Following technical difficulties with the Funding Service in late September the Simpler Better Funding, Senior Responsible Officer (and Executive Chair for the Economic and Social Research Council), Stian Westlake wrote to Universities on 29 September about the performance of the Service. The email included the below:
"I know this has been a challenging period for users of the Funding Service. Some applicants and their research offices have experienced technical problems that have prevented or delayed submissions to opportunities, including two service outages.
I recognise the anxiety and stress this will have caused, particularly during application deadlines - and we take full responsibility for these issues. Like all digital services, UKRI’s new funding service is not immune to technical issues, and we are working hard to further improve its resilience, and developing procedures around managing these events should they occur in future. Our programme team is working fast to resolve issues, the helpdesk team is prioritising support to applicants facing imminent opportunity deadlines (and to their organisations), and we are adding more staff to our development team.
Where these issues occur, in addition to contacting impacted applicants, we will contact Funding Service research office administrators highlighting the issue and guidance if applicants were affected. As an ongoing communication channel, we have also introduced a service status page on UKRI.org to ensure the research community has visibility of service issues and guidance. We have also refreshed our guidance materials to help users familiarise themselves with the Service.
Should an application be subject to a technical error preventing it being submitted successfully by the deadline, we request that applicants contact the Funding Service helpdesk with evidence of the reason for the late submission, at which point the case will be considered in line with UKRI’s submission policy. As a matter of principle, we will not reject applications received late due to Funding Service technical errors."
