Over at Partial Recall, Rob gives us an update on what NIH is doing regarding PureEdge's inability to provide a Mac client to Grants.gov. The latest news is that the Mac client will be available in November 2006. Now, I could be wrong, but I distinctly remember some pledges from PureEdge about a year ago that a Mac client would be available "in a year".
NIH's solution, which I think is as good as anyone could hope for at this point, is to offer grant applicants the use of a Citrix PC session through which they can use the PureEdge forms, or access to one of NIH's service providers. As Norka Ruiz Bravo, NIH Deputy Director of Extramural Research, puts it, "We recognize that this solution is not ideal but ask for your patience and forbearance as we work toward the very complex task of electronic submission of all NIH applications by May 2007."
I keep saying this; maybe someone will listen soon: there are Mac e-forms clients out there, available today. One is Formatta's Filler application, which is in use by a bunch companies and federal government agencies already. In fact, Formatta is one of NIH's "service providers." The government shouldn't be locking users (or itself!) into a particular platform when perfectly good alternatives are available.
Note that Formatta's Filler for Mac was not available when Grants.gov was in development, so no-one should think that they didn't do their homework. But I think that the situation regarding PureEdge's intentions and ability to produce a Mac client should be pretty clear by now, and a change of direction is possibly overdue. Although PureEdge was bought by IBM earlier this year, I personally have little confidence that the development of the Mac client will be any quicker as a result.
In the meantime, NIH and others have to balance a very tricky situation. On the one hand, OMB is mandating that they must integrate and use Grants.gov. On the other hand, they can't risk alienating a large part of their customer base (research grantees) by mandating use of a PC-only platform that delivers less customer satisfaction compared to the existing application submission process or alternative methods, e.g. NSF's FastLane. I feel NIH's pain here; it is acute and it's not going to go away until PureEdge delivers a Mac client. Until such times, I hope the agency continues to work with its customers to communicate their position, and with Grants.gov as the team there works to satisfy this need. NIH's strategy of moving to 100% electronic applications by the end of FY2007 is brave and admirable for an agency of its size and the importance grant-making is to its mission. The people responsible deserve kudos for it.
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