Board of Research Data and Information (BRDI) presentation on May 12, 2022.

1. On August 2, 2021 a group of concerned
scientists and US funding agency and federal
government officials met for an informal discussion
to explore the value and need for a
well-coordinated US Open Research Commons
(ORC); an interoperable collection of data and
compute resources within both the public and
private sectors which are easy to use and accessible
to all.

3. As detailed by Foster et al. (2021) the US is falling
behind in both the accessibility and connectedness
of our research computing and data infrastructure,
and as a result, our competitiveness
and capacity to lead will continue to
dwindle.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06953

4. The ORC would span federal,
state and local government agencies and
computing facilities, including the national
laboratories,
public and private clouds and institutions.
The ORC would be designed to replace
the largely siloed, individually controlled
data and compute resources in the US
today, a situation that limits discoverability,
access, innovation and collaboration.

5. The US is Not at the Table
• European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
• CS3MESH4EOSC Science Mesh
• China Science and Technology (CST) Cloud,
• African Open Science Platform (AOSP),
• South African National Integrated Cyber Infrastructure System (NICIS),
• Malaysia Open Science Platform (MOSP),
• Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) funded mainly by China and organized through the International Science
Council’s Committee on Data(CODATA),
• Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Nectar Research Cloud,
• Digital Research Alliance of Canada (formerly known as the New Digital Research Infrastructure Organization,
NDRIO),
• Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN)
https://www.geeklawblog.com/2016/05/if-youre-not-at-table-youre-on-
menu.html

6. As these collaborative initiatives
advance, the US, without a coherent national
strategy, has found it harder to participate in
the broader global scientific enterprise,
eroding our competitiveness down to how it
impacts individual scientists….
the lack of a unified ORC leaves
the US following along in global efforts
(e.g., GOSC) with no formal executive
representation
in international ORC-focused initiatives
such as at the Open Science Clouds
and Commons Executives' Roundtable
(OSCER),

7. At the same time, there is no equity to the
resources that exist. Access favors the R1 universities
where significant expertise and local
compute access already exists. We will achieve
more if we can pool resources and enable a
larger and more diverse group of researchers
from underrepresented universities to address
society’s most pressing problems

8. Personal Note
Our own version of data science
– bringing together data,
methods, people for societal
benefit is a microcosm of what
the ORC should represent

9. At a grass roots level, proof of our current
shortcomings can come from talking to
any of the burgeoning number of data scientists.
More than 50% of their time is spent
learning a variety of esoteric compute systems,
figuring out where to get data and
what value the data has before they even
begin the real work of analysis and discovery.
Common API’s, new metadata and data
standards, dashboards and evaluation of
progress as these evolve would enable us to
better solve the problems facing our society.

10. Unified and coordinated Open Research
Commons are not unprecedented in other
sectors. The North American electricity grid
and the CIRRUS banking network are examples.
The sum of the parts is made greater
than the whole through cooperation across
the enterprise. Cooperation implies shared
governance, shared infrastructure, and
agreements on standards that permit a
shared system to operate to the benefit of the
consumer - electricity flows to where it is
needed most; money can be obtained from
one’s bank almost anywhere in the world.

11. Establishing an ORC is less a technical
challenge than it is a cultural and institutional
one that requires policy leadership and a
sustained commitment. Presently our major
US research funding agencies are pursuing
independent initiatives and rarely work together
on shared infrastructure, even as the
problems we face span agencies. The challenge
is further exacerbated because publicprivate
partnerships (PPP) are few and often
poorly managed, hence the interdisciplinary
knowledge, innovation, and underlying
shared data and compute resources needed
to solve global challenges are usually lacking.

12. What Action is Needed?
Congress and Administration must take action
now for the American public to fully
realize the potential of data produced with
public dollars and for the United States to
remain competitive in the research data
race.

13. What Can BRDI Do?
• More workshops, outreach, popularization of the ORC notion
• Dig deeper into the economic value of the ORC
• Write to Francis Collins as the Acting National Science Advisor
• “Petition” OSTP