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Grant Form Application Automated at UT Austin

University of Texas System benefits from Web-based Cayuse424 grant writing tools.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who fill out federal grant applications are benefiting from an innovative technology that helps to streamline the process. This automated, entirely Web-based approach called Cayuse424 has created a ripple effect throughout the UT System.

Cayuse424 gives UT Austin educators, staff and researchers a more efficient way to access grant forms. "We have browser-based forms, with on-the-fly calculations, budgets, escalations - all the complex calculations associated with the funding opportunity are handled inside the Web-based software," said Mark Ace, vice president of business development for Oregon-based Cayuse Inc.

There's even a built-in error detector that alerts users when there's a mistake. "The way the system is set up will provide a warning, which alerts the user to correct the problem," said Ace, adding, "the fact that this system is Web-based and can be deployed immediately without installing any software is what has attracted large institutions, like UT Austin, to this approach to streamlining the application process."

For an institution like UT Austin, which submits hundreds of grant applications each year, a more efficient model for completing the necessary paperwork helps reduce major roadblocks.

Introducing Cayuse424 to prospective users has been fairly easy and the benefits are manifold, according to Sara Boettcher, director of research systems and technology at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio.

"Our implementation started with a conference call with a Cayuse representative who outlined the implementation tasks on their end and also helped our Office of Sponsored Programs [OSP] devise a plan for a staged implementation with our local research community," she said.

It took only a few days for several OSP staff members to be trained on the system. Then, OSP chose six departments at the Health Science Center for training. Simultaneously, Cayuse activated the production version of the Web application that UT would use for grant applications. OSP provided end-user training to the designated departments and accounts were made available to users.

Since Cayuse424 is a subscription-based service, the annual fees are paid at the institutional level, Boettcher said. Each UT System institution is factored into the equation - the amount of federal research dollars each institution brings in annually is used to calculate its cost. No upgrades to hardware or software were required for the rollout.   

 

Competition Spurs UT
Timing is everything when competing for the rapidly shrinking pool of federal dollars, according to Elena Mota, program coordinator of the UT Austin Office of Sponsored Projects. Not only are resources diminishing, but the number of applicants competing for those federal dollars also is increasing, she said, which makes it even more crucial to streamline the application process for faculty and researchers who routinely write grants to federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense.

In fact, there were 2,900 submissions in 2006 from UT Austin alone, including applications to federal, state, private foundations and corporate funding agencies. Because the requests range from $5,000 to several million dollars, all proposal requests must meet state, university and federal guidelines. That's why Mota, who trains users, was pleased that the Web-based system was relatively fast and easy to implement.

"The process itself was simple; it was just the fact that we didn't have a lot of time to deploy," Mota said. "Now here we are a year later, and it's not as labor intensive for people to get their grants out the door because if people have already done a proposal, they are already in the system."

Before UT Austin adopted Cayuse in January 2007, applicants used Grants.gov, a federal government-run Web site that lets grantees access funding opportunities, submit proposals and do post-award administration tasks, such as submitting final reports. Generally the system

only lets one user work on the forms at a time.

"Grants.gov in essence became a post office for the federal agencies - we submit, they pick up our proposals," said Jane Youngers, assistant vice president of research and sponsored programs for the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio.

However, the government's addition of an e-forms program called PureEdge, which was devised to aid the downloading and submission process, actually had an unintended effect. "One of the issues is that PureEdge is not an easy software to use; it does not provide for the Mac platform," Youngers said, adding that Apple computer users constitute a sizable percentage of the scientific community.

While the federal system tried to adjust by announcing a transition to an Adobe format, UT Austin decided to focus its efforts in a different direction: shopping for a vendor to offer a hosted solution.

UT Austin deployed the Cayuse solutions to provide a "cleaner and simpler interface to the proposal package," said Boettcher, because it lets users work simultaneously on different parts of a proposal - a task that wasn't possible with Grants.gov.


Longhorns Simplify Systems
The Cayuse system helps secure federal dollars by offering the application forms online and allows them to be worked on simultaneously by more than one applicant. It also doesn't limit the number of proposals that can be worked on or submissions that can be delivered via e-submission technology - those are popular features among the UT faculty and researchers who use it, Youngers said.

However, while the usability factor has been documented, Boettcher said, it's difficult to say if there has been an increase in grant dollars, because the system was adopted only last year.

"The process of applying for federal research funding is difficult; there is a lot of inherent inefficiency in the system," said Ace. "Our product eliminates some of those inefficiencies. Our software takes a lot of the manual work out of those forms. It streamlines the entire proposal development process. The big innovation is it lets you enter information once and apply it across multiple proposals and forms."

That means a critical time savings in finishing grant applications. For larger institutions such as UT Austin that constantly apply for grants, ensuring that each form is filled out according to federal guidelines is a crucial element of the RFP process. Many of the forms are complicated, and errors can be costly to applicants and time-consuming to correct. The system lets researchers prepare more proposals faster, and administrators now spend less time on technical details, forms validations and clerical tasks. Consequently they can devote more time to evaluation and proposal quality, said Mota.

Other UT institutions are following UT Austin's lead. Of the 15 UT institutions, at least half have either deployed the software or plan to do so, Youngers said.

"Cayuse improved the process for the OSP staff; it helped us ensure that the right version of an application has been submitted. It reduced the number of e-mail exchanges and therefore reduced the chance for error, in terms of sending the wrong attachment," Mota said. "It reduced the work process and allowed for an easier exchange of electronic files between the OSP staff and research community."

The ultimate benefit of deploying the software, said Ace, is that it can transform a large institution in weeks. "It is a small piece," said Ace, "but a very important piece of a very large funding puzzle."

That means, when deadlines arise, and applications are submitted last-minute, there's now, according to Ace, "no more need to run after the FedEx truck."