UW GRACE: Grant Review Automation for Compliance Excellence

Context

The University of Washington's Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) works with UW primary investigators (PIs) to manage grants, contracts, and other sources of funding for their research activites. Part of OSP's work is to process no cost extensions (NCEs) – requests by PIs to extend the length of a grant/contract without modifying funding commitments. NCEs may or may not be subject to approval by the sponsor of a grant. Program Coordinators (PCs) within OSP are responsible for reviewing PI requests for no cost extension and filling out a form called the extension review matrix (ERM), which helps OSP decide whether sponsor approval is required.

Project Overview

Our goal was to establish a proof of concept for process automation to streamline PCs' NCE review workflow. Before this project, PCs manually completed the Extension Review Matrix (ERM), looking up each review item individually. While some items required careful assessment, others were straightforward attributes that could be pulled directly from existing databases.

To design our solution, we thought of the ERM as containing two types of items:

• Structured items – objective attributes of a grant (e.g., budget details, approval requirements) that PCs previously had to look up and enter manually.
• Unstructured items – more complex elements requiring interpretation, such as reviewing contract terms to determine if sponsors explicitly require extension approval.

To streamline the process, we aimed to:

1. Automate structured items by developing an autofill feature that pre-fills the ERM using university database records.
2. Assist with unstructured items by integrating a virtual assistant powered by a large language model (LLM), enabling PCs to quickly locate relevant document sections and ask content-related questions.

To ensure usability, we collaborated closely with a program coordinator in the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) and conducted user interviews with managers. These insights helped us refine UW-GRACE to align with real-world workflows, identify where PCs find relevant data, and ensure the tool effectively supports their decision-making process.

Getting Started

UW-GRACE is currently in the proof-of-concept phase. In this stage, we are only able to provide functionality to users affiliated with the University of Washington who have already been provisioned with permissions to access certain university IT resources. If you believe you fall into this category, please contact the contributors to this repository or SSEC to coordinate access. If you do not have the required permissions, you will not be able to run GRACE.

To get started with UW-GRACE, you first need to install Docker.

On Mac OS, go to the terminal and run: brew install docker

(Note: if you encounter errors running the commands below, you may also need to install Docker Desktop)

On Windows, please install Docker Desktop and enable wsl integration. See here for more info.

Once you've completed those steps, open the Terminal (MAC OS) or Command Prompt (Windows) and run ./deploy/build.sh

This will build containers that store the dependencies GRACE relies on and automatically and run the app. When you run this command, you should get a message that looks like:

frontend-1  |   You can now view your Streamlit app in your browser.
frontend-1  | 
frontend-1  |   Local URL: http://localhost:8501
frontend-1  |   Network URL: http://172.18.0.3:8501
frontend-1  |   External URL: http://24.19.202.153:8501

Follow the Local URL to open the app in the browser.

Application Architecture

At the highest level, the GRACE application is organized as follows.

Data Layer

• Retrieves relevant data from the university’s databases using SQL queries.
• Uses SQLAlchemy to convert the database output into a Python-friendly format.
• Passes the processed data to the application layer as input.

Application Layer

• Processes data from the data layer, applies business logic, and generates responses for each question in the Extension Review Matrix (ERM).

Presentation Layer

• The user interface is a web application built with Streamlit, a Python package that simplifies the creation of interactive web UIs.
• While the frontend is ultimately rendered in HTML and JavaScript, we do not develop it directly in these languages.

Repo Structure

src

This is the main development folder.

src/backend/libs

This folder contains methods for:

• backend functionality
  • connects to the PI form (an xls file stored in Sharepoint)
  • connects to the RADDB and EDW SQL databases
• business logic functionality
  • transforms data extracted from the data sources into answers to ERM questions
  • delivers the answers as a JSON to the frontend

Methods defined in this folder serve as helper methods in the main application flow.

shared

Provides utility functions for resolving paths and directories within the project, such as obtaining the project root, SQL directory, and data directory paths.

src/osp_nce/backend/libd/queries/sql/

This folder represents the core of the application's database layer. The queries in this folder access the non-production verison of the RADDB and the employee data warehouse (EDW) and return data from these databases for processing by the application layer.

With minor exceptions, we try to avoid including business logic in these queries to keep code modular and maintainable. Instead, methods in the application layer – contained in the src folder – transform the database output into answers to questions on the extension review matrix.

deploy

The bash script in this folder installs software and libraries that the end user will need to run the GRACE streamlit web app. The script:

• installs the correct version of Python, if needed
• installs the poetry package manager, if needed, and uses it to load the right packages to run the web app
• allows the user to specify environment variables (which they need to connect to databases which the app depends on)
• kills any processes running on the port needed to listen for API calls
• launches the Streamlit application

This script represents a streamlined way to launch the web app without requiring end users to configure the computing environment.

assets

Contains references and miscellaneous assets related to the project.

eda

This folder documents queries we performed to explore the datasets on which the GRACE web app depends, mostly RADDB. The purpose is to understand the data and ensure that the application layer correctly anticipates the format and conventions of data it ingests. Queries in this folder do not contribute to the function of the application.

[Reference]: ERM Shorthand

Throughout our codebase, we refer to items that appear on the extension review matrix (ERM). These are verbose, so we usually abbreviate them. The table below specifies abbreviations.

ri stands for "Review Item". Review items are enumerated in the order they appear on the ERM. The review items below are from the Spring 2025 version of the ERM; this may be updated in the future.

Code Abbreviation	Form Text
mod-worktag-id	Mod/Worktag ID:
pi_name	PI Name
ri1	SFI Current?
ri2	Remaining Balance $$:
ri3	Is the award in deficit?
ri4	Is the balance greater than 25% of the total award?
ri5	Award lines listed or "extend all" indicated?
ri6	Temporary request?
ri7	New cost share?
ri8	Human Subjects?
ri9	Animal Use?
ri10	Prior approval required?
ri11	Has the project previously been extended? Is this an NIH 2nd+ extension?
ri12	Is the request to extend within Sponsor's required timeframe?
ri13	Is this a federal contract?
ri14	For federal contracts only: is FAR clause 52.222-54 incorporated (e-verify)?
ri15	Fixed Price terms?
ri16	Paid in full?
ri17	All deliverables submitted?
review_notes	Review Notes