TEST ERA SOFTWARE PACKAGE WITH LOCAL CONTROL OF PROFILES

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): RAMS proposes to identify and prototype the best methods for creating, submitting and tracking faculty and institutional profiles, proposal applications, and invention information from an existing data source, ecGrant, under local control of the applicant organization to the sponsoring entity within defined standards. The term "local control" is important because our experience indicates that most organizations prefer to maintain the information in databases under their control and do not want to enter data more than once. In addition, especially faculty are concerned about privacy issues when personnel data is being maintained at a location other than the responsible organization. Our objective is to provide small and medium sized grantee organizations a comprehensive, inexpensive software solution for ERA that mirrors the more expensive "build your own", "buy and revise", or "rent an ASP application". It is understood that the mid size and smaller organizations provide less than 20% of the overall NIH applications, but more than 2,300 of these grantee organizations do submit and obtain funds from the NIH. This is a significant customer base and requires NIH, SBIR ERA Project to consider this solution. A low cost commercially available, off-the-shelf software solution is essential for the overall success of electronic research administration (ERA). RAMS will perform the necessary research and prototyping, working closely with NIH staff, to determine the best practices that will enhance its current ecGrant software application. The research and testing will include; Profile data stored locally and accessed by grantor; Registration process with the NIH Commons; Creation and electronic submission of a competing 398 application and non-competing continuation grant awards; Obtain status of applications and awards via ecGrant; and provide required data on inventions to Edison, all in a secure/authenticated session.