# ![](media/image1.png){width="1.375in" height="0.5in"}![](media/image2.jpeg){width="0.4166666666666667in" height="0.2972222222222222in"} eRA Stee eRA Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

**Date:** October 31, 2002

**Time:** 2:00--4:00 p.m.

**Location:** Building 31, Conference Room 6A35

**Chair:** Dr. Paul Sieving

# eRA Project Retreat Follow-up and Status

Dr. McGowan delivered the following presentation to the Steering
Committee:

# ![](media/image3.wmf)*E-Grants*

Dr. McGowan began his remarks by briefly recapitulating the E-Grants
discussion at the eRA Project Team Retreat. As seen on *Slide #3,* the
Federal Commons concept has been replaced by E-Grants. This new vision,
which incorporates the idea of a single "trusted broker" between
grantees and government agencies, removes the option of each agency
sponsoring its own Web interface for grantee access. The National
Science Foundation will continue use of their FastLane Web interface,
but NIH will no longer be a partner in a consolidated rollout of this
application. NIH's focus will move to the Small Business Innovation
Research (SBIR) grantees and using the resulting products and services
to map eRA's efforts into the E-Grants model.

eRA will adapt to this movement away from the Federal Commons by
de-emphasizing the NIH eRA Commons/IMPAC II distinction in favor of
consolidating the eRA IMPAC II and Commons into a single application and
database with internally and externally facing components.

At the eRA Project Team Retreat, Mr. Charlie Havekost, the E-Grants
Program Manager, announced that the E-Grants *Core Data Standard* would
be:

**Core = SF424 + DUNS via TS194**

*Non-Core* data elements will be specific to an agency, a program within
an agency, a funding opportunity within a program, or to initiatives
that encompass multiple agencies. As long as eRA uses the defined *Core*
elements, the project may develop *Non-Core* elements as needed.

For more information about these data standards, visit this link: [194
for Dummies](http://era.nih.gov/Docs/194_for_Dummies_10-02.doc).

# *SBIR Grantees*

Dr. McGowan handed out a summary of the SBIR projects:
[SBIRs_Awarded](http://era.nih.gov/areas/com/SBIR_Awarded.pdf). The six
grantees are scheduled to meet on November 13 to discuss the
requirements for Phase 2 awards. Dr. McGowan plans to request the monies
for funding the Phase 2 awards from EPMC.

# *NIH eRA Commons Status*

The phased rollout of the NIH eRA Commons is proceeding. As seen on
*Slide #6,* Version 2.0 is to be deployed on November 4 to the CWG with
full deployment scheduled for January. Full market penetration is
expected to take two--three years during which both NIH and external
grantees will switch to the electronic grant administration process. The
rollout of the Financial Status Reports (FSR) system begins with the
shutdown of IMPAC I on November 1. The FSR rollout will require the
registration of affected institutions in the NIH eRA Commons during
November and December.

It was noted that Program Officials and their staff need information on
the NIH eRA Commons since they are already receiving questions from
extramural users. eRA has set up a new helpdesk to handle
Commons-related inquires:
[mailto:commons@od.nih.gov](mailto:commons@od.nih.gov). Program staff
should refer extramural users to this helpdesk.

A discussion ensued concerning the difficulty communicating with Program
staff. eRA's primary means for communicating with the intramural
community is the *Inside eRA* newsletter. eRA Advocates are also tasked
with bringing eRA news back to their constituents. Dr. Thorsten
Fjellstedt and Dr. Steven Hausman have made numerous presentations to
groups within NIH to publicize eRA initiatives. Dr. McGowan stressed
that he is willing to go to any forum to present eRA strategies and
direction. In spite of all this outreach, it was acknowledged that the
Program community is difficult to reach.

# *eRA Priorities*

*Slides 11--14* show eRA project priorities. These priorities are
determined by incorporating the direction determined by the Steering
Committee, urgent tasks brought to eRA by NIH management or due to
statutory changes, and merging the requirements listed in each eRA
Advocate's Business Plan. It is not possible to fund every requested
requirement with the available resources. Priorities must be
established. In the next year, updates to the Program Module will be
elevated to a higher priority. Pending Work-in-Progress files will be
made available in an online queue for Program staff.

# *Role of the eRA Advocate (Attachment A)*

Dr. McGowan distributed a draft of the eRA Group Advocate Charter (see
Attachment A). This charter was presented at the eRA Project Retreat and
will be reviewed during the next eRA Project Team meeting.

# eRA Budget Update

Dr. McGowan turned the floor over to Ms. Donna Frahm, eRA Chief
Information Officer (CIO), who gave the following presentation:

![](media/image4.wmf)

Responding to the request from the previous Steering Committee meeting
for more detail on the eRA budget, Ms. Frahm provided the requested
granularity. Speaking to *Slide #2,* the *Planning and Tracking Model,*
Ms. Frahm noted that this delineation of cost categories maps into a
life-cycle redesign project management concept. It reflects one year's
experience with the contractor costs, FTEs, and Other Direct Costs
(ODCs) needed for the eRA project.

Ms. Frahm commented in detail on the following cost categories:

-   **Box 3---Project Management:** The \~\$2.2M in ODCs for this area
    include unanticipated expenses such as utility payments, rent and
    building maintenance.

-   **Box 4---Architecture:** Contractor support for this area includes
    the Northrop Grumman IT (NGIT) due to the work done on the J2EE
    framework modules. These modules will facilitate migration to the
    J2EE architecture.

-   **Box 8---Technology Infrastructure:** The \~\$4.5M in ODCs for this
    area include software licenses as well as the following hardware
    purchases:

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-   Upgraded servers to accommodate an n-tier environment for
    Development, Test, and Staging as well as Production.

-   Additional equipment to enhance system reliability and performance

-   Terrabytes of storage for Scanned Grant Images

-   Additional equipment to provide a more robust test environment.

    The contractors in this area possess valuable technical expertise
    and are among the most highly compensated on the eRA team.

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```
-   **Box 9---Application Design, Estimation, Maintenance and
    Development:** The eRA Office of the CIO (OCIO) analyzed budget data
    to determine how much eRA spends on analysis, design and testing of
    applications in order to tease out the actual software development
    costs of \~\$6.7M.

As seen on *Slide #12,* IMPAC II Development and Maintenance is the
largest project expenditure category. The percentage of this expenditure
used for maintenance is very high, while the actual yield in new
functionality is low---indicating that a technology upgrade is needed.

# *Budget Concerns and Recommendations*

To recapitulate the budget discussion in the previous Steering Committee
meeting, Ms. Frahm noted that eRA's budget has been frozen since 2000,
there are \$10M in unfunded costs associated with the J2EE migration,
and eRA has had to absorb the cost of responding to unfunded mandates
such as stem cell tracking and integrating the Loan Repayment System
into eRA.

During the last Steering Committee meeting, Dr. McGowan asked the
Steering Committee to approve the following budget increases:

**FY 2003:** \$10M contingency fund allotment:

-   \$4.9M budget base increase

-   \$1.5M for the Loan Repayment Program integration

-   \$600K for QVR support

-   \$4M in contingency fund money (10%)

**FY 2004:**

-   \$4.9M budget base increase

-   10% contingency fund allotment

The Steering Committee has approved these increases. The next step is to
present the request to the Board of Governors.

# ECMS Update

Dr. McGowan initiated a discussion on the possibility of integrating the
Electronic Contract Management System (ECMS), a COTS product currently
used by NIAID for research and development contracting, into NBS or eRA.
Mr. Jack Jones said that CIT has a contract with Digicon to do an
analysis. There are three options:

-   Make ECMS a stand alone enterprise system

-   Integrate ECMS into NBS

-   Integrate ECMS with NBS and eRA.

Dr. Belinda Seto, the eRA Data Quality Advocate, noted that contracts
data is now drawn from DCIS rather than IMPAC I. Data quality is a big
issue with HHS DCIS (Departmental Contracts Information System) data,
which is scheduled to be incorporated into the CIT Data Warehouse
shortly and must eventually be bridged into IMPAC II. Mr. Jones said
that he has been told the data is "clean enough" to be incorporated in
the Data Warehouse. Dr. McGowan said that Mr. Jim Tucker, from the eRA
Systems Quality Assurance and Interfaces Branch, has concerns about
quality of this data and needs to do more analysis before it can be
bridged into IMPAC II.

# New Committee Member Introductions

Dr. Sieving announced that Dr. Brent Stanfield, Deputy Director, CSR has
been appointed to the eRA Steering Committee to replace Dr. Ellie
Ehrenfield, Director, CSR. He also announced that Mr. Thomas Murphy,
CIO, NIDCR would be joining the committee as well.

In reviewing the minutes of previous meetings, Mr. Murphy noticed that
the eRA budget is often discussed. He agreed with Mr. Graeff's
assertion, in a previous meeting, that the "tincup" approach of
piecemeal and inadequate funding was not the way for an enterprise
system to move forward. He also agreed that the Program Module should be
made a high priority in the upcoming year.

Mr. Murphy underscored the important role that eRA communications and
outreach must play in informing ICs how their extension systems and
business practices will need to change to adapt to the electronic grants
management process. He also stressed that while ICs develop an *esprit
de corps* in their scientific and information technology enterprises,
this kind of commitment and focus is difficult to achieve on a Central
Services System (CSS) project.

Dr. McGowan said that the government employees on eRA are dedicated to
its mission. The practice of recruiting exceptional performers from ICs
like Cathy Walker and Tracy Soto as lead analysts and making them task
managers of development teams has enhanced the cohesiveness of these
teams. Dr. Stanfield pointed to the recent eRA Project Team Retreat and
the eRA Contractor Retreats as valuable mechanisms for promoting the
vision and identity of eRA.

# Plans for the Next Meeting

The next eRA Steering Committee meeting will be held on December 19.

# Attendees

Sieving, Paul, M.D., Ph.D., Chair

Copeland, Zoe-Ann, OER

Duff, Judy, NEI

Ellis, Joe, NIGMS

Fisher, Richard, Ph.D., NEI

Frahm, Donna, OER

Geaney, Stephanie, Soza

Jones, Jack, CIT

McGowan, John, Ph.D., NIAID/OER

Murphy, Tom, NIDCR

Ramm, Louise, Ph.D., NCRR

Seto, Belinda, Ph.D., OER

Stanfield, Brent, Ph.D., CSR

Albrecht, Lyn, LTS, Recorder

# Attachments

A.  **eRA Group Advocate Charter---Draft**