[Flex] fastlane fun & NASA niceties

[Helen Gordon]

Dear gang:

Have had nice visits with a number of you due to vagaries of Fastlane 
issues...

So I have sent a long semi-technical email to Brian Midson & Vaugn 
Slater at NSF. We'll see what happens next.

For those of you trying to print from the browser window using Acrobat: 
Make sure you select the printer and then select 'print as image.'

For those of you using GSView: Make sure to select the printer at the 
top and that 'Windows GDI printer' is selected and click the button next 
to that choice (Settings) to select 'full colour' for your printing option.

It is interesting that some of you can only print well from Acrobat 
using 'print as image' and others can only print from GSView using the 
Windows GDI printer...

sigh...

On to NASA NSPIRES (read stuff below that Sheila sent...) This is the 
NASA online proposal system. GCS has already registered WHOI. I will be 
going over to experiment with Sue Ferreira tomorrow with how it works as 
far as adding PIs, authorizing folks, etc. If you have done NASAs using 
SYS-EYFUS, please email me so that we can call you when we are 
investigating the rolling over of records into the new system.

Sue & I'll let you know what we find out.

Helen

***************************
NASA is moving to a new web-based
system for the submission and review of research proposals.  The current
system - SYS-EYFUS - is being phased out and the new system - NASA
Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System
(NSPIRES) - is being introduced for proposal submission to solicitations
released in January 2005.  NSPIRES is designed to ultimately receive
complete electronic proposals for NASA research opportunities, including
NASA Research Announcements (NRAs), Announcements of Opportunity (AOs),
unsolicited proposals and Congressionally directed financial
assistance.  Currently, only proposal cover page data is submitted
online and that is generally expected to continue for the present.

The main change NSPIRES introduces is the submission of online proposal
data will become the responsibility of the submitting organization's
Sponsored Research Business Office (or functional equivalent), rather
than the responsibility of the Principal Investigator as at present.
This significant change will allow NSPIRES to serve as NASA's portal to
Grants.gov, the Federal Government's common site through which
organizations will submit proposals in response to NRAs.  NSPIRES will
also offer proposal management and tracking capabilities to the
submitting organization community, with each user able to conform
NSPIRES capabilities to their unique organizational management needs.

Consequently, all organizations wishing to submit research proposals to
NASA must register with NSPIRES.  NSPIRES will use the Central
Contractor Registry (CCR) as the basis for its organization database.
Therefore, in order to register with NSPIRES, organizations must first
have a valid registration with the CCR.  The organizational Electronic
Business Point of Contact (EBPOC), or alternate, listed in the CCR -
http://www.ccr.gov/  is the only person who can register an organization
in NSPIRES.

Once that organizational registration is complete, all investigators and
team members wishing to respond to NASA research solicitations need to
register with NSPIRES, set up their affiliation with their submitting
organization, and have that affiliation confirmed to complete the
registration. An organization's Sponsored Research Business Office, or
functional equivalent, will be able to advise when the organizational
registration is complete to enable its researchers to begin their
individual registration and affiliation process.