Problem

Institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) individually manage their budgets for the extramural grant award process.  The Institutes utilize a paper-based methodology to manage their funds that is labor intensive and time-consuming.  In many cases, the budget office is not aware of the exact dollar amount of the grant until an award is made by the grants management office, generating a timing issue for creation of the fiscal year’s budget allocations. This predicament can put budget offices at the NIH in an odd position of grossly over- or under-budgeting their extramural grant dollars at the end of the fiscal year.  The problem is compounded when required reports cannot be easily generated due to long wait periods, delay in final dollar amounts, and the lack of a repeatable process.

Resolution

LCG Systems built a web-based application (FINeX) for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) that interfaces with the underlying NIH grant issuance systems, allowing the budget office to make timely decisions with regards to the Institute’s extramural budget.  FINeX identifies, and captures, the rules that the budget office uses to make decisions regarding extramural grants, which are then stored in a local data repository so that budget estimates can be made very early in the fiscal process.  At the time the grant is to be awarded, all of the information needed by the grants management office for obligation is available. FINeX also automatically updates its records with awarded and obligated dollar amounts so that accurate forecasting of budgetary information can be completed.

Value Added

FINeX has provided an electronic data repository for extramural budget forecasting and reporting, and has been extended to include other types of data beyond extramural grants, such as contract and workshop budget planning.  The NINDS and NIAAA budget offices have been able to reallocate the resources utilized in this process at a significant cost savings, as well as being able to generate more timely reports.

Technologies Used

LCG Systems built FINeX with a Microsoft .Net solution, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft .Net framework, Internet Information Server 6.0, Microsoft Reporting Services and Microsoft Office 2003. This technology was compatible with the standard desktop environment utilized by the client.