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NIH eSubmission Update for PRAC Megan Columbus NIH Program Manager for Electronic Receipt of Grant Applications May 22, 2006

Mechanism Abbreviation Key: C06/UC6 Research Facilities Construction Grants DP1NIH Director’s 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,S11Biomedical Research S21,22Health Disparities Endowment Grants U Cooperative Agreement Awards X02Preapplication Current as of February 2, Visit the Web site for the latest version: eSubmission Is Becoming a Reality for NIH Resource (G7, G8, G11, G13, G20), Career Development (K), S11, S21, S22 (Jun. 1, 2007) R03, R21/R33, R34 (June 1, 2006) R18/U18, R25, C06/UC6 (Oct. 1, 2006) Fellowship (F) (Aug. 5, 2007) Project/Center (P), G12, M01, S06, R10/U10, U01, U19, U54, U56, R24/U24 (Oct. 1, 2007) S10 (Mar. 22, 2006) R15 (Feb. 25, 2006) R36 (Feb. 17, 2006) R13/U13 (Dec. 15, 2005) SBIR/STTR (Dec. 1, 2005) X02 (April 18, 2006) R01 (Feb. 1, 2007) Training (T&D), U45, D71/U2R (Sep. 10, 2007) R01 Multi-PI Pilot (Oct. 1, 2006) DP1 (Jan. 22, 2007) Over 5,000 apps received electronically X01 (May 18, 2006)

Small Business Electronic Submission Experience Much Improved - Dec 1 vs April 1 Applications verified and moved on to Receipt and Referral much more quickly 1 week after the receipt date: December – 775 April - 1, # verified applications Average Number of Corrected Applications December - 4+ April - 3 Increased processing speeds eRA systems increased processing from 30 apps/hour to 150

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 … but there’s still room for improvement Number of unaddressed* requests for assistance decreased dramatically * 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.

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 s  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

Working Together with Applicant Community to Refine the Process Timeline shift in Feb – R01s moved to February 2007 Application receipt deadline - changed to 5:00pm local time for the applicant institution effective April 1. Revised SF 424 (R&R) Application Guide - released April 7, 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:

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.

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.

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 >1.5 to date

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

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