The University of Minnesota is undertaking a significant upgrade of its grants management system that will bring UMN in line with other top-25 research universities and will significantly improve efficiency, reduce administrative burden, and expand capabilities in all aspects of grants management.
MN-GEMS (Minnesota Grants Electronic Management System) is a multi-year, multi-phase project that engages stakeholders across all aspects of research throughout the University system.
Project Timeline
Project Updates
MN-GEMS Testing In Progress, Training Starts February 2024 - November 15, 2023
Throughout the fall, teams have been working simultaneously on testing and finalizing development of the MN-GEMS application, which should be in its final form by the end of December/early next year. Training is currently scheduled to start in February 2024, with an anticipated "Go Live" date of April 29.
MN-GEMS Development Phase Nearly Complete - July 24, 2023
The MN-GEMS project continues to advance toward a "Go Live" launch in spring 2024. Members of the MN-GEMS project team recently completed a three-day onsite workshop focused on technical design and development. The team anticipates completing the design and development phase by September 2023 with the goal of beginning testing in October 2023.
MN-GEMS Timeline Updated - August 8, 2022
The MN-GEMS project advanced to the detailed design and implementation phase. The project team is currently targeting April 2024 as the go-live date for the new software.
Anticipated Benefits
The system is expected to offer better transparency into the status of award negotiations, faster award setup via electronic data migration, as well as enhanced reporting and interfaces with other enterprise compliance systems, such human participant and animal subjects databases.
For federal grants, investigators and departmental administrators will not only be able to have their proposals electronically submitted directly to grants.gov, but they will also be able to work on their science until close to the agencies' published deadline instead of having to stop three days ahead of time as is true today.
Other anticipated benefits to MN-GEMS include:
- Reduced faculty administrative burden (more time available for research/scholarly work)
- Increased faculty time to finalize scientific narrative in proposals (key feature requested by faculty)
- Reduced error/warning rate for proposal submissions
- Improved reporting capabilities
- Increased efficiency of award receipt and UMN set up
- Streamlined outgoing subaward issuance and management
- Better visibility into award negotiations/improved ability to track and assist with complex negotiations
- Expanded ability for designated research team members to view proposal and related documents
- Improved interfaces with other University systems governing research (e.g. human subjects, animal subjects, etc.)
- More administrator time available to assist faculty in quality proposal preparation (less time spent doing manual work or compliance reviews)
- UMN research support services viewed favorably by incoming research-intensive faculty
- Increased efficiency, visibility, and integration of UFRAs
- Increased influence in federal sponsor decision making on proposal/award procedures
What to Expect
We will provide frequent progress updates to the user community and stakeholders throughout all project phases.