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Abstract

We live in an era of increasing data-intensive research. Almost all data is now born digital, and an increasing amount of data is being generated (semi-)automatically. Software and hardware are getting cheaper, but Moore’s Law both helps (by reducing management costs) and hinders (by making more data-intensive research possible). In any case, humans are getting more expensive, and fixing data management problems is enormously labour intensive and hence costly. As more data becomes available, more can be done and researchers can answers questions unrelated to the reasons for which the data was collected in the first place.

The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is being brought into being in 2008 to respond to these challengs. The vision for ANDS is to
provide the essential meeting place where the Australian path forward for research data management can evolve and where a vision can be achieved. This vision will articulate over time policies and guidelines that are readily understood and interpreted while simultaneously creating exemplars of best practice covering:

• Research data ownership and the roles and responsibilities associated with ownership.
• Access to research data collected and maintained with public funding; and
• Best practice for the curation of experimental, research and published data. (TADC, p. 3)

ANDS will deliver its activities in four inter-related programs:

• Developing Frameworks: Focussing on the overall policy framework within which the ANDS goal is to be achieved, as well as defining how activities by researchers will align with this.
  
• Providing Utilities: Fundamental utility services for a cohesive network of repositories, including discovery, access and other value-add services across the resulting data commons.
• Seeding the Commons: Starting to seed the Australian Data Commons by seeking to make more content available through it (content recruitment, repository provision, data federation).
• Building Capabilities: Growing capacity and capability across the data lifecycle in Organisations, Systems, Services, and People.

Because ANDS is being funded through a national research infrastructure program, it will need to deal with disciplines from laboratory-based sciences through to social sciences and humanities. Obviously, each of these has its own peculiar challenges for each of capture, curation, discovery and access.

This paper will describe the genesis of ANDS, the reasons for a number of the implementation decisions, the year 1 business plan (by the time of eRA 2008, ANDS should have commenced operation), and progress towards realising the ANDS vision.

 

About the speaker

Andrew Treloar [http://andrew.treloar. net/] has a B A Hons (first class), majoring in Germanic Languages and Linguistics, a GradDip in computer science, and an MA with the topic “A Computer-assisted analysis of characterisation in Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Waves’”, all from Melbourne University. In 1999 he received his PhD from Monash University with the topic “Hypermedia Online Publishing - Transformation of the Scholarly Journal.” He is currently the Director of the project to establish the Australian National Data Service (http://ands.org.au/). Previously he was the Director and Chief Architect of the ARCHER [http://archer.edu. au/] project and the ARROW [http://arrow. edu.au/] Technical Architect and DART [http://dart.edu.au] Project Architect. Andrew has also held a number of management roles within ITS in the Web and Internet technologies area. Most significant of these was as Director, Information Management and Strategic Planning within Information Technology Services at Monash University. A major part of this role involved implementing the Monash University Information Management Strategy [http://www.monash. edu.au/staff/information-management/]. For much of his early career Andrew was an IT academic, most recently as a Senior Lecturer in Information Management at Deakin University. He has taught extensively in the areas of the Internet, database management, project management and electronic information sources. He has also consulted in Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea and Fiji. Andrew’s research interests include data management, institutional repositories and scholarly communication. He never seems to be able to make enough time for practising his ‘cello, reading, talking to his chickens, or working in his vegetable garden.