NSF PR 96-76 - December 3, 1996
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NSF Fastlane Wins Nationwide Award for Best Use of
Internet Technologies
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) FastLane has
been chosen the first federal government project to
win a National Information Infrastructure Award (NII).
FastLane is an electronic system of administering
scientific research grants, educational fellowships,
and a host of other interactive functions.
FastLane was a winner in the Government category,
one of ten awards in different categories given for
programs and organizations nationwide.
Started in 1995, the NII Awards recognize extraordinary
achievements on the information superhighway, including
innovative uses of the Internet and related communications
technologies. The NII awards are supported by a mix
of private, public and grass roots organizations.
"I was both surprised and humbled by the news, but
extremely gratified as well, because I saw daily the
immense effort underway to make FastLane work," NSF
Director Neal Lane said. "This is a project which
not only is changing how we interact daily with the
science and engineering, research and education communities,
but it is taking us into the next century when instant
access to scientific discovery and learning will be
at everyone's fingertips."
FastLane is an interactive, real-time system to conduct
a variety of communications and business over the
Internet. Its best uses to date involve NSF's complicated
proposal and review process for scientific research
grants and applications for graduate fellowships.
"We've been extremely gratified with the response
we are receiving from those who are using FastLane,"
Fred Wendling, who directs the FastLane effort, said.
"NSF was the innovator of the Internet, but like everything
else, innovation is a continuous process, not something
that stands on its own. We've worked hard, but the
challenges just keep coming and we just have to keep
meeting them."
FastLane has met the challenge so far. Since February
1995, organizers have worked to establish and refine
a process of totally electronic communication for
proposal submissions, updates, reviews, reports and
awards for research. Sixteen universities helped to
design FastLane in this experimental phase.
While analysis is still being done on many basic FastLane
applications, trends are emerging. Recently, NSF's
call for nominations in its Recognition Awards for
Integration of Research and Education resulted in
a 40 percent reduction in processing time for applications
and a 51 percent reduction in administrative costs.
From an experiment that started with 16 university
partners, FastLane is now doing $1 billion worth of
business with 400 institutions in an agency which
has a budget of slightly over $3 billion.
"There's also a reduction in the number of phone calls
asking about the status of proposals," Wendling said.
"We have in place 'smart forms' that help us standardize
submission information, send updates back and forth,
improve data transfer and reduce staff time in performing
redundant data entry. This helps us do our reviews
faster."
"We felt like a real partner in the process," Pamela
Webb, manager of sponsored projects at the University
of California in Santa Barbara explained. "There's
a better sense of ownership for institutions seeking
NSF support because we get real-time acknowledgment
of valid proposals, reports and reviews and more timely
notification of funding decisions."
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