NIH eSubmission Update for PRAC Megan Columbus NIH Program Manager for Electronic Receipt of Grant A

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NIH eSubmission Updatefor PRACMegan
ColumbusNIH Program Manager for Electronic
Receipt of Grant Applications

• May 22, 2006

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eSubmission Is Becoming a Reality for NIH
Over 5,000 apps received electronically
Resource (G7, G8, G11, G13, G20), Career
Development (K), S11, S21, S22 (Jun. 1, 2007)
SBIR/STTR (Dec. 1, 2005)
R13/U13 (Dec. 15, 2005)
R18/U18, R25, C06/UC6 (Oct. 1, 2006)
Fellowship (F) (Aug. 5, 2007)
R36 (Feb. 17, 2006)
R01 Multi-PI Pilot (Oct. 1, 2006)
R15 (Feb. 25, 2006)
Training (TD), U45, D71/U2R (Sep. 10, 2007)
S10 (Mar. 22, 2006)
X02 (April 18, 2006)
DP1(Jan. 22, 2007)
X01 (May 18, 2006)
Project/Center (P), G12, M01, S06, R10/U10, U01,
U19, U54, U56, R24/U24 (Oct. 1, 2007)
R01(Feb. 1, 2007)
R03, R21/R33, R34(June 1, 2006)
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• Current as of February 2, 2006. Visit the Web
  site for the latest version http//era.nih.gov/El
  ectronicReceipt/

Mechanism Abbreviation Key C06/UC6 Research
Facilities Construction Grants DP1 NIH Directors
Pioneer Award Program D71/U2R International
Training Cooperative Agreement/
Phase 2 of FIC mechanism D71 R01
Research Project Grant Program R03
Small Grant Programs R10/U10 Cooperative
Clinical Research Grants R13/U13 Support for
Conferences Scientific Meetings R15
Academic Research Enhancement Awards
(AREA) R18/U18 Research Demonstration and
Dissemination Projects
R21/R33 Exploratory/Development
Research R24/U24 Resource Related Research
Projects R25 Education Projects R34
Clinical Trial Planning Grant Program R36
Research Dissertation Grant Program SBIR
Small Business Innovation Research STTR
Small Business Technology Transfer S06,S10,S11
Biomedical Research S21,22 Health Disparities
Endowment Grants U Cooperative
Agreement Awards X02 Preapplication
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Small Business Electronic Submission Experience
Much Improved - Dec 1 vs April 1
680
verified applications

• Applications verified and moved on to Receipt and
  Referral
• much more quickly
• 1 week after the receipt date
• December 775
• April - 1,390

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• Average Number of Corrected Applications
• December - 4
• April - 3

• Increased processing speeds
• eRA systems increased processing from 30
  apps/hour to 150

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eRA Help Desk Better Able to Handle Calls
System improvements, aggressive education
efforts, and more experienced users and staff
dramatically reduced calls to help desk
Number of unaddressed requests for assistance
decreased dramatically
but theres still room for improvement
Unaddressed contacts are attempts to reach the
help desk that failed. (For example, people who
hung up the phone before reaching a person.) In
April, some of these callers may have followed
the telephone prompt to submit their own web
ticket or found the answer to their question on
the website. Currently, we have no way of
tracking people who found help in these ways.
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Dramatic Improvement Is Result of Lots of Hard
Work

• Better educated users and staff
• Aggressive communications efforts including
• Training thousands of investigators,
  administrators and NIH staff
• Targeted e-mails
• Centralized newsletter articles
• Engaging IC support to systematically spread the
  word at scientific meetings and through
  communications targeted at their specific
  communities
• eRA processing ability increased dramatically
• eRA Help Desk much more accessible still room
  to improve
• Decreased call volume through communications,
  improving error messages, reevaluating business
  rules enforced by system, reducing system bugs
• Engaged surge support at times of heaviest volume
• New web ticketing system reduced redundant
  contacts
• New tools developed to support help desk staff
• Registrations processed quicker and fewer new
  requests

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Working Together with Applicant Community to
Refine the Process

• Timeline shift in Feb R01s moved to February
  2007
• Application receipt deadline - changed to 500pm
  local time for the applicant institution
  effective April 1.
• Revised SF 424 (RR) Application Guide - released
  April 7, 2006.
• Verification requirement changed new
  institutional assurance requirement eliminates
  need for signing official and PI to take action
  to verify application image
• We STRONGLY recommend that the Principal
  Investigator or Signing Official review the image
  in the Commons.
• New process effective May 10.

eSubmission-related Guide notices available at
http//era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/guide_notices
.htm
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Monitoring Systems Performance

• eRA systems held up well for the April round,
  with no system issues reported that would block
  submissions.
• Dramatic improvement over December experience
• Grants.gov experienced some problems that caused
  erroneous errors, some applications not to be
  able to complete Grants.gov processing, and
  longer than expected processing times.
• Many of these problems have already been
  addressed by Grants.gov
• We continue to monitor Grants.gov and eRA
  performance to ensure we are able to handle our
  largest submission dates.

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Citrix Solution Working

• Citrix solution seems to be working for Mac users
  so far
• Low number of concurrent users to date
• Low number of reported issues using Citrix
• The first large submission round for academic
  institutions will be June 1 for the small
  research grant applications (R21/R33/R03/R34).
• This will be a much better test of the solution
• IBM and Grants.gov have reconfirmed their
  commitment to make a platform independent Pure
  Edge solution available by November 2006.

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Early Peek at June 1 Electronic Receipts

• Applicants have started to submitting earlier
  than they did in paper
• Many applicants have successfully submitted on
  the first try
• The average number of submissions to reach an
  error-free application for the R21s and R03s is
  gt1.5 to date

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Looking Ahead

• Continue monitoring and planning to ensure
  preparedness for Feb 1 R01s
• Looking at ways to spread some of the workload on
  peak submission dates
• Continuing efforts to develop solutions for
  handling some of the more complex mechanisms
• Continued aggressive communication efforts with
  applicant community

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If everyone is moving forward together, then
success takes care of itself. Henry Ford