[Timea Biro]

Dear RDA EU Ambassadors,
The current COVID-19 situation is affecting our daily lives and ways of working. Considering the restrictions in terms of travel and the organisation of f2f events, the RDA Europe Executive Board (EB), after consultation with the Project Officer, is gathering information to make a contingency plan for the project. We would like to understand as soon as possible which activities in your original workplan cannot be performed by the end of the project (31 May 2020). This will assist the EB to set up an appropriate contingency plan.
As we don’t know how the COVID-19 situation will evolve, all activities related to f2f meetings must be replaced either with virtual sessions or with a set of activities that can bring results to other areas or parts of your workplan (e.g. adoption stories, CODATA papers, support to RDA global etc.). Given this exceptional situation, refocusing the original strategy and expected results is allowed, as long as your alternative plan contributes to the overall objectives of your original workplan.
Therefore, we would like to ask you to indicate by next Wednesday 25 March 2020 COB in the following Google doc the activities that you cannot perform before the end of May and the alternative plan that you suggest with the related timeline. As you can imagine we need to make a quick decision, so if we don’t receive any input from your side we will assume that you can complete your original workplan by the end of May 2020.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rmDixgWF27mGSvLThMEGQ_IOW976Fpq1kLIE…
Please note that moving a f2f event from May to after the summer cannot be considered an acceptable alternative as we cannot predict the COVID-19 situation in autumn and cannot run the risk of putting in place an alternative plan that will turn out to be not feasible. Transforming instead a f2f event into a series of webinars that need to take place, for example, after the end of the project for a specific reason (planning, choosing the right tool, training etc.) is acceptable, as is substituting a f2f event with a different activity that contributes to achieving one of the objectives of the initial workplan.
Please make sure you justify why this activity cannot be performed by the end of May 2020.
The EB will then assess the feedback received and suggest a contingency plan.
We thank you very much for the collaboration and wish you all the best in these challenging times,
Timea
on behalf of the RDA EU EB
—
Timea Biro | Project Manager, Digital Repository of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy | 19 Dawson St. Dublin 2
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Discussion

[Francoise Genova]

Dear colleagues,
I would like to remind you that, as discussed during our last call, I
would like to organise a telco with each of you to debrief your
Ambassador role, to be able to derive identify learnt, hurdles and
successes, etc. Can you please include that activity in your plans in
the coming weeks, to leave me a bit of time to write a report and submit
it to you for comments? The report can be seen I hope as a contribution
to RDA Global.
Take care
Francoise

[Author]

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