Change is bad - grants.gov

All proposals to the federal government must use a new joing web based application system no later than 2007 or so, namely the rapidly-growing-in-infamy grants.gov

I've been getting increasingly shrill in-house e-mails on the need to prepare for the transition, accompanied by dire whispered conversations with research admin personnel who have actually had hands on experience with it.

I guess NSF will transit this year, and why not, since they have a perfectly decent long running functional grant submission system in the FastLane...
NASA just put in place its somewhat clunky NSPIRES, but despite the unexpected extra bits of work and hidden mandatory sub-items to complete, that thing actually seems to be working - so it must be time to junk it and move on.

So I just took a look at grants.gov and their PureEdge system, and may I say

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

What the f... were you morons thinking?!

First of all the instructions begin with "launch your Internet Explorer".
This piece of junk is a Micro$oft only supported system, with a slight nod to Netscape for the AOL hangouts.

Dammit, real scientists don't use IE!

Where is Firefox and Safari support?

Oh, wait here is a link to "Support for Mac" (what about Linux/Lintel boxes and good old Suns?) - ah, if you run a PC emulator for Windows XP they're pretty sure it will work, except for the following known problems...


I see now why our provisional solution is to have the PIs put the proposal together and then hand it over to the local admin for them to enter it in the system and then have us check it (apart from the need for Institutional "authorized" people to access this - something both FastLane and NSPIRES have solutions to).

Why are these idiocies inflicted upon us?