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Accomplishments
The list below will grow as we continue to push on the system.
- Decreased the time from peer review to proposal status notification.
- Increased the number of four year grant programs
- Adopted new policy to invite limited number of researchers who have recently received their Ph.D's and established researchers without prior panel experience to observe at panel reviews to gain experience
- Adopted new policy to invite community to volunteer for panel review consideration to facilitate panel selection process
- Adopted new policy to send regular email updates regarding program status
- Streamlining constraints which inhibited financial processes (ongoing)
- Set up SARA email communication with the science community
- Compared NASA and NSF best practices (ongoing)
- Reduced unnecessary internal NASA reporting requirements
- Establishing creative solutions to increase efficiencies within SMD (ongoing)
- Improved NSSC requests for annual progress reports
- Removed the bottleneck in No-Cost Extensions
- Volunteer Opportunity for Post Doctoral Fellows
- Proposal Budgets Revealed to Reviewers in 2008
- Broadened Jupiter Data Analysis Program
Accomplishment Details
- Selection notification: All Divisions have agreed to notify proposers
within 8 weeks of peer review that they are either "selected," "not selected" or "selectable." The
last category is for proposals awaiting budget decisions.
- Four year grants: Longer award periods can provide greater stability and
therefore maximize the science return on investment. There are several programs where it will no
longer be considered an oddity to request four year grants. The current list can be found here.
- Panel Review Observers: Serving on a review panel is a service to the
community and an excellent way to stay in touch with the work in your field. Most Principal
Investigators would agree that nothing teaches young researchers the pitfalls of proposal writing
better than serving on a panel. Note that heliophysics recently established a practice of inviting
up to two scientists new to the field to serve on every peer review panel. Without exception, each
"new" reviewer praised the experience.
- Review pools: One issue that takes a lot of time for the program officers
is putting together review panels. Consider adding your name to a possible pool of reviewers here. Like Jury Duty, you may not get called, but it is important to be
willing to serve in some capacity, over the duration of your grant, for panels within your area of
expertise. We will contact you with a request for more information.
- Program officer updates: SARA has made contacting the appropriate Program
Officer easier!
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- Financial flow: It is important to decrease the time it takes to get
money to the investigator, and currently there are many cumbersome steps. A recent example of an
improvement: Before April 23rd it took nearly 70 days for the NASA shared services center NSSC to
process 90% of our grants. Since then its dropped to 46 days. This improvement can be directly
attributed to changes made by the folks at NSSC as a result of feed back from HQ and the community
on how they handled grants. The major source of delay was caused by them devoting an inordinate
amount of time and scrutiny to travel budgets in grants that had already been reviewed by panels and
approved by the program officer. Now they only follow up on travel if the amount requested is above
a reasonable threshold (the amount it costs to travel to the furthest point in the US).
- SARA email and website: self explanatory.
- Best practices: Checked out NSF and got some interesting ideas. Stay
tuned.
- Reporting requirements: NF 1676 requirements for reporting sensitive
material have been modified to accommodate the fundamental research covered under most ROSES
elements for civil servant scientists (and a similar modification has been established for
researchers at JPL). View this document for more information.
- We are creating a better workplace within SMD.
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- Improved NSSC requests for annual progress reports: PI complaints regarding the requests from the NSSC for annual progress
reports motivated discussion and the adoption of a new letter the PI will get 10 days before their progress report is due.
Improvements include: friendlier tone, electronic progress report rather than hard copy, Grant/Cooperative Agreement Handbook link with progress report details, and a clear listing of the grant anniversary date, NASA technical officer, NSSC grant officer, grant and grant number.
To learn more about the form of your progress report, click here.
- Removed the bottleneck in No-Cost Extensions: The GSFC Procurement Office now has someone devoted to the No-Cost Extension problem and the backlog of several hundred has been eliminated! The person in charge of these is Ellen Harden (301) 286-2749.
- Volunteer Opportunity for consideration to serve on panels
The ability to write a successful research proposal is an essential talent for research scientists, and there is no better way to improve one's writing skills than to serve on a proposal review panel. In an effort to better prepare our postdoctoral fellows to excel in the peer review process, we would like to incorporate them into the competitive system as soon as possible. We hereby inform all relevant postdocs of a new opportunity to volunteer to be considered as external reviewers or panel observers.
Please send an E-mail to sara@nasa.gov with a short description of your area(s) of expertise and attach a curriculum vitae, publication list and three scientific references. Being selected to serve on a panel is a significant step in one's career path. Volunteering only ensures that you will be considered - it does not guarantee that you will be selected. The challenge to compose review panels to optimize inclusion of proper expertise and experience level is a task our program officers take very seriously, so volunteers should not be discouraged if they are not invited to serve right away.
- Proposal Budgets Revealed to Reviewers
Budgets will not be redacted in ROSES 2008.
What does this mean? The proposals submitted in response to ROSES 2007 had
redacted budgets, meaning they included a budget justification section
containing only direct costs and proposed time commitments, but actual
salary and overhead rates were hidden from the peer review. The total budget
including labor, indirect, and total proposed costs were available only to
NASA program personnel. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but the
community at large has expressed serious reservations about this practice.
As a result of YOUR feedback, both through SARA and through panel reviews,
SMD has decided to halt this practice in 2008. This will be a trial period
to see if "fixing" this by revealing the complete costs is a good thing or
not. Bottom line: Proposals submitted in response to ROSES 2008 will not
have their budgets hidden from reviewers.
- Broadened Jupiter Data Analysis Program
At the recent DPS meeting it was announced that the New Horizons Jupiter Data Analysis Program
(NHJDAP) would be broadened to include the analysis of older data in the Jupiter system, not just
from the New Horizons mission. This is appropriate in that the Galileo mission data returned after
calendar year 2000 was never open to a Data Analysis Program. Furthermore the planetary community
has been greatly stimulated by the new Flagship studies in the Jupiter system and this provides a
perfect opportunity to support further mission studies in this area.
In order to have the Planetary Data System nodes prepare for analysis of the older data and complete
the ingesting of all the recent New Horizons Jupiter system encounter data our plan is to release
both the Cassini DAP and the revised JDAP calls in ROSES 2008 as early in the year as possible
(February 2008). The due dates will be separated by 2-4 weeks to facilitate PIs proposing to both.
The due dates will be in the May timeframe with a review panel meeting in the summer. Please
carefully check the upcoming NSPIRES announcements and program calls for additional details or
contact James Green (james.greenATnasa.gov) or Denis Bogan (dboganATnasa.gov).
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