The main objective of the meeting is to discuss and finalize a renewed charter for the National Data Service Interest Group, which ceased to be active in 2019. The National Data Services landscape has been evolving since then, for instance with the creation of Digital Research Alliance of Canada in 2019 and of Recherche Data Gouv in France in 2022, whereas the Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform (RCOS) of the Japanese National Institute of Informatics (NII), the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System in South Africa (NICIS), which has the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) among its key areas, and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) had been created between 2017 and 2019. Several other National Data Services were also presented among the cases studied by the GORC International Model WG. The presentations demonstrated that National Data Services can be organised in different ways and with different aims, depending strongly on the national context in which they operate.
The presenters organised a session (which was repeated during the second week) during P22 to assess whether there is an interest to start again the RDA National Data Services IG. The meeting agenda is described below. Its aim was fulfilled: there is indeed an interest in the community to start again the RDA National Data Service IG. The presentations from the meeting proposers, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and South Africa, demonstrated the diversity of the National Data Services landscape and the usefulness of re-establishing a placeholder for the topic in the RDA. The contribution of LA Referencia, which was also invited to present a talk, showed that liaison should be established with relevant regional Global Open Research Commons.
The proposers agreed to continue to work on re-establishing the National Data Services Interest Group. LA Referencia indicated its willingness to continue to participate in the endeavour. A draft list of possible activities for the IG was discussed. It was also proposed to organise a meeting open to all interested National Data Services in September. This meeting will discuss an initial draft for the IG. This initial draft will be presented to the community during the P23 BoF session to gather their feedback, with the aim to submit the charter through the Request for Comments process during the following weeks.
