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NOVEMBER 2003 STAKEHOLDER MEETING MINUTES

**November 12, 2003**

[Next Meeting]{.underline}

Date: December 10, 2003

Time: 2:00 -- 4:00pm

Place: HHS Building, Room 800

1.  Mr. Charles Havekost, Grants.gov Program Manager, convened the
    meeting at 2:05 p.m. After welcoming the audience and giving a brief
    update on the launch of Grants.gov, he introduced the first speaker,
    Ms. Kim Deutsch.

2.  Ms. Kim Deutsch, from the Grants.gov Program Management Office
    (PMO), gave a walkthrough of the Grants.gov site. She reviewed both
    the Grant Community and Grantor sides of the site. Ms. Deutsch also
    showed Grantors where to access documentation that had been included
    in the old Grants.gov site (i.e., system-to-system integration
    materials and stakeholder meeting materials).

3.  The next speaker was Charles Havekost. He began by discussing the
    October 31^st^ launch of Grants.gov. He encouraged Grantors to go
    and see the new site design which was created based, in part, on the
    Outreach Team's market research efforts. He then discussed the
    hosting site at the AT&T facilities in Ashburn and the benefits of
    using a commercial hosting site, including the number one benefit
    being better security. Mr. Havekost addressed the authentication
    process via Grants.gov-issued accounts and the three one-day
    Train-the-Trainer Workshops held in October. He also highlighted
    that the "Find" functionality (FedGrants) has been integrated with
    the "Apply" functionality and that the Grants.gov site is 508
    compliant with the exception of the PureEdge viewer, which should be
    compliant with the release of PureEdge 6.1 in February 2004. Mr.
    Havekost lauded the efforts of the System Integration team (Northrop
    Grumman) in meeting the October 31^st^ deadline, especially in view
    of the relatively short period of time they had to build the site
    since the contract award was made in March 2003.

> Mr. Havekost discussed some post-launch enhancements such as the
> addition of new forms and clean-up of existing forms; load share with
> dual server at the hosting site; deployment of 128 bit encryption and
> certificate for SSL connections; DUNS and CCR lookup prior to
> forwarding to credential provider; and LDAP replication with
> credential provider. Mr. Havekost briefly reviewed plans for
> authentication discussed in the September stakeholder meeting, than
> went over the 6 steps for DUNS, CCR, and the submitter role for
> Grantees. He then discussed the next steps for Grants.gov, such as
> system-to-system interface with Grantor agencies, enhancement of the
> "Find" (FedGrants) integration, and the "forms factory" approach to
> creating forms. Mr. Havekost then took questions from audience:
>
> Q: Can Grants.gov maintain information associated with credentials?
>
> A: No, the credential provider keeps that information, but some
> information will replicate to the LDAP server.
>
> Q: Does CCR track duplications?
>
> A: Yes, the CCR does track persons trying to duplicate DUNS numbers.
>
> Q: Can we verify DUNS numbers?
>
> A: Yes, at the CCR website.
>
> Q: CCR currently requests yearly updates on information. Does
> Grants.gov do this as well?
>
> A: Not presently; that is a future goal.
>
> Q: How does Grants.gov verify a person who is authorized to submit
> applications?
>
> A: The e-Business Point of Contact (EBiz POC) has the authority to
> submit applications for their organizations.
>
> Q: What are your expectations for paper applications?
>
> A: Agencies may want to and are encouraged to move toward receiving
> most applications electronically and to do away with paper
> applications, but no mandate will be issued from Grants.gov. OMB may
> issue such a directive.

4.  The next speaker, Ms. Kim Deutsch, gave a system-to-system status
    update. Ms. Deutsch presented an overview of the topics covered and
    progress made in the October 9^th^ work session and stated that
    minutes and Q&A will be posted to
    http://www.Grants.gov/DoingBusiness. She then discussed
    system-to-system testing with USDA, stating that they had completed
    testing the four web services functions (GetApplicationList,
    GetApplication, ConfirmApplicationDelivery, and
    AssignAgencyTrackingNumber) without using SSL. She also presented
    some of the lessons learned, such as when using Apache SOAP, use
    only Message Routing since the system-to-system interface is a
    document exchange.

> Ms. Deutsch then discussed some of the additional requirements for the
> system-to-system interface, such as developing an option for
> retrieving application both as XML and as PDF attachments also
> developing a NotifyApplicationAvailable function. Ms. Deutsch listed
> some of the new materials available on Grants.gov related to
> system-to-system integration. She also reviewed the requirements for
> an agency to be prepared for system-to-system testing and provided a
> list of agencies that are ready for system-to-system testing.

5.  The last speaker was Ms. Diana King, from the Grants.gov Program
    Management Office (PMO). Ms. King discussed what is needed of
    agencies to get forms posted to Grants.gov including: identifying
    forms; ensuring OMB clearance; defining data elements; completing
    analysis; preparing documentation; and submitting requests to the
    Grants.gov PMO. She also told meeting attendees where on Grants.gov
    they could find documents that will assist them in collecting
    agency-specific grants data. She then briefly discussed the
    components of data analysis and definition. Ms. King also urged
    attendees to look for cross-agency packages, such as the research
    and related application, which will be released soon.

6.  Mr. Havekost concluded the meeting and thanked the audience for
    their participation.