Building a business case and institutional policy on a 10Y research data management roadmap: can it work?Steve Hitchcock and Wendy White, DataPool Project JISC MRD Benefits and Evidence WorkshopBristol, 29-30 November 2012

Roadmap – Business case – Policy?

Roadmap – Business case – PolicyRoadmap – Policy – Business casePolicy – Roadmap – Business case

This talk: Roadmap – Business case – (Policy)

Roadmap: short term (1-3 years)

This and subsequent roadmap slides from Brown, et al., Institutional data management blueprint, September

2011, p6-7 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/196241/

Core components for this phase are:

• robust institutional policy frameworkhttp://www.calendar.soton.ac.uk/sectionIV/research-data-management.html

• agreed scalable and sustainable business model for storage• working institutional data repository, piloted, and grown over the short-to-medium term• one-stop shop for data management advice and guidancehttp://www.southampton.ac.uk/library/research/researchdata/

DataPool Building Capacity, Developing Skills, Supporting Researchers

JISCMRD Progress Workshop 24-25 October 2012 Nottingham

Byatt, D. (D.R.Byatt@soton.ac.uk)Hitchcock, S. (sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk )White, W. (whw@soton.ac.uk )

Policy and guidance Data repositoryTraining

http:/datapool.soton.ac.uk/

SharePoint

EPrints 3.3

EPrints data apps

Support for Data Management Plans e.g.

3-layer metadata

Capture/share with external sources, e.g. SWORD-ARM

Informed by

Developing/working with

Progress

AssignDataCiteDOIs

Graduate & staff training services

Large-scaledata storage

University Strategic Research Groups

Doctoral Training Centres

IDMB Surveys of data practices among academics

Case studies +• Imaging, 3D• Geodata• ++

Roadmap: medium term (3-6 years)Core components for this phase are:

• extensible research information management framework to respond the variations in discipline needs• comprehensive and affordable backup service• effective data management repository model • embedding data management training and support

Roadmap: longer term (6-10 years)“aspirations will focus on providing significant benefits realisation … mixed-mode of data management within consortia or national framework”

Core components for this phase are:

• Coherent and flexible data management support• Agile business plans for continual improvement• Active participation in consortia and national framework agreements

Cf Edinburgh Uni. RDM Roadmap • Phase 0: August 2012 –

January 2013: largely a planning phase, with some pilot activity and early deliverables.• Phase 1: February – July 2013: Initial rollout of primary services.• Phase 2: August – January 2014: Continued rollout; maturation of services.

V1.0, November 2012http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.101223!/fileManager/UoE-RDM-Roadmap201121102.pdf

IDMB Roadmap and DataPool

DataPool takes forward the first phase of the Roadmap.

Southampton has agreed a policy which is more specific and more legally expressed than the more general policies represented by other institutions

There is no doubt that the requirement of the EPSRC, and by extension RCUK policy, exercised significant influence on Senate’s decision to adopt the policy. It has been emphasised throughout the consultation that the policy is intended to be part of an iterative process, which assumes that policy and practice will evolve in response to changes in the external environment and experience internally of managing data more effectively.

From Brown, DataPool Update Report for 1st Steering Group Meeting, May 2012

Policies, Strategies, Roadmaps

Research360 (Bath University) roadmap: response to EPSRC’s expectations is important

St Andrews: when the EPSRC roadmap work was completed, as with Bath, it helped to demonstrate the relevance of RDM to diverse areas of institutional activity.

Edinburgh: Next steps include attaching costs, both in terms of person-time and financial, to the actions specified under their EPSRC roadmap

‘Institutional Policies, Strategies, Roadmaps’ session, JISC MRD and DCC IE workshop, Nottingham

http://mrdevidence.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/11/12/institutional-policies-strategies-roadmaps-session-at-jisc-mrd-and-dcc-ie-workshop-nottingham/

data.bris business case development

After the success of our Stage 0 business case … Some of the detail we’ll need to include in our Stage 1 business case is known, some is almost known and some is still unknown but all of it is currently in a jumble of mixed-up strata

http://data.blogs.ilrt.org/2012/10/29/data-bris-business-case-development/

IDMB business modelThe business model is applied only to the IT services delivery of an infrastructure (technology & people) to deliver and sustain an institutional repository for the University‟s digital assets.

The basic assumption will be that “the University wishes to provide a secure and sustainable repository capable of hosting the University’s entire digital assets”.

The University today offers ~200TB of secure storage for research data. This service currently hosts ~120TB of research data.

The IDMB researcher survey suggests that the University centrally hosts some 10-15% of the research data of the surveyed researchers. If representative of the University as a whole, we can estimate that the University digital research data assets are of the order 0.8-1.2PB. This and all subsequent IDMB slides from Brown, White, Parchment, Institutional data management blueprint,

September 2011, Appendix B, p11-21 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/196241/

IDMB est. growth in research data

Estimated Growth in Research Data Assets %CAGR*

“Content Depot” (High) 121 “Content Depot” (Mid) 76

“Unstructured Data” (Low) 62*compound annual growth rate

IDMB high-level data architecture

IDMB cost modellingfor Tape Based Repository (Scenario 1) 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16Totals £677,563 £396,815 £899,307 £678,931 £757,448

for Disk Based Repository (Scenario 2) 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16Totals £981,848 £580,152 £2,392,436 £1,051,539 £1,315,037

Overall the cost difference in the two scenarios over 5 years is estimated to be £2.9M or £600K per annum in favour of a tape based model.

The per TB price reduces significantly over the 5 year period with the exception of year 3 where the upcoming (year 4) end of life of the disk requires a major procurement. Smoothing out this cost hike will be necessary to provide a sustainable model.

IDMB: how to pay for RDM• A default allocation available to all researchers, with any requirements in excess of the default provided as a chargeable service.• A free-at-point-of-use service for the entire institution regardless of need, which of course does not require any further analysis.

Assigning CostsThe basic requirement of the research data repository is to store the data forever, which would suggest an operational model to cost recovery, i.e. the storage is priced on a monthly or annually. However, research projects overwhelmingly are funded capitally. This disconnect has been and continues to be problematic, but is exacerbated by the need to store research data for decades, when most research grants and contracts are finished in 5 years or less.

Summary

Roadmap particularly useful for:

• engaging VC, PVCs, Deans, Senior PIs  • knock-on impact of senior staff engaging with other networks, e.g. UUK, RUGIT and members/leaders of funder boards/themes• engaging Faculty champions and key innovators and enthusiasts - likely to be "brokers" in knowledge management terms with overlapping communities. This links to our work through our multi-disciplinary University Strategic Research Groups (USRGs)

Roadmaps are tools for increasing the understanding of current research activity - our IDMB Roadmap and Policy was informed by the cross-disciplinary survey of staff, and you can map current activity back to policy/roadmap

- Wendy White, correspondence