The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) is an organization of 95 institutions which receive federal research dollars and 10 federal agencies dedicated to reducing the administrative burdens associated with grants and contacts. Yale is an active member of this organization.
In 2006 the faculty standing committee of FDP surveyed faculty at the member organizations, including investigators at Yale, about the burdens associated with the management of their federal grants. The results of the survey represent responses by over 6000 faculty members. The major finding of the survey is that the of the time committed to federally sponsored research 42% is actually spent on administration rather than on research per se. The report did not identify one administrative activity that created this burden, instead the large time commitment was found to result from the sum of a number of administrative tasks.
One area identified by faculty as a major burden was the preparation of progress reports. Faculty identified the multiple agency formats required for progress reports, as well as the large number of copies of reports which must be sent to mulitiple recipients within an agency as problematic.
Federal agencies have taken note of this study and a standard federal wide, electronic progress report is being developed under the auspices of the Office of Science and Technology Policy –Committee on Research Business Models.
The report can be found at www.thefdp.org