Colleagues,

As we head into the major proposal deadlines in February and March, we wanted to remind you that these will be the first major NIH deadlines that require Adobe forms for Grants.Gov (instead of PureEdge forms).  There are a number of problems associated with the Adobe forms (outlined below) that may impact processing times.  We ask that if you are submitting for these deadlines, that you submit your proposals to SPA as early as possible (if you can, even earlier than 5 days in advance of the deadline).  The first due date we are concerned about is February 5th.  Proposals for that deadline are due in SPA on Friday, January 30th at 9:00 a.m.  

SPA will be working long and hard during these deadlines to successfully submit ALL Grants.Gov proposals received with 5 working days lead time, and to notify investigators and departments of problems within the first 2 working days after a proposal is received (so there is time to re-do a package or make needed corrections if necessary).   

As those PIs who have submitted a Grants.Gov proposal with fewer than 5 working days lead time already know, SPA gives priority for processing (including re-submission, when needed) to all on-time proposals.  With the volume of applications expected for the upcoming deadlines, coupled with the new challenges afforded by the Adobe packages, proposals submitted to SPA with fewer than 5 days lead time are at an unusually high risk of not being able to be successfully reviewed/submitted by their deadlines.  We strongly urge you to make sure that all Grants.Gov submissions in the February/March time period are turned in on-time or if feasible, early.  

Your cooperation and assistance during this time is very much appreciated!  

New Issues and Challenges Associated with Adobe Forms: 

• Limited Capacity on Grants.Gov Servers

The Grants.Gov servers are extremely slow in processing Adobe forms packages.  We learned last week that Grants.Gov has not been able to satisfactorily complete their planned server update, so they expect that their servers can only handle about 365 concurrent users nationally without slowing down, and their servers as configured are only designed to accommodate about 2000 proposals per day.  The planned upgrade will increase that capacity several times over, but will not be in place by the February/March NIH deadlines.  

• Server Time-Out/Confirmation Issues

After SPA completes its review and any necessary corrections are made to the proposal, SPA electronically endorses it and uploads the application to Grants.Gov.  Each package is taking approximately 4-5 minutes for SPA staff to physically submit and the Grants.Gov servers are very frequently timing out before the package is accepted.  This is likely related to the limited capacity outlined above.  When that happens, SPA does not receive a confirmation of receipt of the proposal on the Grants.Gov server.  SPA must separately check in the Grants.Gov database to determine whether the proposal has been received as well as wait until the server checks it for errors.  This process can delay the confirmation of receipt of a proposal at Grants.Gov for hours during high volume grant deadlines.    

• Adobe Application Package Corruption Problems
  Corruption happens when an Adobe package is opened (view or edit mode) by a version of Adobe other than the approved versions (8.1.1, 8.1.2, 8.1.3, or 9.0).  There is no way for you or for SPA to tell if your file is corrupt until SPA tries to submit it to Grants.Gov.  If this happens, the only solution is for the PI/department to re-do the entire proposal in a fresh Adobe forms package using one of the approved versions of Adobe, and then asking SPA to re-submit it to Grants.Gov.  This is clearly a time-consuming task (all Adobe forms pages must be re-keyed and the .pdf files containing the remainder of the application have to be re-attached to the proposal).
  
  

These issues are over and above the "usual" Grants.Gov issues where either the Grants.Gov server or the NIH server will "reject" a proposal for errors (proposal has been rejected and must be fixed and resubmitted) or process it with warning messages alerting PIs to problems they may wish to correct.

-- Pamela

Posted 1/23/09