[Office-of-research] Sponsor Electronic Proposal Submission Systems

[Bruce Morgan]

Date:   January 20, 2009

 

From:  Charles F. Louis

Vice Chancellor for Research

 

Bruce Morgan

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research

 

To:       UCR Researchers & Unit Contract and Grant Analysts

 

Please broadly disseminate this message (or the attached memo) within your
unit to Principal Investigators and those individuals involved in the
development, approval routing and submission of extramural proposals.

 

On several occasions in December and earlier this month, proposals to the
federal government were received in the Office of Research (OR) on the same
day as the sponsors' published deadlines.  When OR attempted to submit these
proposals via Grants.gov, we encountered a variety of technical issues that
resulted in the proposals being submitted after their respective deadlines.
In several cases, the Grants.gov system was simply overwhelmed by the volume
of traffic throughout the deadline day.  In one instance, OR first attempted
to submit a proposal shortly after 12pm.  However, the proposal was not
accepted by Grants.gov and successfully submitted until approximately 20
minutes after the deadline, despite five hours of continuous submission
attempts.

 

Due to the extraordinary efforts of the Contract and Grant Officers in
Sponsored Programs Administration, approximately half of the late proposals
were accepted by the sponsors.  These efforts included spending hours in
phone queues to speak with both sponsor and Grants.gov help desk
representatives to document the technical problems we were experiencing.

 

An increasing number of sponsors are utilizing electronic proposal
submission and there is little commonality between these systems.
Therefore, we encourage all researchers to carefully plan for the
preparation and submission of their proposals.  It is important to note that
in those instances when OR received proposals in accordance with UCR's
long-standing
<http://or.ucr.edu/SP/Lifecycle/Prepare/Endorsement.aspx#LeadTimes>  lead
times and we encountered systems difficulties and/or other
issues/complications, there was sufficient time for OR to resolve the
problems and submit the proposals in advance of the proposal deadlines.

 

We encourage all Principal Investigators and unit staff involved in the
preparation and submission of proposals to re-review UCR's campus policy
regarding the review, approval and submission of proposals, which is
available on the OR website at http://or.ucr.edu/policies/policies.aspx?k=8.
The policy contains information on the three business-day lead time for
standard proposals, the seven business-day lead time for non-standard
proposals, and lists the criteria for determining whether a proposal is
standard or non-standard.  Additional information regarding proposal
preparation and submission can also be found on the OR website at
http://or.ucr.edu/SP/Lifecycle/Prepare/index.aspx. 

 

Please note that the Contract and Grant Officer
<http://or.ucr.edu/home/Staff.aspx?t=3>  assigned to your unit is available
to answer your questions regarding sponsor electronic proposal submission
systems, technical problems and administrative challenges associated with
such systems, and campus proposal submission policy and procedure.  In
addition, your Contract and Grant Officer is also available to meet
individually or with groups of researchers and/or administrators within a
unit to address their proposal-related questions, as well as provide
guidance and advice regarding strategies and good practices for planning
proposal submissions and avoiding known technical challenges with sponsor
electronic proposal submission systems.

 

The one take away is that the ever increasing use of electronic proposal
submission systems have clearly added a level of complexity to, and have
increased the difficulty of,  the process of submitting proposals to many of
our extramural sponsors.

 

 

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