The Office of Contracts and Grants (OCG), in conjunction with infoEd and our campus Office of Information Technology (OIT) team, has been building out the utilization of infoEd for completing the Proposal Submission Request (PSR) form and submitting it to their Proposal Analyst through the system rather than using the PDF form. Essentially, this creates a dynamic online submission version of the PSR form.
Initially the online PSR form is being rolled out incrementally with a few pilot departments beginning the week of May 15, 2023. The goal is by the end of 2023 all PSR forms are completed through infoEd and the PDF version of the PSR form will no longer be available. The initial pilot departments are Biofrontiers, College of Media, Communication & Information, Chemical & Biological Engineering, Institute of Cognitive Science, and Geological Sciences. Additional departments will be phased in to use the new online version of the form through the summer and fall months.
What are the benefits of this change for Principal Investigators (PIs)?
- Provides a secure, responsive form with conditional questions, which will shorten the form for many PIs.
- Provides opportunity for the PI to upload a draft budget, the funding opportunity announcement, scope of work, and other documents as part of the PSR submission to help reduce emails.
- Allows multiple users to work on a record together. The system will also validate that all required fields have been completed and direct the user to any missing information on the page.
- Allows for electronic approval of the PSR without the need for additional steps to sign the form through Adobe Acrobat or DocuSign and then email the form. This is possible because individual PSR submitters are logged into the system with their CU Boulder identikey credentials
- Once all questions are complete and compliance assurances are met, the form will automatically select the PI’s assigned OCG Proposal Analyst based on the department org and routed the PSR electronically to them.
- Provides system delegation for research administrators supporting PIs in the department to contribute to the completion of the PSR form.
What does it mean to be a pilot department?
- Pilot departments will be the first to utilize the online PSR form for all newly initiated proposal submissions after May 15th.
- OCG will provide demos and training sessions for the new online PSR form along with documentation and video resources for the pilot departments.
- The Proposal Analysts for the pilot departments are champions of this new online version and will work closely with the PIs and administrators from their departments as they use the form for the first time.
What does it mean if I am NOT in a pilot department?
- Your department will continue to use the PDF PSR form and follow all the normal proposal submission procedures.
- If a PI in your department is a co-PI for a PSR initiated in one of the pilot departments, the PI will receive an email from the system when the PI submits their online PSR form through infoEd. No action is needed by the co-PI in the system.
- If your department is interested in being an early user of the online PSR form after the pilot has worked through any bugs or issues that may arise, please notify your Proposal Analyst.
What is infoEd?
infoEd is CU Boulder’s electronic research administration system for sponsored project proposals and awards, human subject protocols and the annual Disclosure of External Professional Activities (DEPA).