Active Data Management Plans Group

14 May 2014

The reason for thinking that this topic may be of interest is that Data Management Plans are increasingly mentioned and are in many cases required by funders. However these are static documents which do not evolve, cannot be tested and cannot be enforced. Yet planning managing and preserving data in a planned way is essential to the aims of the RDA.
Therefore the aims, which were discussed and updated during the BoF session are as follows:

Create a design for an active data management plan which can:
be customized
is interoperable with other systems
can evolve
can be monitored
can be enforced
can be tested/ verified
can be automated
Create some simple “running code” which can show how the information can be captured using user friendly terminology.

In addition to the common headings

Data
Metadata
Rights
Access
Archiving

It seems sensible to add

(Adding) value, which can form part of a decision support system to decide, at some point in the future, whether or not information is likely to be worth continuing to preserve.

The evolution could be along the lines of

Proposal

Implementation

Handover

Preserve/ re-use

Data

Rough ideas

Increasingly detailed

Complete

Continue

Metadata

Rough ideas

Increasingly detailed

Complete

Continue

Rights

Fairly firm ideas

Very detailed

Complete

Continue

Access

Fairly firm ideas

Increasingly detailed

Complete

Continue

Archive

Initial ideas

Initial ideas

Decided

Continue

(Adding) value

Initial ideas

More detailed

Much more detailed

Review process

It is clear that existing work and developments arising from RDA working groups are likely to be of use. Initial ideas of the challenges and some things which are likely to help are shown in the table below.

Challenges

Contributions

Data

Metadata

Have we got enough of the right type

- OAIS information model: Representation Information, Authenticity evidence supported by SCIDIP-ES services.
- Registries of various kinds
- Rule based checking

Rights

Too restricted or not restricted enough?

Advice from APARSEN and EUDAT

Access

Are we using the “right” identifiers? Have we got the right discovery mechanisms?

Information from APARSEN, ENS and services from RDA PI-related WGs

Archive

Where should we put the data and supporting information? What will the cost be?

- Audit and certification systems
- Lists of repositories (ce.g.RDA BoF)

(Adding) value

What is the probably/possible value, and to whom?

- Information from APARSEN project

Initial ideas for the user view:

Form based
Non-technical language
Support for evolution – possibly over decades

Conclusion

there is certainly interest in taking this forward
there are sufficient volunteers to write IG/WG cases
there are opportunities for implementations