs through the Grant Folder.

Eileen thanked everyone for the successful deployment of Peer Review 2.1.0.0 on August 24. All scores now must be entered and released in IMPAC II for percentile calculation. Thus far, no major problems have been reported.

The next major undertakings of the Review Users Group (RUG) will be summary statement deployment and integration of the NIAID electronic review module. The summary statement deployment will most likely be delayed, but there is good reason for the "yellow" light status. This topic will be on the agenda at a future Project Team meeting.

Announcements and Status Reports

1. Inside eRA - Christine Rumney stated that the next issue will be published on August 31 or September 4. She thanked Advocates for input and feedback and encouraged them to suggest topics for future articles. eRA issues and plans are first discussed at Project Team meetings; the newsletter then serves as the vehicle to legitimize and disseminate the information. The next Partners edition will be published the third week of September.

2. Secretary Thompson's Visit - JJ reported that although the Secretary's visit to EPMC was very brief, he did attend a 40-minute eRA presentation later in the morning. Dr. Baldwin gave a briefing, and Tim Twomey demonstrated ECB and the Grants Folder. (See Attachment F.) The Secretary asked many questions and seemed impressed. He expects project goals to be achieved in 2004.

3. eRA Participation Matrix - The latest tally shows 604 NIH staff engaged in the project. We are preparing a draft memo from the Steering Committee to IC directors. The memo will give recognition to the participants and ask directors to review their IC's level of representation.

4. Granting Agency of the Future - Representatives from the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at SUNY Albany will visit on September 5 and 6 to learn about best practices and gather requirements. Volunteers are needed for focus groups and interviews. Contact Megan Columbus if you would like to participate.

5. Denali Risk Assessment -Megan Columbus reported that Denali has visited Logicon, the ICs, and Advocates. They are close to issuing their recommendations.

6. SITS Redesign - Tim Twomey suggested that this topic be addressed at a future meeting. Wally Schaffer, Advocate for Training, agreed to pick up the task.

7. Program Portal JAD - Bud Erickson announced that the JAD will hold its first meeting on September 10. Sherry Zucker and Krishna Collie will lead the JAD team which has broad representation from the ICs. They are planning to draft a CDR document by late November. Bud would like to demo existing IC systems such as NCI's NOW. JJ suggested holding a mini-workshop in October for program and budget staff. Krishna will explore this possibility.

Attendees

Eileen Bradley, Carla Flora, Gregory Milman, Ramesh Sarma, Jim Cain, Ali Ghassemzadeh, Madeline Monheit, Wally Schaffer, Dave Carter, Scarlett Gibb, Bob Moore, Sara Silver, Megan Columbus, Cassandra Gibbs, Larry Morton, Chris Seker, Krishna Collie, Andy Greenleaf, Pete Morton, Jay Silverman, Zoe-Ann Copeland, Marcia Hahn, Richard Panniers, George Stone, Michael Cox, Steve Hausman, Yvette Porter, Jerry Stuck, Jack Dennis, Katina Jocktane, Earl Rasmussen, Jim Tucker, Bud Erickson, Mike Loewe, Bob Reifsnider, Tim Twomey, Thor Fjellstedt, John McGowan, Christine Rumney, Virginia Van Brunt

Attachments

A. Presentation on the Commons Working Group Meeting of August 16, 2001
B. Proposed Changes to SNAP Business Process
C. SNAP Business Process Survey Consensus
D. NIH Commons Interface Specifications Survey Consensus
E. Minutes of Grant Closeout Working Group of Jun 29 01
F. ERA Presentation to Secretary Thompson on August 22, 2