Dear Colleagues,
As many of you are aware, The Office of the Vice President for Research is undertaking a multi-phased project to provide new software for many of the things you do that touch research, including proposal preparation and submission, human subjects and animal experiment protocols, conflict of interest management. We are working hard to make the changeover a win for all of us – a tool that reduces the administrative and regulatory burden on investigators and research support staff.
This month, UT Austin signed a contract with Huron Consulting Group for the first phase of the project. The software, known as the UT Research Management Suite, is a family of highly integrated, cloud-hosted applications that will replace several legacy systems, including RMS. Much of our current software operates on a mainframe that will be retired in the near future.
Over the next three years, we will launch the solutions in the new UT Research Management Suite in stages:
The first solution will manage all research-related non-funded agreements, including Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), Data Use Agreements (DUAs), and Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). UT Research Management Suite – Agreements will replace the current process of submission, review, and authorization for non-funded research agreements to the Office of Sponsored Projects. Research agreements directly related to funded grants or contracts will continue to be submitted to OSP as part of the award process until the Grants application is launched in the Spring of 2022. To ensure a smooth transition to the new system, the implementation team will be reaching out to the community with information related to training on the Agreements software.
Our team is working closely with the vendor to maximize the improvements and benefits the new system will bring to UT Austin. We look forward to working with all of you as the project moves forward. For more information on the UT Research Management Suite, please visit the project website at https://research.utexas.edu/eraproject/. If you have any questions or concerns on the transition to the new system, please contact the UT Research Management Suite project team at 512-232-1826 or email era@austin.utexas.edu.