CC-BY @atreloar
ANDS Applications Program: Building Tools to Facilitate Data Reuse
Stefanie Kethers Mingfang Wu Andrew Treloar
1ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 2
Outline ANDS overview Applications program Lessons learned Thoughts on sustainability
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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)
ands.org.au
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
CC-BY @atreloar 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
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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)
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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
ands.org.au
https://projects.ands.org.au/getAllProjects.php?start=app
CC-BY @atreloar 9
CASE STUDY
Soils to Satellites
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 10ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 11
Soils to Satellites
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 12ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 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
ands.org.au
CC-BY @atreloar 16
Questions? [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
andrew.treloar.net
ands.org.au