DEAS To Start Operations on October 3, 2004

The NIH Extramural Transition Team, with concurrence from the Deputy Director for Extramural Research and the Deputy Director for Management, announces that the Division of Extramural Activities Support (DEAS) will start operations on October 3, 2004 – the first workday in FY 2005.

Under the leadership of Mary Frances Deutsch, DEAS Director, a new management plan will be implemented to provide support for the critical functions of extramural research: grants management, peer review, and scientific program management. The implementation of DEAS represents a major change in extramural business operations involving over 600 federal staff within NIH's 27 Institutes and Centers. At the core of the new management plan is the standardization of extramural research business operating procedures and practices across Institutes and Centers and the consolidation of staff supporting these critical functions into three service delivery hubs.

Last fall, NIH successfully competed for and won a competition to continue providing these services in-house and with federal employees. Since then, there has been significant progress to implementing DEAS. Specifically, the DEAS management team has been hired, reassignment of hundreds of NIH extramural support employees is under way, recruitment for approximately 250 new hires is under way, standard operating procedures (SOPs) for carrying out the tasks outlined in the PWS have been adopted, and a workflow management system is under development.

While the NIH Extramural Transition Team was targeting an earlier start-up date for DEAS, the consensus is that we should use the full amount of transition time and avoid a late fourth quarter start-up that would coincide with a heavy workload period for grants management. The delay to October 3 is allowable under the A-76 rules that governed this competition. The October start-up has the additional benefit of making it easier to track the DEAS budget, since costs will be aligned by fiscal year. We anticipate no further delay; DEAS will begin operations on October 3.

The Transition Team and the DEAS Management Team have established the following timeline for DEAS implementation activities between now and October:

• Human Resources - Nearly 400 current NIH employees are being reassigned to positions in DEAS. Additionally, DEAS will hire about 250 new employees recruited from all sources to fill in the gaps after the placement of current staff. All DEAS staff members will be on board and trained in the standard operating procedures by October 3.
  
  
• Information Technology (IT) Solutions – Current IT systems do not lend themselves to the kind of data tracking needed to meet DEAS quality and timeliness standards. DEAS managers, with help from the Transition Team's IT subcommittee, have decided on a highly customized version of SiteScape, an off-the-shelf collaboration and workflow application, for submitting and tracking DEAS work requests. Development of the DEAS Workflow Management System is under way, with a beta test scheduled for mid-July. Training sessions for DEAS staff and for extramural staff who will use the system to request work are planned for August and September. Specific information on the times and places for the sessions will be announced in the near future.
  
  
• Space – The Transition Team is sorting through data on current extramural workloads, staffing, and space allocations to determine where DEAS employees will be located and how many will provide service to the different institutes and centers (ICs). This information will be finalized and shared with the ICs in mid-July.

For the latest information on the transition to DEAS, please visit the NIH extramural MEO web site at http://extramuralmeo.nih.gov. We appreciate the continued patience and support from the NIH extramural research community as NIH progresses toward the stand-up of the DEAS.

David L. Whitmer
Chair, NIH Extramural Transition Team