Many federal agencies use the Grants.gov system for proposal submissions. We have experienced a marked slowdown in Grants.gov performance and have had proposals take six or more hours to get through. Some federal agencies are not extending their deadlines due to Grants.gov issues. This means, unfortunately, that if the proposal is not in the Grants.gov system prior to the agency deadline, we run the risk of having that proposal rejected without review.

In addition to problems with the Grants.gov system itself, the Grants.gov help desk staff have been inundated with calls, making it difficult for us to reach them to request a case number.

Proposal volume through Grants.gov is expected to increase by up to 60% due to Recovery Act funding, causing greater strain on the system. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is aware of these problems and has instructed the federal agencies to make improvements and consider alternative submission methods. However, we don't know yet when that will happen.

There are several steps that IU researchers and departments can take to better ensure that proposals are submitted successfully:

• Work with the Office of Research Administration (ORA) well in advance of the deadline for review of budgets and institutional information. This will enable ORA to have all reviews and approvals completed ahead of the deadline.
• Submit completed proposals to the ORA at least three days prior to the deadline. More time is better.
• Use IU's Slashtmp service to transmit large files (approximately 5 MB or larger) to ORA (http://uits.iu.edu/page/angt) rather than sending them through email.
• Notify ORA that you plan to submit a proposal, so that we can plan staffing.

ORA will do everything possible to submit all proposals on time. We wanted researchers to be aware of the Grants.gov system limitations and plan their proposal submissions accordingly.