DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL DATA SERVICE

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DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN
NATIONAL DATA SERVICE

• Andrew Treloar
• Director, ANDS Establishment Project

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Outline

• Context
• Establishment
• Structure
• Future

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Context
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Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of
Research

• Describes the responsibilities of institutions
  and researchers, including in management of
  research data primary materials
• Joint initiative of Universities Australia, ARC,
  NHMRC

• Institutions are to
• retain research data and primary materials
• provide secure research data storage and
  record-keeping facilities
• identify ownership of research data and primary
  materials
• ensure security and confidentiality of research
  data and primary materials

• Researchers are to
• retain research data and primary materials
• manage storage of research data and
  record-keeping facilities
• maintain confidentiality of research data and
  primary materials

http//www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/r39s
yn.htm
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National Collaborative Research Infrastructure
Strategy
Note scaled to EU or US economies this is
analogous to 1B USD per annum
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Platforms for Collaboration Major Investments
2007-2011
Capability Computing Advanced models NCI - 26M
The Data Commons Data Federations ANDS - 24M
Collaboration services Research workflows ARCS -
20M
Research connectivity Seamless reach AAFAREN -
6M
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Establishment
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The ANDS Blueprint

• Towards the Australian Data Commons (TADC)
• Developed during 2007 by ANDS Technical Working
  Group
• Mapped out coherent vision of what needs to be
  done in the data space
• Available at http//www.pfc.org.au/bin/view/Main/D
  ata

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TADC Why Data? Why Now?

• We are in an era of increasing data-intensive
  research
• Almost all data is now born digital
• Increasing amount of data generated(semi-)automat
  ically
• Consequently, increasing effort and therefore
  funding will necessarily be diverted to data and
  data management over time (Towards the
  Australian Data Commons (TADC), p. 4)

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TADC Need for standardisation

• Software and hardware keep getting cheaper,
  wetware keeps getting more expensive
• Fixing data management problems is enormously
  labour intensive and costly
• Consequently, standardisation within forms of
  data and simplification in the frameworks around
  retention, storage, access and use of data, and
  the elimination of differences whose resolution
  requires labour, must be made, if the on-going
  keeping and reuse of data is to remain
  affordable (TADC, p. 5)

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TADC Role of data federations

• With more data online, more can be done
• Possible now to answer questions unrelated to
  reasons why data was collected originally
• Increasing focus on cross-disciplinary science
• Consequently greater clarity is needed over
  control and access to community-funded data, and
  the means of aggregating, federating and
  accessing such data are increasingly important
  (TADC, p. 5)

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The ANDS Vision

• As a vision, ANDS sets out to transform the
  disparate collections of research data around
  Australia into a cohesive corpus of research
  resources. (TADC, p. 5)

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ANDS Assumptions

• ANDS doesnt have enough money to fund storage
• Thus is predicated on institutionally-supported
  solutions (Australia lacks discipline-specific
  data centres)
• ANDS aims to leverage existing activity, and
  coordinate/fund new activity
• ANDS will only start to build the Australian
  Research Data Commons
• ANDS governance and management arrangements are
  sized for the current funding

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ANDS Establishment Project

• Spent first eight months of 2008 doing detailed
  planning, consulting and consensus building to
  turn vision into reality
• Generated the first of a series of annual
  business plans
• http//ands.org.au/andsinterimbusinessplan-final.p
  df

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Structure
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Realising the Vision
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ANDS Delivery Structure

• ANDS has been structured as four inter-related
  and co-ordinated service delivery programs
• Developing Frameworks
• Providing Utilities
• Seeding the Commons
• Building Capabilities
• Plus candidate service development activities
  funded through National eResearch Architecture
  Taskforce projects

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Developing Frameworks

• Influencing relevant national policies
• Building common understanding of data management
  issues and solutions across government, research
  funding agencies, and research intensive
  organizations
• Encouraging moves in favour of discipline-acceptab
  le default sharing practices
• Largely centralised, with some specialised
  outsourcing

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Providing Utilities

• Building and delivering national technical
  services to support the data commons
• Examples
• Discovery
• See poster 16!
• Persistent identifier minting and management
• Collections registry to underpin discovery
• Outsourced delivery and insourced technical
  framework development
• Providing capability within ANDS for integration
  of existing systems into Australian Data Commons

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Seeding the Commons

• In targeted areas (because not enough resource to
  do everything), working to improve
• fabric for data management
• amount of content
• state of data capture and management
• Plus, opportunistic content recruitment in year 1
• Selection process to identify targets
• Placement of ANDS-funded staff, together with
  co-investment

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Building Capabilities

• Improving level of capability for research data
  management and research access to data
• Train-the-trainer model
• Focussing both on early career researchers and
  research IT support staff
• Building community around data management
  concerns
• Largely distributed

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Future
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Australian Strategic Roadmap Review

• Data Storage (p.21)
• National data-fabric, based on institutional
  nodes
• Shared Data (p. 22)
• More ANDS
• Coordination Component (p. 23)
• Integration of eResearch activities
• Inclusion of data itself as collaborative
  research infrastructure (p. 9)
• Expertise as an enabling infrastructure (p. 23)
• Addition of humanities and social sciences
• http//www.innovation.gov.au/ScienceAndResearch/Do
  cuments/Strategic20Roadmap20Aug202008.pdf
• Not yet funded

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What do we want?

• More researchers re-using more data more often
• So we need to
• lower the costs and raise the benefits
• have data be seen as a first class research
  output
• drive culture change in all the roles
• build partnerships between those with
  responsibilities

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Questions?

• andrew.treloar_at_ands.org.au ross.wilkinson_at_ands.org
  .au
• http//andrew.treloar.net/ http//ands.org.au/