Minutes of the NIH Intramural Administrative Officers' Meeting
September 2, 1999
NIH Principal Administrative Officers:
Present: Alternates:
Robert Dennis, NIMH, Chair Janice Carico, NIDA
Sandy Logan, NIMH Mary Slagle, NEI
Richard Freed, NIAID Marlyn Strickland, CIT
Susan Harrelson, NIAID
Marsha Hennings, NIAMS
Hillel Soclof, NHLBI
Carol Smith, NINDS
Linda Adams, NHGRI Guests:
Byron Mason, NIDDK Barbara Merchant, NIDDK
Bruce Wiggins, NIEHS Richard Wyatt, OD/OIR
Anthony Pirrone, NLM Vicki Malick, OD/OIR
Elaine Ayres, CC Ted Colburn, The Foundation for the NIH Janis Mullaney, OD/OIR Liaison
Mr. Robert Dennis chaired the meeting.
I. Meeting of Principal Administrative Officers:
1. Announcements -- Mr. Dennis announced membership changes, including that he was now the Chair of the group and Ruth Ann Talley was the Co-Chair. He also announced that Janice Mullaney would be joining the group in her new role as the OD/OIR Liaison. In addition, Bruce Wiggins was introduced as the new representative from NIEHS, taking Ms. Mullaney's place. He said that he would continue forwarding things that he feels are applicable to the group, usually via email.
2. Certification of Shipping Hazardous Materials -- The group discussed several options for ensuring that the appropriate people are trained. ORS - Division of Safety has a list of people who will provide training. Mr. Dennis said that his institute bought CD ROMs with a training program that will provide legitimate certification that is blessed by the Division of Safety. It includes Regulations and Guidelines and goes for about $250/CD ROM. He provided a handout entitled: "Saf-T-Pak" that outlines features of this CD ROM. Ms. Merchant said that her institute had ½ day training and volunteered the phone number of 435-2925 for the person who can schedule this training. Dr. Gordon is the woman in the Division of Safety in charge of this program. The group recommended that NIH should keep control of this program like the Radiation Safety program, instead of leaving it up to all the individual ICs.
3. Items from the last Executive Officers meeting -- Mr. Dennis explained the new security measures outlined by Steve Ficca. Buildings 49 and 31 are the first to undergo the new procedures. Individual occupants are responsible for any further security within their areas of the building. During the transition, the new procedures may require a second ID to get into specific buildings. The NIH Ombudsman, David Robinson spoke about the pilot Peer Panel Review that several ICs are participating in Concerns were expressed that panel compositions are not spelled out clearly, employees can appeal the decisions but programs cannot, and there were questions about the incentive for management to participate. The new Human Resources Software system has not been selected yet - the choices have been narrowed down to People Soft vs. Oracle, and there is an issue as to whether payroll processing should be included in the system or not.
4. Mr. Dennis recognized Ms. Merchant's efforts as chair for the past two years with presents and an award. Ms. Merchant recognized her co-chair, Marsha Hennings and the person who prepared the minutes, Sandy Logan.
5. AO Retreat Initiatives -- Ms. Mullaney led the discussion saying that the result of the May Retreat was a set of prioritized goals. One was to look at common business processes to create improvements in administrative services. To that end, Ms. Mullaney distributed a hand-out entitled "IAO Survey" and asked the group to return it to her before they left the meeting, indicating their prioritized list of what they felt were the processes that were the most important to work on, and identify any "best practices" they may have in any of the areas. It is hoped that the survey will identify the most important area(s) for the AOs to seek improvements. From that, an instrument may be developed for the customers (lab personnel) to "rank" the areas that are important to them for improvement. NIDA provided a report from their library committee that included an example of a survey they used to improve the performance of library services.
II. Open Meeting
1. Dr. Wyatt opened with a discussion of the Howard Hughes Research Scholars Program, which has been in existence for 14 years. He said that the ICs pick up the scholars as Guest Researchers for the first year, because they are actually employees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. If the scholar chooses to stay an additional year, s/he would become a Pre-IRTA and be funded by the NIH. These people are medical or dental students here to learn basic research.
In contrast, the Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP) provides opportunity for medical or dental students to spend one year at the NIH learning clinical research. This program, explained by Dr. Richard Wyatt, Dr. Ted Colburn and Ms. Vicki Malick, is supported by The Foundation for the NIH through a generous grant from the Pfizer Corporation. This program accepts up to 15 new students per year and pays the Fellows' stipends and health insurance. Specifically, other expenses that will be paid for by The Foundation include: one meeting or conference per year, one FAES course per semester, computer allowance; travel to NIH and back home (even if going back home occurs at the end of the second year); and relocation costs. The ICs are responsible for operating expenses in the lab or branch. CRTP Fellows are appointed as Pre-IRTAs, although the Foundation fully funds the Fellow's stipend and health insurance. There is an IRTA agreement specific to this program that should be used for these trainees; which is available from Dr. Colburn. The Foundation also provides an MOU between the CRTP fellow and The Foundation. The goal of the Foundation is to "unburden" the preceptor by handling as much of the paperwork as possible themselves. Fellows who wish to stay for a second year must gain approval and funding from their IC, along with concurrence from their school and the Office of Intramural Research. For those Fellows who wish to participate in the Duke Master's program, whether in the first or second year, the Fellow's IC must authorize and pay for this program. The Foundation will pay for books and materials. Ms. Malick provided brochures on the program. Monthly stipend for the first and second year in the CRTP is based on an annual stipend of $22K; HHMI scholars in their second year should also receive this amount. Even though this is outside the pay band for pre-IRTAs, an individual exception from Dr. Gottesman is not needed, because he has already approved a blanket exception for all Howard Hughes and CRTP fellows.
Ms. Mullaney recommended that to eliminate the IC's confusion with the CRTP, a matrix be developed to define the roles and responsibilities of the Foundation, the IC, the Mentor, and the CRTP fellow.
2. Mr. Dennis asked the group if they should form a subcommittee for administrative career ladders. Elaine Ayers has already done some work in this area for the Clinical Center. People who volunteered to participate include: Elaine Ayers, Mary Afeldt, Bruce Wiggins, Janice Mullaney, Bob Dennis and Marsha Hennings.
3. The IAOs agreed that Ms. Janis Mullaney, the new Intramural Management Liaison Director for the Office of Intramural Research (OIR), should have time to bring up issues at each meeting. For this meeting she discussed the following issues:
A. AAALAC Site Visit - She provided a handout to the group on NIH's response to the AALAC Site Visit. She wanted the IAOs to be aware of the issues in the memo.
B. Intramural Research Sourcebook - She recently sent an e-mail to remind the IAO group of the web site for the Office of Intramural Research Sourcebook,
http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/index.htm
This web site is a good resource for providing guidance on many of the OIR issues, for example, checklists for preparing personnel cases to the OIR.
C. Staff Scientists - Ms. Mullaney reminded the IAOs that a National Competitive Search process is required for Facility Head Staff Scientists. The Sourcebook definition of "a Facility Head is a subset of the Staff Scientists, who independently manage a substantial core facility (for example, a sequencing laboratory or an NMR facility) that provides central support for more than one independent investigator." A question was raised about the type of appointment mechanism available for Staff Clinicians. As stated in the Sourcebook, "Most Staff Clinician appointments are made in Title 42. With regard to guidance concerning the possible use of permanent appointments for Staff Clinicians, there are three situations in which use of a permanent mechanism (General Schedule Civil Service or Commissioned Corps) might be necessary or appropriate, based on the needs of the Institute. This information is continued under URL http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/prof-desig/staff-clinician.htm
D. J-1 Visa - She mentioned that updated "Guidance for J-1 (Research Scholar) Visa Extension Beyond Three Years" was coming out soon and would be in the Sourcebook. She provided a reminder that the J-1 request package is due 120 days to the Office of Intramural Research (OIR), J-1 Visa Extension Review Committee (JVERC).
4. Mr. Dennis discussed a proposed 5% across the board stipend increase for Post-Doc IRTAs and VFs, which is being considered by Dr. Varmus. Mr. Rich Freed discussed a spreadsheet he prepared which would serve to notify FIC and OFM of the increase per Fellow to keep from having to create paperwork for each fellow individually. This spreadsheet, along with one obligating document for all the fellows is all that OFM needs to active the increases. OFM would need the spreadsheet (electronic and hard copy) by October 31 and the increase would be effective December 1. For the ICs that are participating in the pilot fellowship payment program, they can notify Dennis George in CIT and he can automatically enact the changes. A copy of the spreadsheet was distributed and the following comments were made: the group decided to leave the calculations to the penny, and columns will be added for number of days and months so that the increase can be automatically calculated instead of manually figured. (After the meeting, Mr. Freed completed the changes and the modified spreadsheet was sent to the group.) Other VF/IRTA changes that may be coming include a provision for up to 10% of the VF/IRTAs could be given a higher stipend, specialty categories can automatically come in at a higher level, and stipend ranges may be changing.
5. Mr. Dennis discussed having Courtesy Associates and it competitors present to the group their logistics services for committee meetings, conferences, etc. It was suggested that if they do come, that the project officer, Tony Ravine be present and aware of what they plan to present.
6. IAO web page -- There was a short discussion on whether someone should develop an IAO web page that would contain items such as: meeting minutes, best practices, links to other sites, meeting agendas, etc. Since there was not a lot of interest, the idea was tabled for the time being
7. Workshops for Administrative Staff -- There was a short discussion on whether the group should conduct workshops on topics such as recruitment of scientists - making them feel comfortable when they come on board by helping them with administrative functions. It was decided to wait for the results of the IAO Survey to see which procedures were the most important for the group to focus their attention.
8. Future Agendas -- Tom Bodine will be coming to the Oct 7 meeting. He is running the Employee Directory program. Leonard Taylor who is doing the NIH Census will come to the November 6 meeting. Ms. Adams suggested a demonstration of the new web based requisition system that her IC developed, called Genome Requisition and Acquisition Support Program (GRASP). She said that she might be able to arrange it as an agenda item for the November meeting.
DISTRIBUTION:
Administrative Officers (For distribution to staff members)
Scientific Directors
Executive Officers