This year of 2005 is a year of significant changes at FAPESP. The Development Management Support System (SAGe), which is going to computerize the procedures for presenting, analyzing and judging proposals for funding, contract management, and the follow-up and assessment of the programs of the Foundation. In other words, this means that, from this year onwards, FAPESP is only going to receive applications for research scholarships and grants if presented electronically.
In the opinion of FAPESP’s president, Carlos Vogt, the Foundation’s computerization program, SAGe, meets two needs widely recognized by the community of users of the Foundation and by the in-house community of public servants. “On the one hand, it caters for agility and visibility, facilitating access to the different programs that the institution offers to the scientific community and, at the same time, creates conditions for a service that is increasingly better, on the part of the employees who carry out the interface with these users.”
The date for triggering this process was the third of this month of January. That was the day when the process for personally registering every researcher, at SAGe’s address: www.fapesp.br/sage. Throughout this month, when FAPESP will be on collective vacation, the registration can also be done through a hot line for solving questions (by www.fapesp.br/converse or by telephone 3838-4000). And, from February 1, when attending to the public is resumed, the applications may already be forwarded electronically. These new applications will also be assessed electronically, just as all the other stages of the process: opinions, rendering of accounts, etc. The administration of the process in force before computerization will carry on in the traditional way until their conclusion.
“FAPESP has an annual circulation of 17,000 processes of scholarships and grants for research. It could not continue to be dependent on the physical and material circulation of papers”, Vogt notes, to justify the adoption of computerization as a way of reducing costs and the handling time of the processes. “Virtuality will be totally at the services of the major ends of the Foundation, which is to serve well the broad academic and scientific community of the state of São Paulo.”
The computerization of the management of programs and processes has been carried out since 1993 by FAPESP in conjunction with the Advanced Studies and Systems Center of Recife (Cesar). Within this process, in July 2004, the Foundation started to accept, on an optional basis, the curricular summary requested in initial requests for grants and scholarships using the database of the Lattes Platform, of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
In-house assessment – Also last month, FAPESP concluded the first in-house assessment process, an important human resources policy instrument that, together with other instruments, such as stimulating in-house education and qualification, aims as qualifying the support structure for the development system. In the assessment process, adaptations in functions and assessments of merit were carried out, to the benefit of 70% of the employees. It should be pointed out that FAPESP’s spending with personnel is 3.4% of its budget, paid from the Foundation’s own resources.
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