 |
|
April 1999
History of FastLane
Introduction
The origins of the FastLane Project can be found in NSF's resp onse to the dramatic growth in workload and budget levels experienced during the 1980s. During that period, the NSF budget nearly tripled to $3 billion and the number of fully reviewed proposals increased by 40%, while personnel resources remained level. NSF's solution for handling increasing workloads with level staffing resources was to become a leader in the use of information technology to perform critical business activities, much as NSF is viewed as a leader in funding merit-reviewed scientific and engineering research.
One area of the Foundation's focus was the application of advanced information technology to support proposal processing activities. In 1985, initial plans for experiments in electronic proposal sub mission were developed. This eventually led to the initiation of the EXPRES (EXPerimental Research in Electronic Submission) project in 1986.
EXPRES
In 1986, the Division of Information Systems (DIS) developed the concept for a research project to be conducted by universities to explore electronic proposal submission capabilities. Working jointly with the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), DIS participated in the proposal competition to award grants under the EXPRES project. In October 1986, two awards were made (to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan) to create an interoperable environment which would enable scientists and engineers to exchange multimedia documents freely among dissimilar hardware and software platforms. The NSF proposal preparation, submission and review process was chosen to be the experimental testbed, partly because this process offered many challenges common to electronic document exchanges: high volume of activity, geographic dispersion, and heterogeneous environments.
The EXPRES project was ahead of its time in some respects. Some of the technical hurdles to the electronic transmission of compound documents (i.e., those including text, graphics, equations, etc.) among computers using different operating systems (DOS, Mac OS and UNIX) could not be overcome at that time.
EPS (Electronic Proposal Submission)
A pilot program was begun in 1988 (and coordinated with the EXPRES Project) to experiment with online proposal and forms submission. The following year, NSF management reduced funding for the EXPRES project. At the same time, the scope of the project was reduced and responsibility transferred to DIS. The NSF Director approved the establishment of the EPS program in DIS. This new program was to focus on a lower cost experiment to establish a technological base for exchanging proposals electronically between NSF and the university community. NSF-to-university electronic transmission activities were increased over the next several years.
FastLane
In 1994, an NSF Task Force on Electronic Prop osal Processing was formed and chaired by the Director, DIS. This task force evaluated the past experiments with electronic proposal submission and recommended a new approach. Rather than focus strictly on proposal submission, the task force recommended that NSF invest in automating all business transactions with the research, engineering and education communities. The Director, NSF, approved the task force report. The project was named FastLane and would utilize the Internet, World Wide Web and browser technology.
FastLane continued NSF's long-standing emp hasis on reducing the administrative burden on NSF staff and organizations, and improving business processes through the application of advanced information technology. FastLane was intended as an experimental program to explore methods to redesign and streamline the way NSF does business with its customer communities. The program strategy was to create pilot projects that would demonstrate in the early phases the technical feasibility of various approaches, and test new processes for exchanging information among proposers, reviewers, university research administrators and NSF staff. The early pilot systems were tested with subsets of the NSF research community. Successful pilots were then implemented more widely.
FastLane was central to NSF's government re-invention initiatives. The Rep ort of the National Performance Review cited "NSF's efforts to automate grant management activities...as an example of an effective way to keep up with increasing workload by handling program administration more efficiently." FastLane was also one of 53 projects selected to test measurement provisions of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. Performance indicators have been developed to measure the effectiveness of the FastLane pilots.
As originally conceived, many existing p aper or telephone interactions would be re-designed to allow computer access to NSF via a dial-up or Internet connection to World Wide Web (WWW) servers. Anyone using standard PC technology would have "point and click" access to software that would facilitate most of NSF's business transactions - from completing proposal forms to inquiring about the status of proposals.
Doing business with NSF would be simp ler, faster, more accurate, and less expensive. Proposers, reviewers and awardees would have more choices in how to do business with the Foundation and would be provided greater access to information and more control over their transactions. Most applications would be designed with a "smart form" that uses information already available in the NSF database in order to minimize the time and effort required to complete transactions and the amount of redundant information collected during proposal submission. Internal NSF systems were also re-designed to accept data entered directly from FastLane, thereby improving data quality and the productivity, timeliness, and effectiveness of the proposal and review system.
A FastLane Internal Review Committee (FIRCOM) was formed in May 1994 to provide guidance to the FastLane Project and to resolve policy issues. This steering committee includes representatives from NSF directorate management, program management, grants and contracts, financial management and information systems. That same year, development started on the first six pilot applications:
- Electronic Proposal Forms Submission - provides the capability for electronic submission of administrative information related to proposals;
- Proposal Status Inquiry - allows PI's and other authorized individuals to review the current status of a pending proposal;
- Submission of Final Project Reports - provides an electronic version of the final project report and enables electronic submission of the form and attachments (in a future release, project results information will be made publicly available);
- Cash Transaction Request - allows access to the cash request system;
- Submission of Review Information - allows reviewers to enter ratings and review comments or to cut and paste from a local word processing document; and
- Announcements of Award Actions - provides a list of recent awards, including information on the organization, principal investigator, amount, and duration.
Software develop ment efforts for these systems were funded from the program accounts, reflecting the experimental nature of the FastLane Project and the fact that it supported programmatic requirements.
NSF worked with initial group of 16 universities to evaluate FastLane prototype activities. NSF directly involved these colleges and universities, representing a broad cross section of the grantee community, in the design and pilot testing of each application.
NSF established working relationship s with other Federal agencies that are developing similar systems, including the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. FastLane has been used as a model to ensure the development of systems government-wide that will promote a seamless interface between research organizations and Federal grant-making agencies.
In 1995, FastLane develop ment included a voice response system for the status of proposals, a Graduate Research Fellowship Application, and the initial capabilities in the Electronic Jacket System. In July 1995, NSF established a FastLane Internal Implementation Group (FIIG) to provide advice on internal implementation issues, as more FastLane modules became operational. This group consists of program and administrative staff from each directorate at NSF.
In 1996, FastLane develop ment continued and was made available to all NSF organizations. By the end of the year, nearly 400 organizations were registered. A pilot of a fully electronic jacket for internal NSF processing was implemented in ten NSF programs.
In March, a meeting was held at NSF with all research grant agencies and OMB to evaluate the technical ap proaches being developed for Federal electronic research administration. The Department of Energy had sponsored a demonstration with eight organizations of the use of EDI to transmit grant information. The FastLane Project was the primary World Wide Web approach. The consensus was that both approaches had merit for various applications and customer groups. Agencies were encouraged to work together to adopt the best of both technologies. NSF committed to the acceptance of EDI transactions for grant applications for those larger organizations capable of using that technology. Other agencies were encouraged to collaborate with NSF on common WWW implementations. In May, the Electronic Commerce Committee issued a Strategic Plan endorsing both technologies for implementation of electronic research administration.
In the fall of 1997, NSF formed a FastLane Divisional Exp erts Group consisting of representatives of each NSF division. The members of this group are expected to become FastLane experts and serve as a resource both to their divisional staff and to their research community for FastLane. This group meets bimonthly to discuss recent changes and share experiences.
In FY 1998, FastLane acceptance by the research community expanded rapidly. Over 17% of all full proposals (5,100 proposals) and over 17,000 reviews were submitted to NSF via FastLane in FY 1998. More than 1,000 organizations are registered. Major solicitations that required full or partial FastLane submission included IGERT, KDI and CAREER. A FastLane Implementation Plan, calling for full implementation by the end of FY2000, was published.
Project information is being disseminated widely through the Foundation's regular publications, via the NSF Home Page, and in presentations and site visits. NSF customer survey instruments and other feedback mechanisms have been used to solicit feedback on FastLane objectives and plans.
NSF staff conducted 60 outreach activities in FY 1998 to help the research and education community learn more about FastLane. Workshops were conducted in 21 states and Puerto Rico. These activities ranged from formal presentations and demos to workshops for hands-on training of Principal Investigators and organizations' Sponsored Research Offices.
In September 1998, NSF's Director, Rita Colwell, issued Important Notice 123 outlining NSF's goals for a paperless proposal and award system. A study of the impact of FastLane on Program Assistant positions was begun. Formal training and orientation activities for NSF staff were expanded. Performance goals under the Results Act for receipt of proposals via FastLane for both FY1999 and FY2000 were raised based on the excellent rate of acceptance of FastLane by the research community.
Please use the “Back” button on your browser
to return to the previous page
|
| |
