Streamlining post-award grants administration

The ARC is always working to streamline its grants processes and we explained more about these efforts our last edition of ARChway. These activities have continued recently, with a particular focus on variations to grant agreements and final reports.  

As part of a general review of our post-award grant agreement requirements, we have updated the documentation required for supporting variation requests. These changes include allowing Human Resources areas of universities to certify maternity/parental leave (rather than provide documentary evidence) and reducing the required documentation for variations to organisation, personnel and project details.

Intended to ease the workload of Research Offices, these changes were implemented in December 2018. The variation instructions on the ARC website have since been updated to incorporate these changes.

The ARC has also released the latest round of Final Report forms in the Research Management System (RMS). The new forms, which further improve on a version released in November 2017, now auto-populate the majority of report data by linking to current post-award information in RMS. This means that, for the majority of ARC funding schemes, final reports are now able to  be submitted in RMS. Final reports will continue to be made available at the end of each year. 

These changes occur within a broader program at the ARC to streamline grants administration. We continue to explore further mechanisms that make post-award administration easier for Research Offices and grant recipients.