NIH tool eases researchers' ability to share software

The National Institutes of Health awarded more than $5 billion in research funding for neurosciences in fiscal 2008. And for the first time, a small, but significant, portion of that money did not go for software development.

That's because NIH led the development of a repository, called the Neuroimaging Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC), for researchers to stop spending money on developing applications to analyze MRI pictures of the brain.

NITRC is estimated to have provided NIH and researchers with about $22 million in cost avoidance since 2007, but more importantly it created an easy-to-use and adopt database of applications.

"So instead of creating it themselves and wasting time, researchers should be analyzing the data and coming up with the smart results," says Nina Preuss, the project manager for Turner Consulting Group, who helped build the database. "We have ratings and reviews just like Amazon and Zappos and see if it is hard to use or easy to use. And they can make their decisions to use the tool or not."

NIH awarded TCG a five-year, $3.8 million dollar contract in October 2006 to develop this database.

The program's impact in the way it uses technology makes information more transparent and saves money were some of the main reasons the Industry Advisory Council and the American Council for Technology honored it with the best overall award at the Excellence.gov awards April 14 in Washington.

IAC/ACT chose NITRC out of 61 nominations and 21 finalists.

"We were totally shocked," Preuss says. "It's a boutique service and we have a niche community. When you look at some of the other competitors that have serviced much larger groups of people in the U.S., we though it might have been based on reach. To be the overall winner obviously meant we were strong enough in each of the individual categories. We were totally shocked and pleased."

Preuss says the site includes proprietary and open source software and hardware. The tool also includes a user guide, a feature to log software bugs and make requests for new capabilities.

"Anyone can download software, read the forums or the news," she says. "If they want to contribute software or data or ask questions, they need to be a registered user."

The four other category winners are:

• Excellence in Business Process:The Office of Personnel Management's Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) program. EHRI is digitizing 1.8 million federal employee paper records. OPM estimates savings is $800 million over the next decade.

• Excellence in Leveraging Technology:The Energy Department's ESnet4, the Energy Sciences Network 4th generation. The Berkley National laboratory leads the development of ESnet4. Its goal is to support advanced scientific capabilities at universities and labs by letting them share large amounts of data over the network. The network transfers 10 gigabits of data per second. The estimated savings over a six-year period is about $20 million.

• Excellence in Transparency: The Library of Congress's Global Legal Information Network. This project provides laws of the world in languages from the 14 different member countries. It helps these countries share and collaborate on legal documents, and each document is certified and tagged to make for easier and trustworthy sharing.

• Excellence in Acquisition:The Interior Department's National Business Center's GovPay program. NBC developed an electronic invoice system between agencies and vendors. Vendors submit invoices, the data is verified and it's moved along for payment. The processing time is cut down significantly and vendors can track the status of an invoice. NBC says agencies saw a .02 percent decrease in the prompt payment penalty claims that saved agencies about $900,000 in 2007.

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On the Web:

NIH - NIH To Build Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (press release)

IAC/ACT - The Best Overall and Best Category Winners were Announced at the April 14th Awards Luncheon (press release)

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