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Not surprisingly, I received many comments and suggestions about the policy regarding the new internal deadline for submission of applications to Sponsored Research Services (SRS) five working days before the deadline.
First and foremost, I want you to realize that I am very well aware of how each of us responds to deadlines, having been there myself. But this internal deadline was put in place (after much consideration and discussion with the Research Officers) in order to protect the applicant. The next round of NIH submissions will occur in the beginning of February with the requirement that all NIH grants will now be submitted electronically. This means that on February 5, 2007 all NIH R01 grants will be due electronically. The NIH expects about 30,000 grants to be submitted, and UC expects to submit approximately 200 proposals within two weeks of this deadline. Most of these proposals will be submitted via Grants.gov. It is unimaginable how Grants.gov (the federal site for electronic proposal submissions) will be able to handle this enormous response. We do know that Grants.gov can take up to 48 hours to communicate an error in a rejected application. Assuming the corrected application is resubmitted it may take another 48 hours to clear the proposal and receive confirmation the proposal was accepted. Therefore, a 5 day deadline is absolutely needed. And more importantly, this deadline will hopefully protect our investigators and ensure grants are submitted to meet the sponsor's deadline.
And for those non-NIH grant applicants, we know that the NSF and other federal agencies are migrating to Grants.gov over the next year for all proposal submissions. So FastLane and other existing systems will no longer be "time-stamping" proposal submissions to validate receipt. Grants.gov will be the validation point.
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Not surprisingly, I received many comments and suggestions about the policy regarding the new internal deadline for submission of applications to Sponsored Research Services (SRS) five working days before the deadline.
First and foremost, I want you to realize that I am very well aware of how each of us responds to deadlines, having been there myself. But this internal deadline was put in place (after much consideration and discussion with the Research Officers) in order to protect the applicant. The next round of NIH submissions will occur in the beginning of February with the requirement that all NIH grants will now be submitted electronically. This means that on February 5, 2007 all NIH R01 grants will be due electronically. The NIH expects about 30,000 grants to be submitted, and UC expects to submit approximately 200 proposals within two weeks of this deadline. Most of these proposals will be submitted via Grants.gov. It is unimaginable how Grants.gov (the federal site for electronic proposal submissions) will be able to handle this enormous response. We do know that Grants.gov can take up to 48 hours to communicate an error in a rejected application. Assuming the corrected application is resubmitted it may take another 48 hours to clear the proposal and receive confirmation the proposal was accepted. Therefore, a 5 day deadline is absolutely needed. And more importantly, this deadline will hopefully protect our investigators and ensure grants are submitted to meet the sponsor's deadline.
And for those non-NIH grant applicants, we know that the NSF and other federal agencies are migrating to Grants.gov over the next year for all proposal submissions. So FastLane and other existing systems will no longer be "time-stamping" proposal submissions to validate receipt. Grants.gov will be the validation point.
We also know we are not alone in implementing and enforcing this type of policy. Many other educational institutions across the country are enforcing mandatory internal deadlines for proposal submissions, some 10 days prior to deadline.
Let me reiterate what proposal submissions are covered under this new policy. New, competitive renewals and full resubmission proposals will need to be in to SRS 5 full working days before the sponsor deadline. Proposals submitted for task orders under an existing sponsored agreement do not fall under this policy.
Grants.gov submissions require SRS staff to not only review proposals administratively but also ensure the PureEdge (or other e-applications) form is in the correct format. One small typo or misplacement of a hyphen causes applications to be rejected.
There were two frequent comments we agree need flexibility. First, if a grant is due on a Friday, then it is perfectly reasonable that this grant be submitted to SRS by 7 am on the following Monday morning. The bottom line is we need five full working days (not including weekends) to process the application.
Second, there were concerns about how to deal with grants where there are multiple collaborators. We suggest you do your best to communicate with these collaborators about our internal deadline. But we also suggest that you keep in communication with your designated grant administrator in SRS to keep them apprised of the situation. Completion of as much of the administrative part of the grant as possible far ahead of time will help. We will try to be flexible where needed, but you still need to remember the issue of the turn around time with Grants.gov that we cannot control.
We received comments about hiring more staff in SRS and flexible work schedules to accommodate the number of grant submissions around major deadlines for the NIH and NSF. SRS already has a flexible work schedule. Frequently, the staff works well beyond the standard workday, including nights and weekends to meet the demands of agency deadlines. UC does not compensate them for this extra work and UC does not have the resources to hire additional personnel.
Proposal deadlines are constant and given other responsibilities SRS does not have any down-time as one email suggested. You may not be aware of these other responsibilities so I so I will list some of them. When Grant Administrators are not processing proposals they are responding to emails and phone calls about existing awards and upcoming deadlines for over 200 sponsors, reviewing and processing awards including financial set-up, tracking and/or submitting sponsor mandated reports, training themselves on how to use rapidly changing electronic submission systems, training UC business staff on sponsored project administration and e-application systems, cross-training of SRS staff and development of new procedures in response to the changing sponsor guidelines.
I thank you for your comments. I am sorry that I have to impose this internal deadline, but it really is being done with the investigator in mind. Last month we had two grants that did not make it in by the deadline (one was 6 seconds late) and neither DOD nor NSF would accept the late submissions. Not only did the faculty members feel badly, but so did the staff. All involved take this very seriously and do their utmost to get proposals submitted in time. When there is not enough time to do this properly, it affects many people.
And finally, I want to thank you for all of your efforts in gaining additional grant support. These are very difficult times with regard to federal funding levels. Please keep trying. And please be patient with the bureaucracy. And again, thank you for your comments and suggestions. They really are appreciated.
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