Presentation accompanying talk on the ANDS Applications program at IDCC 2016. Discusses the outputs of the program, but also focusses on issues of sustainability of such eresearch tools
2. Outline
ANDS overview
Applications program
Lessons learned
Thoughts on sustainability
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3. ANDS at a glance
In operation since 2009
Approximately AUD90M total investment
45 staff (mostly Melbourne, Canberra)
Working to make Australia’s research data more
valuable
Funding through to mid 2016 (probably 2017)
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4. So that researchers can easily publish, discover, access and use
research data through the Australian Research Data Commons
How Do We Make Data More Valuable?
Increasing Value
5. Key differentiators for ANDS
No actual data storage
Nationally co-ordinated approach
Institutionally-focussed engagement
“helping them meet their research data ambitions”
Engaging with large nationally-funded discipline
investments
Bulk of funds spent outside ANDS
https://projects.ands.org.au/getAllProjects.php?start=all
All disciplines covered
Focus on adding value to data and re-use
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6. Applications Program
“Applications that demonstrate the value of data
integration and analysis to answer complex
research questions”
Enable and promote the fourth transformation
Produce compelling demonstrations that could be
promoted
Typically smallish projects (2 EFT, 1 year)
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7. Discipline distribution
7 projects in bio/characterisation
8 projects in climate change adaptation
10 others (urban planning, marine research,
public health, humanity)
For a completed list of the projects and their
profiles, please visit the ANDS project registry:
https://projects.ands.org.au/getAllProjects.php?start=
app
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13. Lessons learned
Support from research champions was critical
Tight timelines were the enemy of modular
common design
Outreach forms (blogs, videos) were more popular
than expected
Data and system sustainability an ongoing issue
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14. Sustainability challenges
More desire for bespoke solutions than can be met
Every researcher’s needs are “special”
Trade off between individual researcher's need and a research
community's need
Finite amount of the right dev resource available
and keeping them is difficult
Waterfall development will deliver the right solution two
years too late
Communities still constrained by old ways of working
and culture eats technology for breakfast
It takes a planet to maintain a codebase
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15. Sustainability responses
‘Good enough’ solutions are actually just fine most of
the time
Adopt/Adapt/Augment is always better than Build
Existing common toolkits let you focus on the missing
10% of functionality
So don’t start from scratch
But also don’t leech
Involve research champions who can articulate their
community's requirements, and promote project
outcomes
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