00:08 I've been working as a research administrator 00:10 at the University of Virginia for 20 years. 00:14 During that time, I've worked with many of our faculty 00:16 investigators to help them with the administrative aspects 00:19 of managing their grant awards. 00:22 I have seen the large number of administrative tasks 00:24 our faculty are responsible for close-up. 00:27 But it still surprised me when I learned 00:29 that, according to national surveys conducted 00:32 by the Federal Demonstration Partnership, 00:35 the administrative burdens placed on faculty who perform 00:38 research is significant. 00:41 42% of the time spent by an average PI 00:45 was reported to be spent on administrative tasks associated 00:49 with the research. 00:51 Currently, for our principal investigators 00:53 to get answers to their questions, 00:55 they have to get help from an administrator. 00:57 The administrator has to spend time running reports. 01:00 And the result often looks something like this. 01:03 Every research administrator has probably 01:06 heard his or her faculty members complain 01:09 that these tasks decrease their productivity 01:11 and compromise their ability to do science. 01:15 The time that it takes me to contact the administrator 01:18 and find out whether I have sufficient funds 01:21 to purchase x, y, or z is time that would be much better 01:24 spent actually performing the research, 01:27 analyzing data, or writing a manuscript, 01:32 writing up the next grant to follow on the grant I have. 01:35 So it's not time well-spent in terms 01:38 of completing my research. 01:41 UVA has recognized the problem and is 01:43 devoting many new resources to try to help. 01:46 One resource is the Research Administration Dashboard 01:50 that provides data in a way that is 01:52 understandable to researchers. 01:54 Researchers can grasp visual data very quickly. 01:58 But they struggle with spreadsheets 01:59 and financial reports. 02:02 With a dashboard, if they want, they 02:04 can drill into the details from the summary data 02:06 to get fast answers to their questions. 02:09 Research administrators are partners to our faculty. 02:12 Our job is to take as much administrative burden as we can 02:16 from them to allow them to do what only they can do-- 02:21 make breakthrough discoveries and offer hope to the anxiously 02:25 waiting patient.