ROI losses due to administrative tasks

The FDP has been reviewing research grants and contracts since 1986 and their recommendations have been implemented to streamline and simplify grant procedures. The latest study, which surveyed over 6,000 university faculty, asked questions about the administrative component of research grants. It is not that any one specific administrative task is time-consuming, but rather the accumulation of time spent on admin-related activities - progress reports, ethics approval, hiring personnel - is burdensome. When asked to rank a list of twenty-four common tasks associated with federal grant administration, the top six were: progress report submissions, personnel hiring, project-revenue management, equipment and supply purchases, ethics protocols and training, training personnel and students, and personnel evaluations.

These administrative duties are necessary to ensure that research funds are properly spent and that the research is in compliance with rules, regulations and policies that have been designed to protect research participants, sponsors and the public. However, the duties have increased drastically in recent years due to new financial accounting mechanisms and homeland security regulations. The FDP hopes this study will help streamline the requirements to ensure the return on investment is maximized. Among other things, the FDP study recommends that reporting requirements, budget detail requirements, and reporting frequency and detail be harmonized.

The report also has recommendations on how research funds could be spent. Often research grants do not provide funds for administration. Such stipulations, however, can effectively turn researchers into administrators, something that researchers would like to avoid since administration is not their comparative advantage. Indeed, seventy-six percent of faculty surveyed suggested a reallocation of funds to allow research-based administrative support to be hired. The study estimated that personnel hired specifically to carry-out administrative duties related to the research project would reduce researchers time burdens by 28 percent.

It is important to note that some granting agencies are recognizing this problem. For instance, when SSHRC designed the KIS program they specifically required that a portion of the funding be used to hire project coordinators to manage the administrative aspects of the research grant. SSHRC and the other Canadian academic granting agencies (NSERC and CIHR) also provide universities with research overhead funds to pay for administration of the research grants.