(Re)Engineering Research Grants Management

In this paper, we briefly describe our approach and experience in a research effort focused on (re)engineering the activity of research grants management at the Office of Naval Research. We found that we could contribute to a substantial reduction in process cycle time and operational costs associated with the funding of thousands of research grant procurement actions. Accordingly, we focus our discussion on topics that underlie these results. We also observe that knowledge brokering is an area where a new R&D initiative could lead to more effective and efficient research funding and research program management, as well as serve the mutual selfinterests of the Federal research funding agency and researcher communities.