Federal Demonstration
Partnership & NIH Commons
Working Group Update
Lynette Arias, AVP for Research/Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Jason Myers, Associate Director, Office of Research Information Services
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About The Federal Demonstration
Partnership
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“The FDP is an association of federal agencies, academic research
institutions with administrative, faculty and technical representation,
and research policy organizations that work to streamline the
administration of federally sponsored research.”
• 3 meetings a year in Washington DC
• 120+ research organizations, 12 federal agencies
• Activities organized into 3 “tracks” / 3 reps
• Faculty (we are looking for a new faculty rep for UW)
• Administrative (Lynette)
• Technical / eRA (Jim Kresl) (other ORIS attendees, Jason Myers, Rick Fenger
and Aron Knapp)
FDP Website:
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/fdp/index.htm
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The FDP History
• Phase VI: 2014 – TBD (beginning planning)
• Phase V: 2008-2014 Current Phase – Includes the STAR
metrics pilot, A-133 subrecipient monitoring, effort reporting pilot,
Grants.gov, JAD team, second faculty burden survey, and
administrative burden reduction
• Phase IV: 2002-2008
• Phase III: 1996-2002
• Phase II: 1988 Federal Demonstration Partnership
• Phase I: 1986 Florida Demonstration Project
• Pre Phase: 1985 - Hearings convened by the GovernmentUniversity-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) on “Reducing
Bureaucratic Accretion” in government and university sponsored
research systems.
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FDP Highlights – Admin
perspective
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Federal Agency updates
Faculty workload survey activities (FDP and NSB)
Administrative Committee highlights
COFAR & Omni-Circular (Uniform Guidance)
• (Council on Financial Assistant Reform)
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FDP Highlights – Agency Updates
• Agencies providing highlights: NSF, NIH, NASA, USDA, Air Force,
ONR, and Grants.gov
• Most agencies updated Proposal and Award Guides in last few
months – policy clarifications made throughout the year
• All will update their guides next fall for changes in Uniform Guidance
• Interesting notes:
• NIH ASSIST for multi-project applications continues to expand use
• NIH – Public Access continues to cause issues with awards
• USDA is now assessing possible use of NIH system
• Air Force – can’t issue awards now if expenditure reports are not
submitted
• Many agencies going through financial system changes, having
affects on things like PI/PD transfers at USDA and transmitting
award notices at ONR
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FDP Highlights – Faculty Workload
Survey Activities (FDP and NSB)
• 2 FDP faculty burden/workload surveys now – both showed
42% time spent on admin burden
• Enough focus on and concern with this that the National
Science Board (NSB) has taken up the cause
• NSB governs NSF, develops Science and Engineering
Indicators, and advises the President and Congress on S&E
policy, research and education issues.
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FDP Highlights – Faculty Burden
Survey Activities (NSB)
• Started Dec 2012. Report est March/April 2014
• Info collection: RFI (3/13), roundtables (4&5/13), analysis of findings
(8/13)
• Top reported burdens
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Financial management
Grant proposal and submission
Project and other reporting
Human subjects
Effort reporting
Animal research
• Cross cutting themes
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Legislative and regulatory burden
Need for greater harmonization
Burden due to audit and oversight
Variable institution support
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FDP Highlights – Admin Committees
• Subawards Committee
• Subcontract template available (OSP is starting to use similar
template for Federal Contracts and non Fed)
• FDP clearinghouse – collecting pertinent institution information
(audit, inst profile, F&A rate, etc.)
• NIH Subaccounts matter
• Initial implementation was to be 10/13, now 10/14
• NIH going back to DHHS asking for extension
• NIH considering policy exception to assist with reporting
• Open Government
• Potential continuation of transparency report
• Involvement with federal agencies as potential new requirements
get implemented
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FDP Highlights – Omni-circular
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Joins 8 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circulars into 1
Actually “2 CFR Part 200” – “Uniform Guidance”
Final guidance issued 12/26/2013
Effective 1 year later, 12/26/2014
Federal agency plans due in 6 months
Dec release was expected to be interim final guidance
COGR & others working on analysis and comments
UW Working group forming – 1st meeting in Jan
Sponsored by Mary Lidstrom and Sue Camber
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UW Omni Guidance Working Group
• UW Task Force working on identifying the changes and
challenges posed by the new Federal guidance
• focused on compliance with this updated guidance, not a
process improvement group
• Initial review and assessment of overall guidance, Jan-May
• After July, will also be reviewing and assessing federal agency
implementation plans
• Webpage being developed to collect pertinent information
and serve as communication tool
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UW Omni Guidance Core Team
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Ted Mordhorst (Financial Management) – Facilitator
Tami Sadusky (Financial Management)
Mike Anthony (Financial Management)
Carla Helm (Purchasing Services)
Lynette Arias (Office of Research)
Carol Rhodes (Office of Research)
Joe Giffels (Office of Research)
Linda Gamman (Office of Research)
Zenaida Shattuck (Internal Audit)
Jenn Dickey (UW Medicine)
Kathy Bracy (UW Medicine)
Susan Carpenter-Brandt (Psychology)
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FDP Highlights – Omni-circular
• Eliminating duplicative and conflicting guidance
• Focusing on performance over compliance for accountability
• Encouraging efficient use of information technology and shared
services
• Providing for consistent and transparent treatment of costs
• Limiting allowable costs to make best use of federal resources
• Setting standard business processes using data definitions
• Encouraging non-federal entities to have family-friendly policies
• Strengthening oversight
• Targeting audit requirements on risk of waste, fraud and abuse
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ORIS at The FDP
ORIS participates in the FDP and has representation in the following eRA initiatives:
eRA JAD Team
• The Joint Application Design (JAD) Team is a group of individuals with different roles in the
grants application process that work with Grants.gov to address issues in the system and
streamline the process of using Grants.gov to submit grant applications. They look at both
the PDF forms submission process and the system-to-system submission process
SciENcv
• In collaboration with NIH & NSF, the FDP is exploring how a central repository of researcher
profiles might be implemented in the United States. They are looking at systems that have
been implemented on other countries as well as gathering input from stakeholders in the
community.
STAR METRICS Project
• Working with federal agencies, research organizations submit data to a central depository
where it is aggregated and information about the effect of the federal investment in the
American research enterprise is extracted. The data is extracted and submitted
automatically requiring very little effort once it is in place. This is being put forward as the
best model for the federal government to collect this type of data.
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Government and FDP initiatives
result in ORIS work efforts
In Addition to the official FDP Committee Initiatives, Other information
and working groups help drive ORIS work efforts:
• Faculty Workload Survey
• Information on most troublesome areas of research admin burden
• Open Government
• Reporting standards and data needs
• Ongoing S2S efforts
• Applications, multi-project (ASSIST), and RPPR S2S opportunities
• Research.gov
• Federated login, S2S, etc.
• Grants.gov
• S2S changes, User Interface Updates
• NIH Commons Working Group (CWG)
• xTRACT is the latest NIH system initiative
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The Faculty Workload Survey
ORIS’ mission is to implement solutions that reduce the researcher’s
administration burden; allowing the researcher to do more research
• In response to FDP’s National Faculty Workload Survey results:
• We are using the data as a baseline to help understand the specific
needs of the UW research community,
• and analyzing the results data to help determine areas that we can
implement system solutions
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Open Government
• The Open Government is an initiative, launched by the White
House, to be more transparent and accountable to the public
• Most impactful to UW is a higher demand from the federal
government in regard to research funding and spending…
think ARRA
• Expanding on what was done for ARRA, ORIS is working on a
“Federal” Reporting Engine to support the ever increasing
data and reporting needs
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Grants.gov, Research.gov, and Other
S2S Efforts
• There is a need for more and more data at the federal sponsor
level and a greater need to improve the mechanisms for data
submission
• Expanding on ORIS’ Grant Runner system, an improved
technology base will position us for meeting the increased
demands
• Currently the Grant Runner system is being re-architected so
that we can
• Support more application form sets
• More quickly and easily create anticipated data transfer needs
• RPPR, multi-project, etc.
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NIH Commons Working Group
• XTRACT: Making training tables electronic
• ERA Commons updates
• RPPR Pilot
• July – new home page being released
• Working on new image generation process
• ASSIST updates
• Working on calculation issues on subs F&A
• Application retention
• How long should an application with errors stay in system?
• Cover letters
• Want to speed up assignment process. Looking at requiring structured data in
these cover letters
• Closeout
• Focus on closeout throughout federal agencies currently
• Change in Final FFR date to 6 months
• Looking at possibly sending additional reminders to PI’s via email
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Latest NIH CWG Initiatives
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NIH is a very strong partner in relation to system needs and solutions
Partnering efforts are continuous with S2S and other system solutions
One of the latest efforts coming out of the NIH CWG is xTRACT
Goals of xTRACT
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Simple and comprehensive management of training data
Make the data formatted so it can be stored in a database
Provide the ability to easily identify and track people supported by NIH funds
Development in parallel with SciENcv and ORCID
Better understanding of results to students and post-docs after funding ends
Reduced burden on applicant organizations
Leverage information from existing sources
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Commons Personal Profile
xTrain
SciENcv
ORCID
• ORIS and others from OSP, OR, Grad School and some campus
departments will be participating by providing input and assisting with
user testing to help inform and help drive a useful solution
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Links to more info
• All FDP presentations:
• http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/fdp/PGA_086497
• NIH Commons Working Group
• http://era.nih.gov/commons/about_CWG.cfm
• COFAR webpage with new Omni-circular and more:
• https://cfo.gov/cofar/
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Questions?
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