SFU is seeking a research administration system (RAS) solution to replace two existing systems:
1) a research funding system, managing pre-award and some post-award sponsored research activities, and
2) a research compliance system, managing human ethics and other compliance activities. This expands to all aspects of research compliance, including animal care, biological, and radiation.
A RAS solution that provides users with a common look and feel (ideally, a single portal) to both research funding and research compliance is strongly preferred. SFU is interested in assessing available options ranging from fully integrated solutions to partial or complete reliance on third party solutions. For the latter (i.e., partial/complete reliance on third party solutions), the ease of interoperability and availability of application programming interfaces (APIs) that support two-way query and update transactions, plus support for batch and ongoing import/export of data, are critical components. Leading from this is a core requirement of data and functional interoperability between research funding and research compliance systems, where compliance decisions are key factors in determining whether research funding is accessible to researchers.
While a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) solution is preferred, the university is open to exploring other hosting options during the assessment of the solution’s ability to meet other core requirements.
The chosen proponent shall provide and facilitate the installation, configuration, and implementation of the new solution including:
a) planning, analysis, design;
b) development, testing, deployment;
c) data migration;
d) training;
e) end user and technical documentation;
f) project management;
g) post-implementation support (software maintenance and/or support); and
h) documented business process improvements that are supported by the implemented software application and related technology with minimal software customizations.
SFU expects that the new solution will provide equivalent functionality to the university’s current systems – Grant Track, Human Ethics (ORE database), and other compliance systems such as animal, radiation and biologicals – in addition to new functionality that supports efficiency, effectiveness and innovation in our services. An overview is provided below of the areas/modules for which more detailed functional requirements are described in the “System Requirements Checklist” included in Appendix D.
