Central Research Laboratory Gets World’s First Good Financial Grant Practice Certification

Bennett Oghifo

The Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance (CGPS), based jointly at the Oxford Big Data Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, has supported the Bangalore-based Central Research Laboratory at Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences (CRL KIMS) to become the first organisation in the world to be certified under the Good Financial Grant Practice (GFGP) international standard (ARS 1651).

Harry Harste, Finance Implementation Manager at the CGPS, said, in a statement, “We are thrilled to have successfully supported our CRL KIMS partner to achieve this landmark certification. The benefits that this will bring to CRL KIMS are huge in terms of enhancing their ability to attract and manage international funding, as well as the significant operational and grant management capacity that this has developed.”

The GFGP standard is the world’s first international standard in grant management, developed by the African Academy of Sciences’ Global Grant Community through extensive consultation with grantees from across Africa and with support from some of the world’s largest public and private sector funders.

“This first GFGP certification is a huge milestone for us and a great achievement for CRL KIMS. Our vision for the GFGP Standard is for it to be a globally accredited standard under the international standards organisation or ISO framework”, said Prof Tom Kariuki, the Director of Programmes at the African Academy of Sciences.

The UK-based CGPS supported CRL KIMS through the certification process by working as collaborating partners in a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded Global Health Research Unit on Genomic Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

Dr Ravi Kumar, Principal Investigator at the CRL KIMS said “Our laboratory and research practices are at an internationally recognised standard (ISO 1589:2012). However, as with many global research organisations, our financial management and operational practices were lagging behind. This initiative has therefore been of huge importance to us in ensuring all areas of our operation are aligned with international best practice.”

Due to worldwide lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, GFGP certification was successfully completed remotely by a globally licensed certifying body (BDO LLP).

Dr Geetha Nagaraj, Senior Scientific Officer at CRL KIMS stated that “The process of working towards and achieving GFGP certification has brought so many benefits to CRL KIMS, including giving the whole team confidence that the structures we have in place are in line with best practice and are at an internationally recognised standard. We are especially pleased to achieve this milestone given the challenges created by the global pandemic.”

Prof. David Aanensen, Director of the CGPS, said “GFGP is a truly equitable initiative that levels the playing field for institutes globally. We are delighted to have been involved in spearheading the initiative and thrilled that CRL KIMS have achieved the world’s first certification’.

The Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance’ mission is to inform pathogen control strategies and interventions on a local, national and international scale. CGPS achives this mission through a combination of structured population surveys and whole genome sequencing to generate high quality openly available surveillance data and identify high risk clones; by developing software tools and technologies that make data visualisation and interpretation accessible to all; and by investing in capacity building across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), helping to train future leaders of new national and emerging surveillance programmes.

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit pan African organisation whose vision is to see transformed lives on the African continent through science. Our tripartite mandate is recognising excellence through the AAS’ highly prestigious fellowship and award schemes, providing advisory and think tank functions for shaping Africa’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) strategies and policies and implementing key STI programmes addressing Africa’s developmental challenges. The Academy’s five strategic focus areas include: Environment and climate change; health and wellbeing; natural sciences; policy and governance; and social sciences and humanities.

The Global Grant Community (GGC) is a financial platform of the African Academy of Sciences whose mission is to connect funders with trusted grantees through digitizing, standardizing and de-risking the due diligence process for both funders and grant receivers. The GGC reduces the cost and time taken to connect major state and philanthropic funders with the world’s most trusted grant receivers that have a proven track record of managing funding effectively. The platform consists of a i) New international standard for Good Financial Grant Practice (GFGP) developed in collaboration with multiple African and global partners and adopted by the African Organisation for Standardization (ARSO) ii). Portal based pre-certification scheme to the requirements of GFGP and Non GFGP Assurance Framework iii) Global network of audit firms licensed to undertake site audits for certification that an organization’s day to day operational activities are in compliance to the requirements of the GFGP standard.

The Central Research laboratory was established in KIMS Hospital and Research Center, KR Road,V.V.Puram in the year 2008. CRL’s research interests are to understand the serotype distribution, antimicrobial/drug resistance, antibody response, opsonophagocytic activity and genotypes of Indian pneumococcal isolates. The laboratory has the infrastructure for conventional and molecular diagnostics and research work. Various molecular technologies like Microarray, PCR Sequential Typing, MPCR-FAF Typing, qmPCR are developed, standardized and applied for the study of pneumococci.

BDO is an international network of public accounting, tax, consulting and business advisory firms which perform professional services under the name of BDO. BDO’s global organisation extends across 167 countries and territories, with 88,120 people working out of 1,617 offices – and they’re all working towards one goal: to provide our clients with exceptional service.