NSERC-Innovation Hub

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Mission

The Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) works collaboratively and cooperatively with other funding agencies and allied organizations in its ecosystem, building a strong, harmonized Canadian research infrastructure that reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary and dynamic nature of scientific research and the community’s desire for administrative simplification.

NSERC realizes that its people are at the heart of its success as an organization. To deliver on its priorities and adapt to new ways of working, NSERC’s workforce must be talented, agile, and diverse. The Innovation Hub was created with a mission to encourage continuous innovation and improvement across NSERC.

Areas of focus

To achieve its mission of encouraging continuous innovation and improvement at NSERC, the Innovation Hub (IH) has focused on the three areas below.

Lead projects that span different groups

Sometimes there are large projects that impact NSERC’s business directorates, but there is no clear group that should lead it. In some of those cases, the IH will be tasked with leading the project and helping coordinate the work.  One example of this is the Business Process Harmonization (BPH) project.

Support innovative projects led by other groups

Teams at NSERC are already working on innovative projects of their own. In some of those cases, they may seek help from the IH. One example of this is the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Selection Process Evaluation project.

Enhance NSERC’s innovation culture

Although NSERC already has a strong culture of innovation, it can always be improved. One of the ways to achieve this is by encouraging opportunities for collaboration across teams. One project related to this is the annual Hackathon.

Collaborations

To achieve its objectives, the IH collaborates with groups both internal and external to NSERC.

Collaboration with groups internal to NSERC

The IH collaborates with a wide variety of teams from all of NSERC’s directorates for its projects: Research Partnerships (RP); Research Grants and Scholarships (RGS); Strategic, Corporate and Public Affairs (SCPA); and the Common Administrative Services and Directorate (CASD).  The annual Hackathon is an example of a project where all these groups are involved.

Collaboration with external groups

The IH also collaborates on projects with external groups such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Tri-agency Grants Management Solution (TGMS) team.  The BPH project, for instance, involved consultation with the TGMS team, SSHRC and CIHR.

Lead projects that span different groups

Business Process Harmonization (BPH) project

The existing grants management systems used by the three federal granting agencies (NSERC, SSHRC and, CIHR) operate on dated technology and are limited in their ability to adapt to the changing needs of both the research community and the agencies themselves.  As a result, the agencies have embarked on a project, referred to as the Tri-agency grants management solution (TGMS), to modernize their grants management system to better support applicants, administrators, and reviewers during the grants management lifecycle. Prior to implementation, there is a need to validate and gather information on how the system will be used. There is also an opportunity to harmonize some areas across the agency to allow for a more user-friendly experience. These aspects form the BPH project which is being led by the NSERC IH.

Obtain complementary information on TGMS functions and data from NSERC's subject matter experts

The TGMS team has created a list of business functions that could be included in the new solution as well as a conceptual data model (CDM) identifying what data would be captured and used. The agencies needed to validate both of these elements while also identifying any gaps and capturing more details on how they would be used. The results of this work will inform the fit-gap analysis (determination of the fit of the new solution’s built-in functionalities, processes and workflow with the agency’s business needs and desired outcomes as well as any gaps in the solution’s capabilities that may need to be addressed through development) in preparation for the TGMS implementation.

As the lead, the IH has co-developed change management activities with the TGMS team for NSERC staff. They have also identified subject matter experts (SMEs) to provide input on the documents, created training material and provided training sessions, and facilitated information gathering.

Identify areas for harmonization for the federal granting agencies in readiness for the Tri-agency grants management solution (TGMS)

CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC each perform several tasks differently. Even within one agency, there can be differences between funding opportunities. By moving to a unified solution, there is an opportunity to harmonize many of the existing processes, business rules, etc. across all three agencies.

The IH captured a list of business rules currently in place at each of the agencies which was used to identify areas where variabilities exist. These areas were validated by SMEs across the agencies, and then the TGMS team confirmed which areas could be harmonized prior to implementation.

Establish a strategy for consultation and collaboration for harmonization within the agencies

A strategy is required to both harmonize across the agencies and to identifying potential areas of harmonization. The strategy must identify how areas of harmonization will be prioritized, how the agencies will collaborate, and how approvals will be obtained.

The IH has created a strategy for achieving the agencies’ harmonization objectives which is currently under review.

Support innovative projects led by other groups

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Selection Process Evaluation project

NSERC is committed to excellence in research and research training. Achieving a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive Canadian research enterprise is essential to creating the excellent, innovative, and impactful research necessary to advance knowledge and understanding, and to respond to local, national and global challenges. One aspect of achieving these goals is to include EDI considerations in decision-making.

The IH was approached by a group that was interested in experimenting with a new approach to taking EDI aspects into consideration in its decision-making. The IH reviewed the proposed approach as well as existing approaches and proposed an evaluation method to determine the best approach for different scenarios, based on three criteria: (1) ability to reach the target; (2) administrative effort required; and (3) stakeholder perception.

Enhance NSERC’s innovation culture

What is a Hackathon?

The annual Hackathon encourages people to come together to solve both technical and non-technical problems in creative ways. It is an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues to help improve the agencies by developing time-saving tools, more effective procedures, streamlined workflows, leaner processes, and other innovations.  Typically, project leads identify a problem that they want to team up with others to solve and then go through various steps of exploration, brainstorming, planning and execution until a mutually agreed solution is found. This exercise results in several benefits for participants as they acquire new knowledge (including developing communication, organization, and leadership skills) and meet with various people of diverse horizons from both within and outside of their teams, while exploring new approaches in a fun and supportive environment.

Hackathon organization

The IH leads the Hackathon Event Planning team who organizes the annual Hackathon. The Hackathon Event Planning team is composed of volunteers from different divisions at the agencies. Their goal is to create a supportive, hybrid environment for innovation that enables teams to achieve their own objectives. To achieve this goal, they: reserve a suitable space for teams to collaborate; plan activities during the Hackathon; maintain a website where information can be found; present to various groups to encourage participation; create a list where project leads can add their projects and participants can join; facilitate Idea Labs to generate projects; provide project management tools to help project leads; provide training sessions for project leads; and more.

The most recent Hackathon involved a full day of project interactions followed by ad-hoc engagements within the project teams during the remainder of the week. The Hackathon was a hybrid event where people participated either in person or virtually. Following the Hackathon, project leads reviewed their accomplishments with their teams, then sought and obtained approval to continue working on their project, where potential benefits are demonstrated..

Idea Labs

All the great projects of participants in earlier Hackathons have started with one thing: an idea. To help generate and explore ideas in the lead-up to Hackathons, the Hackathon Event Planning team facilitates Idea Labs: a place and time dedicated to investigating current problems or potential improvements and to proposing new ideas and approaches to resolve them. In these labs, ideas are evaluated based on their merit and potential for advancement and impact. Idea Labs can be a brainstorming session that may lead to the creation of new ideas; and/or they can be a validation exercise of pre-existent ideas. The purpose of bringing up ideas in such a setting is to get instant and informal feedback on whether they’re worth pursuing, as well as to discuss elements to consider if one decides to move forward (e.g., what has been done to solve this problem previously? Who might have more information on this topic? etc.).

Examples of past Hackathon projects

OptaPlanner Tool Development

During the Discovery Grant (DG) competition, there is a need to schedule the review of approximately 3,500 applications by 450 reviewers who change locations every 15 minutes over a 3-week period. Previously, this resulted in a complex, time-consuming, and non-optimized workflow for reviewers and NSERC personnel.

The OptaPlanner Tool Development project involved: completing an environmental scan to search for existing tools that would meet staff needs; testing several different types of software; obtaining approval for one of them; and customizing the tool for the identified needs. The Hackathon was used to jump-start this project, which experienced several unsuccessful attempts in the past.

Following its initial success during the Hackathon, work has progressed. This resulted in the reduction of the amount of time staff spent manually scheduling the DG competition: a savings of approximately 1,875 hours annually. Other teams across the agencies have since adopted the tool.

Administrative Review Tool

To reduce the administrative burden for applicants when an Alliance grants application fails its administrative review, the Alliance grants team wanted to review its competition data and explore alternatives to rejection.  The team used an Ideas Lab to generate potential projects, which were approved by management prior to the Hackathon. The Hackathon itself was devoted to analyzing the existing data on rejected applications and brainstorming alternatives to rejection. The work continued following the Hackathon, where changes were recommended based on their previous work and community feedback.

Modular Webinar Videos

Prior to this work, a working group from the RGS directorate would prepare slides and a script for webinars, then get it approved and translated. Then comes the lengthy process of preparation and conducting the presentations at fixed times, which was not always convenient for applicants. There was a need to create reusable material with flexible access by applicants and reviewers for better communication of information, which would replace the traditional and long 2-hour webinar sessions.

During the Hackathon project, the team analyzed the requirements to create modular webinar videos of 3-4 minutes each, covering various aspects of grant applications and reviews. The team experimented and started the conversion of the old-style webinars to short modular videos, recorded by program officers at convenient times.

The outcome was improved productivity for staff, as they stopped preparing for webinars and allocated their time to more productive tasks.  The webinar videos were also more responsive to the needs of the researchers, as they provide flexible access to information, when and as needed. As an additional benefit, this work proved especially useful when COVID-19 forced staff to work from home..

Program Scoring

The goal of this project was to research methods of score standardization used across Canada and around the world, and recommend short-term changes, as well as envision long-term changes, to better improve score distribution across the Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) program. During the Hackathon, one person from the RTI team was able to complete the environmental scan, in part due to being able to consult with other participants. Following the Hackathon, they produced recommendations that were accepted and incorporated into the program in under three months. The changes resulted in many improvements, including eliminating uncalibrated scoring from reviewers, reducing concerns around unfair results and eliminating the rescoring of applications.