Online Grant Submission
In this modern day and age, it’s not surprising that we are moving to submitting grants electronically. On the face of it, that’s a good thing - you don’t have to worry about mail delivery or paying for Federal Express because the proposal wasn’t completed until the day before it’s due. (Who, me, procrastinate?)
On the other hand, you are left at the mercy of the online submission system and your access to it. I know how to deal with having a paper document ready at the last minute - either the above-mentioned Federal Express, or the Post Office at Sea-Tac Airport, which is open until 11 p.m. and is a lifesaver for getting your postmark at the latest time possible. When you can’t get into the grant website, however, there’s no alternative. It’s a single point of failure.
We just submitted a fairly significant federal Department of Education grant this morning, and have been using the website for a couple of weeks. Even last Friday, four days before the proposals were due, it was getting difficult to access the site. As of yesterday, it was taking as long as an hour of attempts to finally get in. Using the site late into the evening worked, because by seven o’clock our time, not many east coasters were still on the site. Things perked along just fine, until 9:00 p.m., when the site was shut down for midnight (eastern time) maintenance. Arrgh!
So, we came to the morning of the due date, still with some documents to upload. I spent most of the time from 8:00 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. just trying to get into the site again, trying not to feel too panicky because the deadline is 1:30 p.m. our time. (Extra deodorant today was a good idea.) Finally things opened up around 9:00, and though slow, I was able to get all the documents finally loaded, double-checked and in by 9:45. Heck, almost four hours to spare!
Interestingly, the site asked me to fill out a survey about my experience. I gave the design and layout of the site good marks, and on the whole it was very easy to use - a good example of how technology can make things better for us. However, I made strong recommendations to significantly increase the capacity of the system, because the best-designed system in the world isn’t much use if you can’t get to it.