# FSIS FERN Cooperative Agreement -FERN Portal

Source: https://welltoldgrants.com/grants/fsis-fern-04072023-fsis-fern-cooperative-agreement-fern-portal/  
Official notice: https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/347382

> Food Safety Inspection Service offered grants of up to $260,000 (at least $187,000) to the applicants described in the notice. It expected to make one award worth $260,000 in total. Applications closed on May 15, 2023.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Opportunity number | FSIS-FERN-04072023 |
| Agency | Food Safety Inspection Service |
| Status | Forecast |
| Deadline | May 15, 2023 |
| Award ceiling | $260,000 |
| Award floor | $187,000 |
| Expected awards | 1 |
| Total funding | $260,000 |
| Cost sharing | not required |
| Assistance Listings | 10.479 |

## Who can apply

- Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

Eligible Applicants: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education and National Associations/Organizations whose purpose is to represent and support State food regulatory programs are eligible to apply for this funding opportunity. Award recipient is to already have an established relationship with the CoreSHIELD technology owner, Datastream Connexions, to ensure continuity of database operations.

## What the grant funds

The Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) comprises federal, state, and local government regulatory laboratories with varying capacities to perform food defense and emergency response testing. The Contaminants and Threat Agents team of the Laboratory Quality Assurance, Response and Coordination Staff in USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) manages a cooperative agreement program to fund external partners and projects supporting FERN. The Contaminants and Threat Agents team is seeking to award a cooperative agreement for providing and maintaining, in its current active state, a secure online Information Sharing Exchange (ISE) software solution called the FERN communication, collaboration and management (CCM) portal. The infrastructure supporting the FERN customized portal is named “CoreSHIELD”. The CoreSHIELD platform provides the information technology architecture underlying a suite of web-based portals and applications. This tool provides the FERN with capability, capacity, and readiness data for the network member laboratories. The data housed in this system is not captured in any other system and is the only tool available to FERN to determine national capacity and capability for laboratory testing needed to respond to a foodborne emergency. The FERN Portal provides for: (1) training event registration and historical tracking of attendees; (2) secure video and webinar capability available to multi-agency participants; (3) proficiency test event registration and historical tracking of participants; (4) public webpage maintenance and enhancement; (5) FERN Storeroom online, secure ordering and inventory maintenance; (6) capability and capacity information for all current FERN lab members; (7) activation management and results data entry database for all members during exercise and actual activation events; (8) a FERN documents repository, including housing all FERN methods, operational SOP’s and other network documents, complete with search functionality for all capabilities of network members; (9) FERN Calendar of events automatically populated from each network event scheduled within the website functional arena, (10) document management including real time collaborative editing, approval workflows and digital signatures, (11) large and sensitive file sharing with risk mitigation and activity auditing, (12) 24 hour helpdesk assistance and online management of user accounts.

## Questions people ask

### Is FSIS-FERN-04072023 still open?

No. It closed on May 15, 2023.

### Who can apply for FSIS FERN Cooperative Agreement -FERN Portal?

Food Safety Inspection Service accepted applications from the applicants described in the notice. The notice adds further conditions, so read its eligibility section.

### What is the deadline for FSIS FERN Cooperative Agreement -FERN Portal?

Closed May 15, 2023. Applications are no longer accepted; the program's newer notices are on this page when there are any.

### How much funding is available?

Awards of up to $260,000 each. About $260,000 in total for one award.

### Who has won Food Safety Cooperative Agreements grants before?

The largest recipients over five fiscal years were Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Health Research, Inc. The program made 58 awards worth $13.7 million in that time.