# Presentation: 683355

## Slide 1

## eRA Statistics

|  | May | September |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Institutions | 425 | 560 |
| Logons | 10,700/mo. | 18,300/mo. |
| eSNAPs | 165 | 306 |
| FSRs | 7000 | 14,500 |
| Users | 3100 | 5400 |

**Notes:**
General statistics to show the increased usage of the Commons.

## NIH eRA Commons Registration

- Open to All Institutions
- Go to Commons home page & click registration link (see next slide)
- Enter small amount of information
- Print out signature page & fax to NIH
- Approx. 2-3 days to process registration
- Help desk can help with any problems

**Notes:**
Commons registration is open to all institutions
This is the basic procedure for an institution to register, helpdesk number is shown later in the presentation
User registration, including PIs, is separate from this one time registration of the institution. Once the institution is registered, user accounts can be created. Administrator accounts are active immediately upon creation. PI accounts can take several days to become active due to the process of matching profiles and the correct grant information to the correct individuals.

## NIH eRA Commons

**http://commons.era.nih.gov**

- Link for further Commons
- Registration Information

**NIH eRA Commons**

**Notes:**
This is a screen shot of the eRA Commons home page.
A link is provided on the home page for institutional officials to find out more about registering their institution to use the Commons.

It is important to remind people that registration requires institutional official signatures.  While PI’s may want to use the system, registration must occur first...and registration can only be completed by institutional officials.

## Commons Functionality

- Profiles
- Institutional Profile (IPF)
- Professional Profile (PPF)
- Status
- View status of pending/awarded applications
- View and access to priority score/summary statement (PI only)
- View NIH staff contact information for each application
- Link to study section rosters and dates of meetings
- Link to NGA and other grant related documents
- e-SNAP (pilot)
- Submission of non-competing progress report
- Now includes the Minority Enrollment Forms
- Open to all soon (Dec. – Jan.)

**Notes:**
This is a list of the modules that are currently available in the Commons and the high level functionality associated with them. Not shown for space purposes is the administration module where all accounts are maintained. Also not shown is X-Train because of it tenuous status at this point. This list is continued on the next slide.

## Commons Functionality

- FSR (Financial Status Reports)
- Submission of financial status reports
- Same system is used by NIH Office of Financial Mgmt.
- IAR (Internet Assisted Review)
- Reviewer submission of critiques and preliminary scores prior to study section meeting
- Demo Facility
- Anyone can use (don’t need a Commons Acct)
- Contains all functionality of production system
- User creates their own training accounts & institution
- Standard data populates new accounts
- Great for on-campus training classes

**Notes:**
Demo facility – The user creates a dummy institution, administrator account and a PI account when they go into the demo facility. This allows them to perform just about any function that they could in the production system. The same data is replicated to all new accounts and institutions so that they could teach classes at their institution and the participants would see the exact same thing.

## Future Plans

- Submit No Cost Extension notification through the Commons (Nov.)
- Submit Just-in-Time Information through the Commons (Nov.)
- New Query/Reporting Tool (Est. Fall ’04)
- Canned Queries
- Ad Hoc Queries
- X-Train (Spring ’04)
- Training grant appointments
- HHS Grants Management Consolidation (Next 2+ Years)
- HHS is migrating all agencies to eRA for internal management of research grants
- Other Agency business processes will be affected (CDC, FDA, etc.)

**Notes:**
In the Nov. release users will be able to send NIH notification that they are using their one time No Cost Extension privilege as well as send their Just-in-Time information electronically.
NIH is working on a tool to make it easy for institutions to generate information about their NIH funding as well as grant activities through the commons. A prototype of this tool was shown to the Commons Working Group in Sept.
X-Train version 2.0 is slated to be the first project to be done under the new contracting scheme. The requirements have been worked up and we are just waiting for the new mechanism to take effect.
HHS is making all op/divs use either eRA (Impac II) or the ACF system for all grants management activities. The op/divs will be working to migrate to our systems over the next couple of years.

## Electronic Proposal Submission

- NIH received 14 applications electronically for the Oct. deadline
- Plan to continue pilot for the Nov. deadline
- Close coordination with Grants.gov
- Working with vendors to provide solutions for smaller institutions
- Interested in participating?  Contact David Wright (david.wright@nih.gov)

**Notes:**
There are 2 ways to submit a grant application electronically at this point, through the Competitive Grant Application Process (CGAP) project or through Grants.gov. Once the data is in our system, everything is treated the same. Just the delivery mechanisms are different. CGAP is working with vendors who were awarded with SBIR grants to create tools for universities to use to submit grants electronically. Grants.gov is creating form packages for download off of their web site. The user fills out the forms and then submits back to Grants.gov. 
We are working with Grants.gov to make sure that we are not going off in different directions. We hold monthly coordination meetings with top level staff of both projects.

## Commons 2 Training/Outreach Presentations Planned

- National/Regional Meetings FY 2003/2004
- SRA – Pittsburgh, Oct. 2003
- NCURA – Washington DC, Nov. 2003
- NIH Regional Seminar Miami Fl, May 2004
- NIH Regional Seminar Seattle WA, June 2004
- Others to be announced....

**Notes:**
List of eRA Commons presentations and workshops...in the coming months.

## NIH eRA User Support

- Commons Support Page:
- _http://era.nih.gov/commons_
- Release notes
- User guides
- Deployment plans
- User tips
- FAQs

-   eRA Help Desk:
-   Mon–Fri, 7:30-5:30 Eastern Time
- (866) 504-9552 (Voice-Toll Free)
- (301) 402-7469 (Voice-Local)
- (301) 451-5675 (Fax)
- (301) 451-5939 (TTY)
- commons@od.nih.gov

- Extramural Group Advocates
- George Stone – george.stone@nih.gov
- David Wright – david.wright@nih.gov

**Notes:**
Contact information for extramural eRA...