Strawman/Papers

The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), Phase III

A Cooperative Venture Between Federal Agencies and Participating Institutions

Barbara E. Siegel

The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) is a cooperative initiative among federal agencies and institutional recipients of federal funds. It was established to increase research productivity by streamlining the administrative process and minimizing the administrative burden on principal investigators while maintaining effective stewardship of federal funds. If you are a researcher and a recipient of federal grants, you have benefited from FDP successes, which include ninety-day prespending authority, institutionally approved no-cost extensions up to one additional year, and automatic carryover of unobligated funds from one budget period to the next. In its current phase, the FDP boasts sixty-five institutional members, eleven federal agencies, and five professional organizations. Given the ever-increasing federal regulatory environment and the strain on the relationship between academe and the federal government, FDP provides a unique forum for dialogue, demonstration, and debate among all the key players.

Since 1986, a select group of federal agencies and institutions have come together under the FDP umbrella to actively engage in dialogue and demonstrations focused on increased productivity of federally supported research combined with a reduced administrative burden. Although the acronym has remained the same during three progressive phases of the FDP, the name of the organization has changed along with the membership and approaches to minimizing bureaucratic accretion.

Florida Demonstration Project

In 1986, five federal agencies—National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Department of Energy (DOE), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—joined forces with the Florida State University system and the University of Miami to test and evaluate a grant mechanism utilizing a standardized and simplified set of terms and conditions across all participating federal agencies. The grant mechanism represented a radical departure from the highly individualistic and locally controlled standard agreements at that time. This innovative approach moved away from the notion of federal prior approvals to institutional approvals of such items as foreign travel and equipment purchases. It also allowed the Florida institutional participants to authorize prespending, approve no-cost extensions, and carry forward unobligated funds from one budget period to the next, as noted above. This first phase of the FDP was called the Florida Demonstration Project and was supported by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) of the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The goal of this initial Florida phase was to demonstrate that standardizing and simplifying financial and administrative requirements would result in enhanced research productivity and reduced administrative burden without compromising stewardship of federal funds. The agenda and participants for this first phase of the FDP were dictated by the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Demonstrations were designed to delegate responsibility for key administrative decisions away from federal agencies to the participating institution.

Federal Demonstration Project, Phase II

Based on the success of the Florida project, OMB notified all federal agencies that these new, expanded authorities could be applied to a designated group of award recipients. In addition, OMB encouraged the continuation of the FDP in a broader forum. As a result, a solicitation was placed in the Federal Register in June 1988 for expanded membership in the newly named Federal Demonstration Project, Phase II. The focus included four core areas: terms and conditions and award instruments, the application process, reporting requirements, and audit requirements. This Phase II solicitation resulted in a membership consisting of eleven federal agencies, one nonprofit research organization, two consortia of academic institutions, sixteen individual academic institutions, and two university systems. The GUIRR, which was created to address the tension between the federal government and institutions over burgeoning administrative requirements, became the official convener of the FDP. In this capacity, GUIRR has provided invaluable support by coordinating meetings and ongoing activities and serving as the liaison between FDP and organizations involved in science policy decision making.

Mission Statement

The mission of FDP, Phase II was to foster productive research environments by promoting communication and cooperation among participants involved in the research enterprise at the federal and institutional levels; improving, streamlining, and standardizing the management and administration of research throughout the research support system; serving as a laboratory to evaluate innovative changes to existing research support practices; and optimizing the investment of research funds while maintaining appropriate stewardship

Goals

Goals for FDP, Phase II included enhancing the capability and performance of the research support systems of federal agencies and institutions; identifying high-priority areas for improvement, standardization, and streamlining; effecting improvements in administrative systems through selected demonstrations and other means; evaluating demonstrations and the effectiveness of the FDP overall; institutionalizing successful outcomes into the mainstream; improving the application of technology to communication, administration, and decision-making systems; and articulating principles of the government-university partnership and obtaining agreement on them. All of these identified goals were directly related to increasing research productivity by streamlining and improving research administration.

Impact

An early undertaking of FDP, Phase II was to administer a survey on the impact of the expanded authorities on principal investigators. The results were striking. Among those surveyed, thousands of hours were saved as a result of the streamlined administrative procedures. More importantly, seventy-three percent of the time saved was redirected to research.

Successful demonstrations during Phase II included streamlined procedures for noncompeting continuation proposals; equipment screening which resulted in the elimination of screening requirements from OMB Circular A-110: Grants and Agreements with Institutions of Higher Education, Hospitals, and Other Non-Profit Organizations; simplified technical-reporting requirements; and an allocation methodology for research costs among multiple projects managed by the same investigator, which was incorporated into OMB Circular A-21: Cost Principles for Educational Institutions. In addition to serving as a test bed for demonstrations, FDP, Phase II solidified its role as a communication conduit between Federal and Institutional partners and among administrators and program managers across federal agencies. In fact, one of the most significant outcomes of FDP, Phase II was the increased interaction and cooperation among federal agencies. Agencies now routinely share information and discuss issues of importance because of the relationships established in FDP, Phase II. As a result, the decision was made to extend FDP, Phase II indefinitely as a forum for open communication on issues relating to the research enterprise and as a test bed for demonstrations.

FDP Phase II gained national recognition in Vice President Gore’s 1993 National Performance Review: Creating A

Government that Works Better and Costs Less (NPR), which recommended using the FDP organizational model and demonstration focus to look at ways of reducing administrative overhead on research grants. OMB solicited the support of the FDP in evaluating the possibility of direct-charging facility costs to research projects, thus subjecting more costs to peer-review scrutiny. This OMB request resulted in an FDP report that strongly opposed the inclusion of space as a direct charge. The FDP considered several methodologies and concluded that the additional administrative cost to both federal agencies and institutions associated with such a change would be prohibitive.

Federal Demonstration Partnership, Phase III

In late 1995, the FDP agreed it was time to move into Phase III, with an expanded membership and broader scope. The broadened scope emphasizes demonstrations that combine electronic research administration (ERA) and reengineered systems and procedures, with increased productivity and stewardship and decreased administrative burden. The makeup of the membership expanded to include faculty researchers, agency program officials, and professional organizations. A solicitation appeared in the February 8, 1996 Federal Register, which resulted in FDP, Phase III. The kick-off meeting was held in June 1996 at the National Academy of Sciences. At that meeting, the official name of the FDP was changed to the Federal Demonstration Partnership, a change that reflects the strength of the relationship that has developed over the years.

Since the June 1996 meeting, eleven task groups have been formed to study specific segments of the proposal and award interface between federal agencies and institutions; to develop models; and to propose demonstrations to test the models.

Initiatives currently underway include identifying models of electronic award notification; defining a common data set for electronic or paper submission of biographical information by principal investigators and other key project personnel; defining a common data set for electronic submission of institutional profiles; developing a basic assistance award instrument; investigating, designing, developing, testing and distributing alternative solutions for an electronic research administration system module to do institutional routing and approval of contract and grant proposals; and evaluating just-in-time proposal submissions.

As the focus shifts more and more to electronic research administration, a full-time ERA coordinator will be hired to serve as the interface among FDP task groups, institutions, federal agencies, and others involved in the research partnership; and to help coordinate demonstrations and other initiatives designed to move the partnership forward in the emerging electronic environment.

Challenges

Our challenges are many. At this point, the FDP is the "only game in town" that is actively addressing administrative and regulatory issues from the perspective of increasing research productivity. As the FDP, Phase II survey results on the impact of the expanded authorities indicate, principal investigators reinvested seventy-three percent of time saved back into their research. The magnitude of this reinvestment is profound. The FDP will continue to chip away at bureaucratic accretion and serve as the test bed for demonstrations designed to streamline and standardize procedures and processes.

Ms. Siegel is chairperson of the Federal Demonstration Partnership and director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, Northwestern University.

Information on the Federal Demonstration Project can be found on their web site at:

http://www.fdp3.org/

Member institutions in the Northeast who are also NERA members are:

University of Maryland at College Park

Cornell University

The Pennsylvania State University

Participating Federal Agencies are:

AFOSR -- Air Force Office of Scientific Research:

AMRMC -- Army Medical Research & Materiel Command:

ARO -- Army Research Office:

DOE -- Department of Energy:

EPA -- Environmental Protection Agency

FMS -- Financial Management Service, (Dept of the Treasury):

NASA -- National Aeronautics & Space Administration:

NIH -- National Institutes of Health:

NSF -- National Science Foundation:

ONR -- Office of Naval Research:

USDA -- Department of Agriculture: