Dear Colleagues,
Most of you are perhaps unaware that Dartmouth is a participant in the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), let alone that we (Joyce DeLeo and Roger Sloboda) are the faculty representatives from Dartmouth.
Dartmouth is one of the founding members of the FDP, now 20 years old and comprised of 111 or so research universities, 11 'emerging' research universities, and 10 federal agencies (NIH, NSF, USDA, DOE, NASA, etc.).
The purpose of the FDP is to reduce paperwork related to grant administration, from both a grant administrator's point of view and a faculty member's point of view. FDP member institutions pitch an idea to the feds, and if the feds think it reasonable, the FDP schools are empowered to give the proposal a trial run and if deemed successful, all grantees are then allowed to use the new procedures.
Some examples of successful changes run through the FDP were modular budgets for NIH proposals, internal approval for rebudgeting, etc.
If you are interested, you can find out more about the FDP at http://www.thefdp.org/index.html; this site http://www.thefdp.org/FDP_Members.html provides content information about past meetings.
The bottom line for this message, though, is if you have any ideas for ways to reduce paperwork and faculty time related to administering grants, let us know and we can pitch the idea to the FDP.
Best,
Roger Sloboda and Joyce DeLeo
Faculty Representatives, FDP
Please send comments and/or questions regarding the FDP to The Office of Sponsored Projects.
Memo dated: 09/22/08
