[DM-MUG] Fwd: [MacLaw] New Grant System Excludes Mac Users

[Victoria L. Herring]

Write Grassley and Harkin...

>
>
><http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200942.html>
>
>==========
>
>New Grant System Excludes Mac Users
>Electronic Forms Compatible Only With Microsoft
>By Rick Weiss
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Monday, February 13, 2006; Page A19
>
>What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400
>billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft
>software could apply?
>
>That is the predicament that many scientists, scholars and others say
>they are in as the government enters the final phase of its five-year
>effort to streamline its grant-application process.
>
>The new "Grants.gov" system, under development at a cost of tens of
>billions of dollars, aims to replace paper applications with
>electronic forms. It is being phased in at the National Institutes of
>Health, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal
>agencies. All 26 grant-giving agencies are supposed to have their
>application processes fully online by 2007.
>
>The problem: Although many U.S. scientists and others depend on
>graphics-friendly Macintosh computers, the software selected by the
>government is not Mac-compatible. And it is expected to remain so for
>at least a year.
>
>Last week, faced with evidence that the system will not be fully
>accessible to Mac users by this fall as promised, NIH quietly dropped
>its plan to switch to electronic applications for October's $600
>million round of major "R01" grants.
>
>But NIH and other agencies already have been asking for electronic
>applications for smaller grants, triggering hair loss among
>frustrated Mac users.
>
>"It's been hell on wheels," said Mark Tumeo, vice provost for
>research and dean of the college of graduate studies at Cleveland
>State University, one of many smaller institutions that have been hit
>especially hard by the new requirement.
>
>Although most observers believe that the move to electronic granting
>will eventually pay off, concerns about fairness during the
>transition have prompted angry humor on Mac-related listservs.
>
>"Uh, this would be the same government that spent a lot of time and
>money pursuing Microsoft for its anti-competitive behavior?" one
>blogger wrote. "And they now offer a government site that mandates
>monopoly?"
>
>Charles Havekost, chief information officer at the Health and Human
>Services Department, which helps manage Grants.gov, acknowledged that
>the system is "not perfect" but encouraged applicants to look at the
>positive side: They can go to one site and see every grant being
>offered by every federal agency, and use a standardized electronic
>form to start the process for most grants.
>
>The overall Grants.gov system, under construction by Northrop Grumman
>under a $22 billion federal contract, attracts more than 1 million
>hits every day, Havekost said. The system accepted more than 16,000
>applications for about 20 agencies last year. And it took in even
>more than that last month alone, with 45,000 expected by the end of
>this year.
>
>"In early 2002, people laughed and said, 'This is going to be
>impossible to get agencies to work together,' and yet we were able to
>do it," Havekost said.
>
>But the promise of making Grants.gov accessible to everyone remains
>unfulfilled because of a decision by Grumman and HHS to give a small
>Canadian company called PureEdge Solutions the job of creating the
>electronic forms.
>
>The PureEdge solution, it turns out, works only with the Windows
>operating system. And that is especially galling, several scientists
>said, as at least one major grant-making agency, the National Science
>Foundation, has for many years been using a "platform-independent"
>system that works seamlessly with all kinds of computers.
>
>Mike Atassi, program manager for Grumman's Grants.gov system
>integration team and an avowed fan of Macintosh computers, said the
>choice of PureEdge was logical given that the contract demanded full
>implementation within seven months and because more than 90 percent
>of computer users nationwide use PCs.
>
>Critics note that in contrast to the domination of PCs in the
>business community, Macs constitute about one-third to one-half of
>the computers scientists and academicians use.
>
>A long-standing PureEdge promise to make its forms Mac-compatible
>came into question last summer when IBM bought the company. Last
>week, an IBM spokesman said the company is "still planning to fully
>support the Mac," probably by fall.
>
>Atassi said if he receives a test version from IBM by this fall, it
>could be ready by the following spring.
>
>Meanwhile, the government is steering people to certain "workarounds"
>-- ways to make Macs behave as though they were PCs -- which can be
>purchased or downloaded from the Internet. But those systems are
>receiving mixed reviews.
>
>At the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge,
>Mass. -- one of the nation's premier research institutions, where
>every senior scientist has a personal grants administrator -- Mac
>users have used an in-house version of a Web server called Citrix to
>get around Grants.gov's limitations, said Mary Anne Donovan,
>administrative lab manager for a Whitehead researcher.
>
>The process has advantages over paper applications, Donovan said. "I
>can't tell you how many times I've had to take a cab to the airport
>at the last minute to FedEx my nine paper copies," she said. "If you
>can just press a button and send it, that's got to be better."
>
>But others who have turned to the workarounds recommended by
>Grants.gov have not fared as well.
>
>Nancy Wray, who directs the office at Dartmouth College that handles
>federal grant applications, said a recent attempt to use the Citrix
>server workaround was a bust. After struggling though lingo-laden
>government instructions "an awfully long time," she said, the grant
>applicant "just gave up."
>
>Christine Sell, who works with Tumeo at Cleveland State, called the
>Grants.gov workarounds "a walk in the wilderness." Mac users loathe
>one approach recommended by the government -- a "PC emulation"
>program -- because it is susceptible to PC-specific viruses they
>normally do not have to worry about.
>
>Other glitches plague the system, said Wendy Baldwin, executive vice
>president for research at the University of Kentucky, who told of a
>researcher who filed on time but did not find out until two days
>later that the electronic form had not gone through.
>
>"When it takes 48 hours to get a 'fatal error' notice back, you're
>screwed," she said. "This is supposed to be a partnership. . . . If
>you crank off your investigators and they don't make their deadlines,
>that's a terrible thing."
>
>In an interview, HHS's Havekost acknowledged that "there's been
>plenty of hue and cry," adding that applicants can apply for waivers
>to use paper if need be. Asked to confirm that the workarounds were
>at least "workable" -- a word he had used twice earlier in the
>conversation -- he pulled back.
>
>"That's not my word," Havekost said. "There will be a firestorm if
>you say I said it is workable."
>

-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Attorney, <http://www.HerringLaw.com> 
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