In this blog post, Roberto Sabatino, Research Engagement Officer at HEAnet, and Lead Investigator on the NORF-funded Shared Data Storage Service Pilot project reflects on the first six months of the project and invites stakeholders to join the project’s Stakeholder Advisory Forum (SAF). Information on the SAF, and on how to become a member of the SAF, can be found here: https://resin.heanet.ie/index.php/irldat-saf-stakeholder-advisory-forum/
The Shared Data Storage Service Pilot project is a two-year project funded under NORF’s National Open Research Fund 2022. The pilot will enable users to access a national shared storage infrastructure and a suite of data management services during the active phase of the research data life cycle to verify appetite for such services, their fitness for purpose and will conclude with a report for policymakers and funders defining a sustainable national scale production service.
What has IRLDAT been up to?
We are six months into the project, so it seems a good time to summarise what we have achieved so far. First, it is a real pleasure working with the project team of six national and European institutions, and with the pilot users who are contributing to the project via a User Advisory Forum (UAF). There are eleven representatives of use cases working with the project partners. To be sufficiently representative of the broader research landscape in Ireland, the pilot’s use cases are drawn from several institutions and disciplines covering social sciences, humanities, sensoring, life sciences, material sciences, geo-earth sciences, and bioimaging/microscopy. The project cannot succeed without their engagement and input, and we are grateful for each their contributions. Our first formal deliverable, which reports on pilot user requirements, workflow descriptions and solution design, is due later this month.
Figure 1 shows the three stages of the project. Consultation with the UAF is part of Phase 1. In this phase the services we are using to store and access data (B2DROP and B2ACCESS) are hosted in the European EUDAT CDI data centres. Phase 1 allows the pilot users to gain experience with these services before we move them onto the national infrastructure where B2DROP will be deployed. This is Phase 2. The design of the national infrastructure has already started, and we’re delighted that the three sites provided by project partners are already configured with the B2DROP service. We are currently working on how to make them work together and having the national configuration up and running by July. This phase will continue testing user services from EUDAT to gain experience in deploying and managing them on national infrastructure.
During the Phase 3, the project will focus on building on the learnings of Phase 1 and Phase 2 to define a production quality service, of national scale, along with its operational, governance and funding model. In other words: who does what, and who pays for what. We will do this in consultation with the broader research stakeholders in Ireland. To this end the project foresees the establishment of a Stakeholder Advisory Forum (SAF), composed of Research Support, IT and Data management leaders at the HEIs, Research Infrastructure directors and SFI centre leads. We will consult with the SAF on the operational, governance, funding model and converge on a final recommendation for implementation.
The SAF will launch on 4 May 2023, via an MS Teams webinar. In this first session we will explain the details of the project and show progress to date. Information on the SAF, and on how to become a member of the SAF, can be found here:
https://resin.heanet.ie/index.php/irldat-saf-stakeholder-advisory-forum/
