The Tri-Council MOU
The Tri-Council "Memorandum of Understanding" carefully outlines 15 schedules that organizations that receive funding through the Canadian Federal Government must to comply with in order to maintain their eligibility status. Where applicable, eRSOis designed to enable your organization to comply with these schedules.
The Schedules
Process Pathways has identified seven specific schedules that can be effectively satisfied through electronic means. The schedules listed below outline specific policies and procedures concerning three main areas: reporting, compliance and eligibility. The other eight schedules not listed below speak to an overall "culture of compliance" that must be created and encouraged in every federally-funded research institution.
Use the tabs below to explore each of the seven schedules satisfied by our eRSOsolution.
Schedule 1:Financial Management
Schedule 1
Better Reporting is Needed
This schedule outlines stringent compliance requirements regarding the administration, accounting, reporting, and oversight of all monies granted & awarded from a funding agency to an institution. The schedule has two main requirements. First, it requires institutions to ensure compliance before monies are disbursed. Second, it requires disbursement of funds to be frozen or held when compliance exceptions occur.
eRSO's Response
Tracking Your Grants & Awards Administration Flow
eRSO enables your institution to track and review the entire workflow surrounding how the grants and awards your institution receives are administered, from setting up the project and tracking the funding application submission, to receiving grants & awards and tracking that funding as your research projects proceed towards completion.Our solution allows your research administrators to set up projects, assign the relevant certifications to each, then add researchers, all while ensuring that your institution properly tracks their eligibility and maintains project compliance throughout.
Prevent Exceptions from Happening
Your institution's researchers often conduct or consult on many different research projects. Often, compliance exceptions occur merely because the researcher lost track of their project's requirements. eRSO works to prevent these compliance exceptions by notifying your researchers, project participants, or other stakeholders of pending action items, on time, before exceptions occur.
Taking Action, Tracking Results
eRSO not only notifies your staff of impending exceptions—it can also help your staff take decisive action to avert exception conditions using powerful, built-in tools that help your staff send the affected individuals all the relevant forms and documents they'll need. eRSO can then be used to make sure the appropriate process review procedures are completed—all at the click of a button.
Although eRSO's mission is to reduce compliance exceptions, when they do occur, our solution can help your research administrators notify your financial controllers, as required. Our solution can send, for example, a detailed email with all the information relevant to the case, including the affected individual's name & funding account, allowing your institution to take action immediately. Because eRSO integrates so seamlessly with so many of the most common ERP systems, it can even query your back-end HR & Finance systems, too, enabling the solution to generate fully-complete and comprehensive periodic financial compliance reports, again, at the click of a button.
Scenario 1
How does eRSO help when a certification expires?
Typically, with eRSO's daily exception reporting in place, your institution's research administrators will be notified long before a project or researcher's certification expires. Or, when a certification does expire, eRSO will automatically notify your financial controllers with the relevant account number, allowing them to take action.
Scenario 2
What if an account is left open after a researcher leaves our institution?
Again, typically, eRSO's daily exception reporting will notify your institution's financial controllers of the affected researcher's status is not longer eligible or active. eRSO will include the affected account number and action to be taken, allowing them to act to close or hold the affected account..
Schedules 2,3,5, & 13: Ensuring Compliance
Introduction
Schedules 2,3,5, & 13 outline specific policies and procedures that must be followed to ensure that federally-funded projects, along with the participating administrators and researchers working on those projects, successfully track and satisfy their respect compliance requirements across the entire length of each funded project.
Schedule 2
Ethics Review of Research Involving Humans
Schedule 2 outlines policies that promote the ethical conduct of research involving human subjects. The schedule outlines the specific certifications and procedures required, including strict enforcement procedures.
Schedule 3
Ethical Review of Research Involving Animals
Schedule 3 outlines policies and procedures institutions conducting animal research must have place to monitor ongoing research compliance, ensuring that the institution conforms, at all times, with federal and provincial guidelines, regulations, and laws covering the use of animals in research, teaching and testing. The schedule also outlines specific reporting procedures required by the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC).
Schedule 5
Environmental Assessment
Schedule 5 lays out specific compliance policies deigned to ensure that an organization's research activities do not harm the environment. The schedule outlines the specific environmental assessments, required by provincial or federal legislation, that must be carried out, and, where necessary, mandates specific measures designed to mitigate any adverse environmental impacts an organization's research may potentially create.
Schedule 13
Research Involving Biohazards
Schedule 13 requires that, before funding will be released, organizations must provide proof of compliance with federally-mandated biohazard regulations as described by both the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) and the Public Health Agency of Canada's Laboratory Biosafety Guidelines. The schedule also lays out specific compliance requirements for veterinary facilities as required by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, the Health of Animals Act, and guidelines of the Canadian Council on Animal Care.
eRSO's Response
Staying Informed, As It Happens
eRSO allows your research project administrators to track and manage your institution's compliance requirements, electronically, in one comprehensive, easy-to-use tool. eRSO tracks, in real time, a complete range of compliance requirements, for both projects and the researchers working on them, providing pending exception notifications to your research staff via pre-generated "quicklinks" reports, displayed conveniently at login through eRSO's "Daily Dashboard." By providing your researchers with the information they need, conveniently, they can spend less time assembling these reports by hand and more time managing your institution's complex compliance activities.
Customizable Reports that Save Time
Institutions tell us that demonstrating compliance at the start of the project is nowhere near as hard as managing compliance across the project's entire lifespan. That's why we've eRSO has been built from the ground up to enable your organization to monitor compliance in real time, any time, using one of the most flexible, comprehensive, and intuitively-usable project reporting and management featuresets available today.
eRSO enable your staff to generate custom reports that show your organization's compliance to any funding agency. Our solution also offers unparalleled flexibility, too, whether it be custom-generated, ad-hoc reports specifically-created for your institution's specific requirements, or to built-in reports pre-designed and formatted to satisfy any agency-specific reporting requirements you may need.
For example, eRSO has built-in reports designed to allow your institution's to provide the yearly report required by the Canadian Council Animal Care (CCAC). Or, once a custom report has been created (a task that takes only minutes), it can be saved and generated as desired, any time, completely on-the-fly.
Managing Your Compliance Workflow
eRSO ensures that nothing falls through the cracks. Our solution lets you manage a complete range of research and compliance-related events and activities. Whether it be progress reports, check-in calls, or project notifications, whether they're related to a particular project file or individual, nearly every related activity can be managed and triggered through eRSOeRSO. And, when it's time to follow up, your institution's research staff will have a detailed electronic "paper trail," enabling anyone to pick up a case file exactly where it left off.
Scenario 1
How can eRSO help streamline our applications process?
eRSO's tracking and reporting features enable your research administrators to structure your institution's researchers' workflow so that first things are done first. For instance, if a researcher needs a new certification for a project, but has several expired certifications that would cause the relevant funding agencies to reject that new certification. Your institution's research administrators can use eRSO to prevent wasted time by notifying the affected researcher of the lapsed certifications, and managing and correcting the certification expiry so that any new certification applications would be approved.
Scenario 2
How can eRSO help streamline an audit situation?
During an audit, your research administrators can drill into any project and view information about and the status of any relevant certifications associated with that project in a systemized way. They can then pull the relevant proof of certification paperwork immediately, clearly demonstrating their continuing commitment to compliance.
Schedule 10: Confirmation of Eligibility
Disbursing Money Only to Eligible Accounts
Schedule 10 describes specific requirements relating to confirming and tracking the eligibility requirements of grant or award holders. The schedule also lays out specific reporting requirements that your institution must satisfy to communicate an individual or program's changes in eligibility status to the relevant funding agencies.
eRSO's Response
Managing Eligibility in Real Time
Typically, your institution's HR systems contain the necessary eligibility data eRSO needs. Fortunately, eRSO has been built from the ground up to integrate seamlessly and securely with these systems (eRSO only requires the necessary 'view' permissions to be set up—an extremely common procedure). Using eRSO, your institution's research administrators and finance controllers can retrieve and merge this information, on demand, generating detailed eligibility audit reports that allow your staff to stay on top of existing or upcoming eligibility exceptions.
Making the Auditor Your Friend
Periodically, funding agencies may audit your organization's compliance. Although these auditors will look closely at any compliance exceptions, the Tri-Council MOU also requires institutions to implement electronic tools and controls to manage and maintain compliance and the associated reporting requirements. eRSO provides your institution with these tools.
Maintaining Compliance
eRSO does not stop there, however. It also offers a feature-rich communications center that lets your staff communicate reporting requirements directly to your institution's researchers, offering quick and convenient-to-use tools that let your research administrators send any necessary information, files, or forms electronically, all with full tracking and follow-up.
If an eligibility exception does occur, eRSO can help your institution's finance controllers act promptly, notifying and enabling them to take the appropriate action, whether it be freezing the affected account or notifying the appropriate federal agency.
Scenario
How can eRSO prevent accounts exceptions when a researcher is on sabbatical?
Through its integration with your institution's HR systems, eRSO can query the status of every researcher, on a daily basis, and track their funding eligibility status. With eRSO in place and your institution's financial controllers and research administrators receiving eRSO's daily reports, your finance controllers can be fully-informed and ready to act decisively in every situation.
Schedule 11: Reporting
Tracking Performance and Outcomes
Schedule 11 outlines specific reporting obligations that funded institutions must comply with, including annual performance reports, results of federally-funded research, and other federally-mandated financial & performance reporting requirements.
eRSO's Response
Managing Eligibility in Real Time
Often, federally-funded research projects require your institution's researchers to submit periodic progress and final reports. eRSO provides a centralized, systematic way for your project administrators to manage your institution's reporting workflow easily and conveniently, making sure that none of these reporting tasks fall through the cracks.
eRSO lets you track each project's reporting milestones, notifying the affected researchers in advance and telling them their progress reports are due. And eRSO has been custom-designed to recognize and conform to each of the Tri-Council agency's specific reporting guidelines and requirements. Whether your institution is conducting a project funded by NSERC, which may require specific reports every two months, or an SSHRC-funded project, which may require progress or outcome reports every six months, eRSO can help your research administration staff compile these reports quickly.
Reporting, Any Way You Like
eRSO's capabilities also allow your staff to create detailed, ad-hoc electronic reports, generated as the need arises, grouped any way your institution wishes. For example, your staff may wish to view reports grouped by agency, researcher, department, or any other important criteria.
Custom reports can also be created and saved to be used later, any time you wish. Important reports can even be saved and configured to generate any time a particular user logs in, to enabling any one your administrators to conveniently monitor specific upcoming action items via their own "Daily Dashboard."
Knowing—and Communicating
Generating these reports is only half the battle. eRSO also helps your administrators communicate, too. eRSO offers extremely powerful and intuitive tools that allow your staff to send custom-tailored email notifications to any number of recipients. With the click of a mouse, eRSO automatically merges the recipient's relevant email contact information and includes, in the email body, the reference numbers specific to each researcher's file. The email body can also include a custom-generated description of all required action items, as well. eRSO can even attach all the necessary files such as documents or forms relevant to that particular communication.
Scenario
How can eRSO streamline our progress reports processes?
Let's say that, for example, your institution has 60 research projects this month that require your researchers to submit progress reports submitted to their respective funding agencies. With eRSO's Daily Dashboard, your research administrators can send your researchers the necessary reminders, with all relevant information—including project number, and even the relevant project forms necessary—all merged automatically at the click of a button via eRSO's stored email templates. The time savings provided by this tool are significant!
