Internal Referral Module (IRM)

What is the purpose?

The Internal Referral Module is a system that provides Institutes/Centers (ICs) the ability to assign applications within their IC, following referral of the applications by the Center for Scientific Review (CSR).

The system is designed for use by IC ‘internal referral’ officers, who manage a pool of applications within the IC and are responsible for assigning the applications to program officials (POs) within the IC.

The module will include some capabilities currently available in the Institute and Center Operations (ICO) module (such as assigning applications to a program official) and entirely new features (allowing POs to acknowledge receipt of the assignments, and potentially suggest a better assignee).

What are the features?

IRM provides the following capabilities:

• View applications within the IC needing assignment
• Make assignments individually or in batches
• Provide real-time information about the assignment to the Program Management Module (PMM), so that POs can acknowledge the assignments via the PMM Task screen.
• View applications pending acknowledgment or returned (whether recommending reassignment or suggesting that the IC should not get the application)
• Make changes to the assignment
• Indicate how much time has elapsed since CSR assigned the application(s) to the IC

What are the benefits?

• Creates efficiencies by automating the ‘internal referral’ assignments, currently done manually on spreadsheets by the ICs.
• Provides status information to let the internal referral officer know that the PO received the assignment.
• Provides an audit trail of the assignments

Who can use IRM?

• Institute/Center ‘internal referral’ officer(s)