Compliance module
Export control software for research compliance offices
Collect export control activity on the same records as the agreements that raised it. The module works with Negotiations, on the same agreement records.
The failure this replaces
The determination was made. Two years later, nobody can find it.
Export control questions arrive one at a time, usually inside something else: a clause in an agreement, a visiting researcher, a piece of equipment going somewhere. Each one gets handled, and the handling is often an email and a note.
The cost shows up later, when a sponsor or a federal agency asks what the institution decided about a particular project and why. If the answer lives in an individual's mailbox instead of against the award, reconstructing it is the work, and reconstruction is exactly what an auditor is entitled to be unimpressed by.
What it does
Record it, route it, find it again
One place for export control activity
The module collects information on all export control activities in research, so what your institution has looked at and decided is on the record instead of in the memory of whoever handled it.
Wired into Negotiations
It works together with the Negotiations module, which is where export control questions usually surface: a clause about foreign nationals, a restricted destination, a piece of equipment. The activity is recorded against the agreement it came from.
Attached to the funding it concerns
Because the agreement hangs off the award, and the award off the proposal, an export control record sits in the same chain as the money. Nobody has to establish which project it was about.
Supports the institutional process
It supports the institutional processes that ensure compliance with US export control laws and regulations. In practice it holds and routes the work your compliance officers do, in the shape your institution has defined.
Alongside the other compliance areas
Export control sits with IRB, IACUC, IBC and COI, so a project's whole compliance picture is in one place.
Reportable
Activity recorded is activity that can be counted. Streamlyne Reporting reads across export control with everything else, which matters when somebody asks what the institution's exposure looks like.
The product itself
What the screens look like
Attached to the funding it concerns
Supports the institutional process
Why it is not a separate purchase
The trigger is almost always an agreement
Export control rarely arrives on its own. It arrives while somebody is negotiating a contract, and it concerns a project that already has a proposal and an award in the system.
That is why the two modules work together, and why they are usually adopted as a pair. Kept apart, the same activity gets logged twice and reconciled by hand.
- Export controlActivity collected against the project it concerns
- NegotiationsWhere the question usually surfaces
- IRB / IACUC / IBCThe same committee machinery, same records
- COIFinancial disclosure, assigned per project
- ReportingExposure counted, with no estimating
Questions
What an export control officer asks
What does the export control module do?
It collects information on export control activities in research and supports the institutional process around them, working together with the Negotiations module where those questions most often arise. It is the record and the workflow: what was raised, what was decided, and against which project.
Does it screen restricted parties or make determinations for us?
No. It doesn't run denied-party screening and it doesn't classify technology. Those are judgements your export control officer makes, sometimes with a specialist screening service. What this module does is make sure the judgement is recorded against the right agreement and can be found again.
Why is it paired with Negotiations?
Because that is where the trigger usually appears. A sponsor clause restricting publication, a foreign collaborator, a shipment of controlled equipment: all of them surface while an agreement is being negotiated. The two modules work together for exactly this reason, and institutions generally adopt them as a pair.
Can we adopt export control on its own?
You can, and it will hold the records. Most of its value comes from the pairing, though. On its own it is a well organised log. With Negotiations it is a process that catches things at the point they arise.
How does this relate to the other compliance modules?
It sits with IRB, IACUC, IBC and COI, sharing the same system and the same links to proposals, institutional proposals and awards. A coordinator doesn't learn a separate tool for it.
Which interface does it use?
The compliance modules run in the classic Streamlyne interface today. You get the full record on the same data as everything else. You don't get the newer UI that proposal development has.