Systems, Technologies and Data Flows of the Research Data - RDA 10th Plenary BoF meeting

Meeting title

Discussions about meaning of systems, technology and data flows in the research data infrastructures

Short introduction describing the activities and the scope of the group: 

With the one word, this BoF and IG proposal [1] is about nuts and bolts of the research data infrastructures.

Research data are managed in variety of IT systems and with variety of different technology or system architectures. For example research data repositories, metadata repositories, data brokers, semantic interoperability tools, long term preservation architectures, discoverability tools, dataintensive research platforms, computing environments, project management enviroments or communication platforms are also IT systems which needs technical interoperability to work efficiently and properly. 

Within research data community, there is number of different projects for research data infrastructures. Some of them are disciplinary projects, some owned by some domain and some are international cooperation projects etc. Some projects have smaller technology challenges and some have bigger ones. One challenge of number of projects is seamless data interoperability between different systems, because this is inevitable part of smooth and efficient user experience. User experience is key factor of the success of any research data service.

The BoF focus on technical infrastructures of institutions for the research data.  This contain for example following point of views:

- infrastructure issues of the institutions
- practical solutions in the research data infrastructures
- enterprise architecture perpectives of the research data infrastructures
- interoperability between institutional and national services

General level idea of this BoF (or later IG if decided) is collaborate and discuss about systems, technologies and data flows as a part of the solution architectures of the research data infrastructures.

Main themes of the BoF will be
- tools like systems, technologies and interoperability architectures used as a part of the services and solutions
- case studies of solutions in the research data infrastructure projects of research institutions like universities
- presentations of technical innovations and ideas in the area of research data infrastructures
- best practises of the system and technology architectures

As secretary general of RDA, Mark Parsons, has written, the RDA "addresses this issue by focusing on creating and implementing the 'social and technical bridges' that connect different systems, communities, tools, etc. And we consciously avoid defining a specific a priori architecture or roadmap as to how these bridges should interconnect."[2]

Idea of this BoF (or later IG if decided) is not create any kind of architecture model for RDA or create any specific architecture roadmap to anything, but discuss about system and technology level solutions to find some good examples or some best practises how to create these bridges.

This group have connections with some other RDA groups like:
- National Data Services IG (usually research institutions support, use or deliver services and solutions of this national data service vendors or operators)
- Repository Platforms for Research Data IG and Research Data Repository Interoperability WG (repositories are essential part of the research data infrastructures, but not only ones)
- Data Fabric IG (technology or interoperability solutions of the research institutions are essential part of the bif picture)

Additional links to informative material related to the group i.e. group page, Case statement, working documents etc

[1] Proposal for the Case statement of the IG: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQlZ3RiHU5TYwBvpeFlk9zuyTrXCc8JRkRHdsAK2kH0lfkdfmvmRS_qml8Yz2kxcYrlQ3QYMEr4hmO2/pub

[2] https://www.rd-alliance.org/group/council-strategy-subcommittee/outcomes...

Meeting objectives

- Discussion of the idea and main themes of the group
- Case studies of some research data infrastructure projects
- Presentation, discussion and finalization of the objectives of the case statement
- Identification of additional partners
- Next steps

Meeting agenda

1. Presentation of the idea behind this BoF and the Case Statement (Ville Tenhunen) (5 minutes)
2. Case statements as an example of the idea of the group (40 minutes)
- Case Griffith University (Malcolm Wolski)
- Digital Life Cycle Framework Project (Siobhann McCafferty)
- Case MILDRED; Overview of the application and service architectures and the description of the data flow of the metadata without own metadata repository (Ville Tenhunen)
3. Specification of the objectives of the IG [1], (discussions, all participants) (30 minutes)
4. Identification of other potential group members (all participants) (5 minutes)
5. Summary of the results, actions, and identification of contributions of the group members (TBA)

Audience: 

The target audience of this meeting may include all those people who are involved research data infrastructure projects or services as well as users who are interested in the topic of systems, technologies and data flows as a part of the research data infrastructures. For example research data infrastructure project owners or product owners, project managers, IT architects, developers and service users who are interested in technology issues are typical target audience of this BoF meeting.

Group chair serving as contact person: Ville Tenhunen

Type of meeting: Working meeting

Session Room: Mansfield 9

Session Time:  Tuesday 19 September, Breakout 1, 11:30 - 13:00

Collaborative session notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uKLXUa8U-i6k5ZI37vKqjGwDJ430ornxhYd3...

Session slides and materials: