Date: Tuesday 14th June 2016
Time: 11:00 – 14:00 UTC  (13:00 – 16:00 CEST)
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1. Opening of the meeting with some background

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss with the European stakeholders about the RDA Global and RDA Europe functions and services with a forward looking view and having in mind the discussion carried out during the SyA meeting on the 4th May 2016 (link).  This is not a meeting about possible (global nor European) governance models but on the services and functions needed for a strong European participation in teh RDA Global activities.

• Question: Do you think we need a European RDA support program (RDA Europe) or should we just have the RDA Global?
  • YES
  • NO
  • Something else?

 

2. Summary of the previous meeting (4th May 2016)

The meeting minutes are available throuh the (link).

The RDA Europe deliverables are available in the file repository (link).

3. Discussion on RDA / RDA Europe on services and functions needed

The sustainability aspects of RDA is now discussed at various places, the US colleagues have created a kind of White Paper (link) about how the funding of RDA US might look like after the NSF funding period will end in 2018. This White Paper has been distributed to a broad range of experts involved in RDA on the US side to open and enable a broad discussion. This meeting is a similar open and transparent approach in Europe to achieve a concencus on how to answer the Work Programme 2016 – 2017 Commission call INFRASUPP-02-2017 (European support for the Research Data Alliance), which is also strongly linked to the RDA  Council in general and the European RDA Council members in particular.

From the previous meeting we know that Augusto Burgueño Arjona (EC) sees that RDA is a natural part of overall European cloud strategy. The recent cloud communication has many elements that RDA would have expertise and knowledge to offer solutions for. The communication has identified five reasons why Europe is not yet fully tapping into the potential of data (lack of sharing mentality, lack of technology, fragmentation of solutions, HPC needed to process data and the need for closer collaboration) and RDA has potential to tackle many of these factors. From the discussions with Augusto it is also clear that EC would like to move the European RDA support into an “operating grant” in much the same way GÉANT is supported. This is not the case for the upcoming call but the next phase of teh RDA Europe should work towards an “operating grant”.

As background for discussions the current RDA Europe 3 project funding scheme looks like:

• Question: Do you think this reflects well the current RDA Europe project work?
  • YES
  • NO
  • Something else?

RDA Europe 3 supporting RDA Global

The core of RDA Europe is to support the functioning of RDA Global. It does so by the following actions:

• Support the RDA secretariat in kind and in cash (only secr. general and some travel costs)
  • Secretariat is responsible for the open access to RDA reference documents and dissemination material
• Support the European board members (council, TAB, OAB) in limited ways
• Contribute to the RDA plenaries and other global meetings (Co-Chairs) in limited ways
• Contribute to regional meetings to engage experts for example from African etc.
  • Satellite workshop in connection with ICRI 2016
• Operating the web-site, creation of flyers, distributing updates notes etc.
• Hosting and organising plenaries

RDA EU does currently not support the work of the WG/IG Co-Chairs and their participation since this is meant to be funded by the projects themselves or institutions. The RDA work must be relevant enough for institutes to send people to the plenaries etc. Currently there is a big investment by the participating individuals and institues in RDA WG/IG in general and the Plenaries and other meetings in particular.

RDA Europe 3 Activities

RDA Europe needs to reach out to and engage its various stakeholders. What we need to think carefully about is what can/should be done by the RDA Europe project and what could/should be covered through funding by EC or national calls. Therefore it has action lines at policy level such as

• Organising meetings with policy makers, industry, scientific leaders, e-Infrastructure leaders and other stakeholders
• Running the Synchronisation Assembly to bring together all interested people who are active in RDA
• Support meetings that are organised at national or community level
• Participate in the European standardisation agenda (RDA output implementation)
• Contributes to funding European early career travels to RDA Plenaries

RDA Europe also needs to reach out to the practitioners. Therefore it has action lines such as

• Giving help, advice and support – running a helpdesk
• Running training courses of various types (webinars, f2f meetings, hackathons, etc.)
• Co-organising meetings with community experts and computer scientists
• Creating an interactive Atlas of Knowledge to aggregate knowledge on data issues
• Supporting small adoption and testing projects (special calls)
• Interact with infrastructure projects (ESFRI, E-Infras, and more) and create a group of experts that will work on aggregated guidelines/recommendations
• Forming and maintaining a group of European Data Experts that work on recommendations and configuration building as part of the global process
• RDA Europe is currently also running its own WWW-service (europe.rd-alliance.org)
• RDA Europe also create and distribute flyers and prepare other sort of communication material to the data practitioners and its stakeholders

Question: Do you think we should European-only activities in RDA or should we just support Europeans participating in RDA Global activities?

• YES
• NO
• Something else?

A set of questions:

• Are the WGs and IGs working well? How could we support them through RDA 4 so that they work better?
• Is Secretariat working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is TAB working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is OAB working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is Council working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is liaison with scientific leaders  working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is liaison with e-Infrastructure  leaders working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is liaison with policy makers leaders working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is liaison with funders leaders working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?
• Is SyA working well? How could we support it through RDA 4 so that it works better?

Question: Is RDA Europe 3 working well? How could we change it in the rest of its timespan so that it works better?

• YES
• NO
• Something else

 

4. Concrete actions to be taken, next steps

After processing the input in agenda point 3. things needs to be taken forward. Need for a f2f meeting?, When?, Who?

Discussion on what RDA / RDA Europe services and functions are needed for the upcoming RDA Europe call based on the tasks mentioned above and the discussion?

• …
• …

Template to collect input for the coming RDA Europe project but also remembering the RDA Global functions is available at the lenk below. Please feel free to submit your input to the SyA mailing list.

• Available at https://rd-alliance.org/group/rda-europe-synchronisation-assembly-sya/wiki/template-collect-input-coming-rda-europe-project

5. Closing of the meeting

 

 

 

 

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