Unless otherwise noted, the slides in this presentation are licensed by Mark A. Parsons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License “Plans are worthless, but planning is essential” Creating the culture and technology for an international data infrastructure Mark A. Parsons Secretary General CASRAI Canada ReConnnect14 Ottawa, Canada 20 November 2014
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Keynote: Mark Parsons - Plans are Useless, But Planning is Essential
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Unless otherwise noted, the slides in this presentation are licensed by Mark A. Parsons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
“Plans are worthless, but planning is essential” Creating the culture and technology for an international data infrastructure
Mark A. ParsonsSecretary General
CASRAI Canada ReConnnect14Ottawa, Canada20 November 2014
All of society’s grand challenges require diverse
(often large) data to be shared and integrated
across cultures, scales, and technologies.
Research Data Alliance
Vision Researchers and innovators openly share data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society.
Mission RDA builds the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing of data.
Dynamics of Infrastructure Edwards, et al. 2007 Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design.
• Infrastructures become “ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, and transparent” as they mature.
• Systems Networks Inter-networks
• “system-building, characterized by the deliberate and successful design of technology-based services.”
• “technology transfer across domains and locations results in variations on the original design, as well as the emergence of competing systems.”
• Finally, “a process of consolidation characterized by gateways that allow dissimilar systems to be linked into networks.”
Not what, but When is infrastructure?
Not what, but When and Who is infrastructure?
Bridges and Gateways
Gateways are often wrongly understood as “technologies,” i.e. hardware or software alone. A more accurate approach conceives them as combining a technical solution with a social choice, i.e. a standard, both of which must be integrated into existing users’ communities of practice. Because of this, gateways rarely perform perfectly. — Edwards et al. 2007
Infrastructure is
Relationships, interactions, and connections between people, technologies, and institutions
From Interregional Highways: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Report of the National Interregional Highway Committee, Outlining and Recommending a National System of Interregional Highways, 12 Jan. 1944.CC-BY Eric Fischer http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/8270270785/
• Australian National Data Service, RDA/United States, RDA/Europe,
• Implement RDA deliverables locally and enhance adoption.
• Ensure regional or national issues are addressed globally.
• Support plenaries and support attendance at plenaries.
But what does this all have to do with RDA?
1. RDA focusses on developing “gateways”
2. RDA doesn’t do “architecture,” but it does provide a level of unity.
3. RDA plays both globally and locally—Think glocal.
4. RDA fosters relationships, interfaces, and connections.
5. RDA provides a “neutral place” to identify and work through friction.
RDA Interest Groups
1. Agricultural Data Interoperability IG2. Big Data Analytics IG3. Biodiversity Data Integration IG4. Brokering IG5. Community Capability Model IG6. Data Fabric IG7. Data for Development8. Data in Context IG9. Defining Urban Data Exchange for Science IG*10.Development of cloud computing capacity and
education in developing world research11.Digital Practices in History and Ethnography IG12.Domain Repositories Interest Group13.Education and Training on handling of research
data14.ELIXIR Bridging Force IG*15.Engagement IG16.Federated Identity Management17.Geospatial IG*18.Libraries for Research Data*
19.Long tail of research data IG20.Marine Data Harmonization IG21.Metabolomics22.Metadata IG23.PID Interest Group24.Preservation e-Infrastructure IG25.RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability IG26.RDA/CODATA Materials Data, Infrastructure &
Interoperability IG27.RDA/WDS Certification of Digital Repositories IG28.RDA/WDS Publishing Data Cost Recovery for
Data Centres29.RDA/WDS Publishing Data IG30.Reproducibility IG*31.Research data needs of the Photon and Neutron
Science community32.Research Data Provenance33.Service Management IG34.Structural Biology IG35.Toxicogenomics Interoperability IG
• Infrastructure is created in phases with the final consolidation phase relying on gateways and bridges.
• Diversity is a central problem, but only diversity absorbs diversity.
• Networking and interconnection are the way to solve complex problems.
• Need to be constantly, but lightly, managing tension between bottom-up chaos and stifling, top-down control.
• We are in more global and democratic world, but also a more local world. Coalition politics with new kinds of coalitions because there are new kinds of identity.
• Data science needs to focus on relationships, connections, interfaces.
• You must participate “glocally” to succeed.
• Responding to change is more important than following a plan.
• RDA provides mechanisms to address all of the above!