Successes - Carnegie Mellon University
Information Flows Through University’s Research Grant Processes with Fortis

Carnegie Mellon is a global research university with more than 11,000 students, 84,000 alumni, and 4,000 faculty and staff. Recognized for its world-class arts and technology programs, collaboration across disciplines and innovative leadership in education, Carnegie Mellon is consistently a top-ranked university. In 2003, Carnegie Mellon University’s Administrative Computing and Information Services introduced a pilot program to better manage documents for the school’s Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP). The goal was to reduce the amount of grant-related paper documents being produced and stored in OSP while facilitating compliance with government regulations and enforcing retention policies. OSP supports faculty and staff who oversee externally sponsored research, an important revenue source for the university. Today, Westbrook Fortis document management is a key part of OSP’s business processes, and the software solution has been rolled out to other departments including the Risk Management and President’s offices.

Thomas Joyce, senior technology consultant at Carnegie Mellon, spearheaded
the document management initiative at the university. “I’ve been involved with
the enterprise content management industry for 10 years. I focus on researching, cataloguing, and assigning cost to current processes, and creatively figuring out how monies can be saved through the implementation of new technology and different business practices. I also assist university departments with workflow-specific strategic planning to make their organizations run more efficiently.”

Starting with the Fundamentals
“We targeted several key business processes that would be a good fit for the Fortis application, and started with three pilot programs,” Joyce continued.
“The one that really took off was at the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP).”
OSP coordinates Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and disseminates information
about grants to Carnegie Mellon’s research community. Once a proposal is accepted, OSP coordinates the budget process. When the grant is finalized
the OSP’s participation is complete.

At that point, the Sponsored Project Accounting Office (SPA) handles the grant administration. The SPA manages approximately 1,600 funded projects running concurrently at Carnegie Mellon. To add another layer of complexity, some of the research leads to development of marketable products. This phase is completed under the auspices of the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC). “It’s like one continuous business process, and the information flows through all three of these offices,” Joyce said.

OSP’s pre-award administration staff reviews and approves research proposals, ensures the accuracy of the budget for the proposed project, and coordinates pre-award negotiations. The contracts administration staff assists faculty and researchers in completing contracts with corporate and government sponsors. In addition, they handle discussions of such issues as intellectual property, confidentiality, publications and other contractual concerns. The research compliance staff oversees the primary compliance areas of responsible conduct of research, conflict of interest, and research involving human subjects, animals, and recombinant DNA. OSP archives proposals, letters, budget acceptance, contracts and documents related to the overall award process in Fortis. This allows these documents to be available to other offices as they need them.

Monitoring an Active Grant
SPA is responsible for the post-award phase of the grant. Documentation accumulates while the grant is active. Then every grant goes through a thorough
close-out process. “This creates a large set of documents that we store in Fortis,” said Rhonda Kloss, director of SPA. “This package includes financial reports, property reports, patent information, and any correspondence we have with our researchers.

“Research accounting is highly regulated and audited,” Kloss explained. “Because we’re spending the government’s money, we have to be particularly diligent about our documentation. We often have to provide samples of different awards and transactions for an audit to support what the auditors are reviewing in our accounting system. Being able to pull the documents up in Fortis is not only a significant timesaver, but allows us to easily meet government requirements during an audit.” SPA also uses Fortis when a sponsor requests a copy of a financial report.

The Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation is responsible for facilitating and accelerating the movement of research and technology from the university to the marketplace. CTTEC consists of licensing specialists and business creation experts who assess and protect Carnegie Mellon University’s intellectual property, commercialize technology and spin off new business ventures. They maintain invention disclosures, faxes, letters and patent information and often need access to documents filed by OSP. At times, CTTEC needs to review the award agreements that OSP has archived into Fortis or refer to financial or grant close-out information in the SPA repository.

As part of the pilot project, Carnegie Mellon used Fortis in the initial implementation of a resume tracking application for all applicants to job postings at the University. The Fortis document database replaced an antiquated paper solution that tended to misplace resumes and which was unable to quickly match qualified candidates for select job postings. Using Fortis, Carnegie Mellon was able to collect applicant and resume information with no loss of critical data.

Carnegie Mellon maintains a Fortis document repository for the Office of the President. This facilitates communication between the executive board and the standing committees of the full board of trustees. The repository archives and indexes agendas, meeting minutes and resolutions. The staff of the Office of the President, in particular the president’s assistant, rely on Fortis for many inquiries, such as checking the wording of a resolution or confirming exactly what terms were agreed upon. In addition, Carnegie Mellon’s Risk Management department stores all insurance certificates and policies required of any vendor that does business with the university.

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