ADMINISTRATION AND
MANAGEMENT
The FY 2000 request for Administration
and Management of $189.63 million provides support for salaries, benefits, and
training of persons employed at the NSF, general operating expenses, including
key initiatives to advance the agency’s information systems technology, and
audit and Inspector General activities.
The workforce includes Federal employees, Intergovernmental Personnel
Act assignees, detailees, and contractors performing administrative
functions.
The Administration and Management key
program function includes administrative costs that are funded through the
Research and Related Activities Appropriation and the Education and Human
Resources Appropriation. All
Intergovernmental Personnel Act costs and administrative contracts from those
appropriations are included in the Administration and Management key program
function. Beginning in FY 2000, $1.20
million in award-related travel is included in program accounts instead of the
Salaries and Expenses Account. This
change is being requested to directly associate oversight and outreach travel
with the appropriate program.
(Millions of
Dollars)
1 Within OIG, $98,101 was
carried over from FY 1998 to FY 1999.
The Administration and Management key
program function includes the following components:
·
Personnel Compensation
and Benefits (PC&B) costs for FY 2000 increase by approximately $4.0
million over FY 1999 to provide for comparability and locality pay
increases.
·
General Operating Expenses (GOE) support the entire range of
operating expenses necessary for the agency to administer its programs. OIG support costs such as rent and
communications are provided in the S&E appropriation. The GOE level for FY 2000 provides for
advances in the agency’s information systems technology and increased rental
payments to the General Services Administration.
·
An increase in travel funds in FY 2000 is necessary to
continue to support the merit review process while increasing the ability for
oversight and outreach travel. Without
an increase in total travel authority, the Foundation will be unable to ensure
both a reliable merit review process and the oversight recommended by the
agency’s Inspector General. Inspector
General reports continue to cite the lack of travel funds for oversight of NSF
awards as a major management challenge.
In addition, management reviews call for more oversight travel.
·
OIG Activities include resources to support the Office of
Inspector General. Funding for the
financial statement audit contract is charged to the appropriations being
audited.
The FY 2000 Administration and
Management request is an increase of 5.0 percent over FY 1999. The increase will fund comparability and
locality pay increases, a rent increase, staff training, and improved
productivity of our staff through investments in information and communications
technology. Such investment in
information systems technology has been crucial to NSF in the past, as the agency
has handled significant increases in program funds and corresponding increases
in the quantity and complexity of its workload without equivalent increases in
administrative funds. To meet this
growing workload, the Foundation has actively pursued the use of advanced
information technologies to improve the way NSF does business and to reduce the
administrative burden on NSF customers and staff. In FY 2000, the Foundation’s program budget will increase by
approximately 6.0 percent, while staff levels remain constant. It is critical that the Foundation makes
further investments in the agency’s information systems that will enable NSF to
handle an increasing workload with the same number of staff. The key initiatives to advance NSF’s
information systems technology are:
Through the FastLane project, NSF is
moving toward more streamlined, paperless electronic administrative
activities. The Foundation initiated
FastLane as a research project in 1994 to test the feasibility of complete
electronic handling of proposal processing and grant administration and to
explore the capability of electronic processing to reduce the workload burden
on both NSF and the research community.
FastLane enables NSF and its customer community to conduct and facilitate
business transactions and exchange information electronically using the World
Wide Web. (www.fastlane.nsf.gov)
In September 1998, the Director of NSF
issued Important Notice 123 to university and college presidents and the heads
of other grantee organizations. It
contains NSF's vision for paperless proposal and award processing. In addition to outlining the steps NSF is
taking to bring the vision to reality, the Important Notice included a schedule
for grantees’ required use of the FastLane components. This notice is NSF's public commitment to
using electronic processing for its standard business processes.
In addition to increased efficiency and
reduced administrative burden, the benefits to be derived from FastLane are
increased access by researchers and the public to information about
NSF-supported research, and reduced proposal and award processing time. Since its inception, FastLane has been
tremendously successful and has continued to experience substantial growth in
all areas through FY 1998. The system
that began as an experiment with 16 university partners currently has 1500
registered institutions (up from 600 in FY 1997). FastLane won the National Information Infrastructure Award in
1996.
To date, 29 FastLane components have
been developed to handle the processing associated with proposal preparation
and submission, proposal review, proposal status inquiry, award notification,
project reports, and award search.
These modules were used by grantee institutions to submit 4,966
proposals in FY 1998. (NSF receives
about 30,000 proposals each year.)
Today, NSF handles nearly $2 billion in
cash transactions on FastLane. FastLane features include electronic
capabilities for cash requests, Federal Cash Transaction Reports (FCTR), and no
cost award extensions. Among the
enhancements added in FY 1998 were the Submission of FCTR, project reporting
system (both annual and final reports), spreadsheet support for proposal
budgets, new proposal cover sheet and other proposal forms, Panel
Travel/Electronic Funds Transfer, support of SBIR Phase II and preproposals,
internal review access, and project reports internal administration.
Currently, FastLane is NSF’s preferred
method of proposal submission. NSF’s FY
2000 goal under the Results Act is that 35 percent of all NSF proposals be
received via FastLane. In order to
handle the increased workload expected from this initiative, the Foundation
must continue to support and enhance FastLane operations and maintenance and
train personnel in its use. The required
infrastructure includes high-speed servers, scanning equipment, monitors,
software, and other equipment. It also
includes system security and contracts to maintain and enhance the FastLane
programs.
The FastLane system is being
continuously enhanced and updated as new technologies emerge and as the agency
receives feedback from the research community.
When the project began in 1994, NSF recognized that the opportunities
presented by advances in the Internet and the World Wide Web would have a significant
impact on how work is accomplished. The
initial project was based on what was known of the capabilities of the Internet
and Web at that time. Based on their
experience with FastLane, the user community has identified new opportunities
that were not envisioned in 1994. NSF
expects the requirement for new enhancements to continue as new opportunities
emerge and as the Web continues to evolve.
The Budget Internet Information
System (http://ntalpha.bfa.nsf.gov) contains information on GPRA issues such as
processing time and award size. It is
easily accessible to the public via the Web and is used extensively by the
university community and R&D press.
Information currently available includes:
·
Funding Rate by State
and Organization: Contains information on number of competitive proposals and
awards, funding rate, NSF processing time, award duration and award size. The information can be obtained by discipline
and includes ten years of trend data.
·
Award Listings, by
Organization, State, and Institution: Includes information on funding by state
and institution, broken out by academic and industrial performers with detail
by discipline and award.
The Enterprise Information System (EIS) is an internal NSF, user-friendly system that informs and empowers NSF program and financial managers as they make budget and planning decisions. The EIS includes information on financial status and FTE & Personnel. For example, a summary of budget detail for all NSF awards is available. This includes budgets for investigator salaries, funding for undergraduates and graduates, indirect costs, and equipment. Trends and current status of ongoing projects also are available.
NSF
is the innovator, developer, and custodian for FinanceNet (www.financenet.gov),
the government's Internet "home page" for financial management
improvement initiatives and the government-wide Internet portal site for
information on all Federal, state and local surplus, abandoned and unclaimed
property. The Chief Financial Officer’s
Council is FinanceNet's sponsor through Memoranda of Agreement with its member
agencies and departments. In FY 1998,
FinanceNet World Wide Web visits increased to the rate of 24.6 million
"hits" per year with subscriptions to its more than 100 topical and
organizational Internet list servers increasing to over 61,000. The Foundation also further broadened
FinanceNet's outreach. In FY 1998
FinanceNet integrated all of its collaborative Internet tools, developed for
more than a dozen governmental organizations, into one seamless turnkey Web
application.
NSF is replacing its aging central
mainframe computer by migrating to a client-server computing environment which
allows more processing to be performed at individual workstations rather than
on the mainframe. This migration is
scheduled for completion in FY 2000.
The performance goals for NSF’s
investment process provide information about the means and strategies NSF uses
in support of its outcome goals and articulates performance goals for the
investment process by which NSF shapes its portfolio of awards. Performance goals for management address
whether centrally funded and coordinated administrative activities are managed
efficiently and effectively in support of NSF’s mission.
ANNUAL
PERFORMANCE GOALS FOR NSF’S INVESTMENT PROCESS [1]
[2]
Performance
Area |
FY 2000 Annual Performance Goal |
Proposal and Award Processes |
|
Use of Merit Review |
At least 90 percent of NSF funds will
be allocated to projects reviewed by appropriate peers external to NSF and
selected through a merit-based competitive process, maintaining the FY 1998
baseline and FY 1999 goal of 90%. |
Implementation of Merit
Review Criteria[3] |
NSF performance in
implementation of the new merit review criteria is successful when reviewers
address the elements of both generic review criteria appropriate to the
proposal at hand and when program officers take the information provided into
account in their decisions on awards; minimally effective when reviewers
consistently use only a few of the suggested elements of the generic review
criteria although others might be applicable. |
Customer service --
Time to prepare proposals |
95% of program
announcements and solicitations will be available at least three months prior
to proposal deadlines or target dates improving upon the FY 1998 baseline of
66%. |
Customer service --
Time to decision |
Process 75% of
proposals within six months of receipt improving upon the FY 1998 baseline of
59% and FY 1999 goal of 70%. |
Maintaining Openness in
the System |
NSF will maintain
the percentage of competitive research grants going to new investigators to
be at least 30%, as provided for in the FY 1998 Performance Plan and 3% over
the FY 1999 baseline of 27%. |
Integration of Research and Education[4] |
|
In Proposals |
At least 25% of all
research grant proposals explicitly addess integration of research and
education. |
In Reviews |
At least 25% of all
reviews of research grant proposals explicitly address the merits of proposed
activities addressing the integration of research and education. |
Diversity4 |
|
REU and IGERT awards |
Participation of
students from underrepresented groups in REU and IGERT awards is at least
proportional to their representation in the relevant student population, and
exceeds that proportion in at least 25% of the projects. |
Center activities |
Participation of
students from underrepresented groups in NSF centers activities is at least
proportional to their representation in the relevant student population, and
exceeds that proportion in at least 25% of the projects. |
ANNUAL
PERFORMANCE GOALS FOR MANAGEMENT [5]
Critical Factor for Success |
Performance Goal |
New and emerging technologies |
|
Electronic proposal processing |
NSF will receive at
least 35% of full proposal submissions electronically through FastLane
improving upon the FY 1998 baseline of 17%. |
|
By the end of FY
2000, NSF will have the technological capability of taking competitive
proposals submitted electronically through the entire proposal and
award/declination process without generating paper within NSF. |
NSF Staff |
|
Diversity |
In FY 2000, as all
appointments for scientists and engineers are considered, the recruiting
organization will demonstrate efforts to attract applications from groups
that are underrepresented in the science and engineering staff as compared to
their representation among Ph.D. holders in their fields. |
Capability in use of information
technology |
By FY 2000, all
appropriate staff will receive preliminary training on use of electronic
proposal/award jackets. |
Implementation of management reforms |
|
Year 2000 |
NSF will complete
all activities needed to address the Year 2000 problem for its information
systems according to plan, on schedule and within budget, during FY 1999. On
January 1, 2000, all mission critical systems will perform as required. |
Project Reporting System |
During FY 2000, at
least 85% of all project reports will be submitted through the new electronic
Project Reporting System. |
[1] Additional information on performance goals in this section
is found in Appendix 2 of the full FY 2000 Performance Plan.
[2] Performance goals comparable to those in italics are
highlighted in the FY 2000 government-wide performance plan.
[3] This performance goal is stated in the alternative format
provided for in GPRA legislation. See
Appendix 2 of the full FY 2000 Performance Plan for the complete statement of
the performance goal, including the minimally effective standard.
[4] These goals are new for FY 2000, but evolved from the FY
1999 goals for the Integration of Research and Education and Diversity.
[5] In FY 2000, NSF continues to emphasize the area of managing
information technologies. Information on these performance goals can be found in
Appendix 3 of the full FY 2000 Performance Plan.