Telecon 02.28.13 materials

Plans for February 28, 2013 telecon

Working with the BRDI

• Combining efforts with BRDI "Grand Challenges" proposal ... under development?
• Welcome to Cheryl Levey, who worked on "Grand Challenges" and is joining us today

Accomplished this month

• Data life cycle model identified
  • goal: identify, constrain scope of survey
  • a linear model, but feedback loops are implied
• A diagram showing data life cycle model, activites, concerns, perspectives
• An instance of that diagram with highlights showing categories covered by one article from the literature review list for the Report from the Committee on Preservation of Geoscience Data and Collections
• a document with a straw man framework for article evaluation for the Report from the Committee on Preservation of Geoscience Data and Collections

Literature review

• Clarify Goals
• Review "article review framework" for ability to meet those goals
• Look at article list, discuss list membership (what, if any, new articles should we add? by what criteria?)

Our working group goals

• Overall
• July goals
• December goals

"Plans are useless, but planning is essentail." -Eisenhower

Steps for March

TBD

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Meeting Summary by Anne

• Lively discussion, but lack of clear plans for moving forward
• Agreed to define a mission statement, here is a page to work on that: Cluster mission statement
• Debates that could be continued via email
  • There was concern that the chosen data life cycle model might not encompass the necessary scope, especially sharing of methods, software
    • Comments regarding this topic can be added to the wiki here: Science data life cycle model
    • [Is this a separate question of technology transfer? -aw]
  • Suggestion: target a panel discussion at the summer meeting with representatives from, say, RDA, ESIP, CODATA, and other agencies to talk about scope from their perspectives, use that to help define statement of tasks
    • I have made a page for discussion here: Summer 2013 panel discusion on survey scope
  • How should we move forward with the literature review? How to evaluate articles? Should we continue to grow the list? What exactly should go on it?

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Meeting Notes (thank you, Sarah!)

Notes from Data Decadal Survey meeting 2/28/2013

Present: Chris Lenhardt, Robert Downs, Ruth Duerr, Denise Hills, Anne Wilson, Steve Aulenbach, Cheryl Levey, Carol Meyer, Joe Hourcle, Beth

Notes: Introduction by Cheryl from the NRC - they are working on a grand challenges proposal/concept relating to research data and information. The project they are working on matches very well with our interests. They would like to work with us on this effort.

Ruth asked about what it means for us to work together - how will that work? Anne and Cheryl agree that this is new to us, so it is flexible. Cheryl is not sure, but assumes we would take lead but defers to Paul on this.

Anne will add Cheryl to the email list.

Carol asked if the ESIP group should develop something that would be handed off to the NRC (build consensus and then hand it off). Anne mentioned having the input from these representatives from NRC is very useful. But Carol wonders if having the groundswell will help with the justification process.

Anne mentioned that we need to consider in the future our roles in this process.

Joe asked if this is a decadal plan for ESIP that NRC would take larger, or is it a larger decadal survey?

Anne - the NRC would be the group creating the Decadel survey - they just finished one for Helio-physics. That influenced the creation of this group. Anne recapped the process (discussed in the initial meeting at the ESIP Winter meeting). This group is discussing what the scope of the report might be and what domains might it include. We have a goal of next January (at the ESIP winter meeting) having a panel discussion about conducting such a survey, and have some options to consider of what a data decadal survey might look like. This year we will talk with agency representatives and get feedback from them and come up with options for what the survey might look like.

Joe mentioned a report from last week (which he will send to the list) that discusses encouraging interagency discussion.

OSTP could also be creating something - a memo by March. That might be useful.

Anne - we are trying to better understand through a literature review of a list of what has been covered and gaps already addressed.

Joe mentioned that just looking at the data lifecycle model - we might miss some things, including knowledge transfer from large scale vs small scale data sets.

Anne recapped a discussion from the list - that details of the model are not as important as the activities around the model. Jeff sent something that broke the model into activities and overarching concerns. Anne compiled that into a model. Paul mentioned that stakeholders is probably not the right term since perspectives and stakeholders are a bit different.

Steve asked about translation - between different user groups (ex: science to social cultural). Ruth thought that would be part of the dissemination part of the process.

Joe mentioned many of these solutions could be applied in more than one field but there is not a good exchange of community of practice - at the BRDI meeting, someone presented a process that could have been applied to other groups outside of the domain speciality. He did not feel like this was done enough at NASA. The sharing of the technology once it has been built - making it generic enough that it can be shared - tech transfer. Here is the process so other groups can use it.

Denise - my concern too is that translation. It does fall under dissemination, but getting it to a point all these tech people are creating programs in isolation of the people who actually use them. Her concern with digital access is making sure that users across disciplines can access/use the systems. Interoperability across fields.

Joe - and preventing reinventing the wheel.

Ruth mentioned EarthCube - who is currently working on this issue. Different user communities have different needs, but that does not mean that managing the data underneath has to be different. Also the International Research Data Alliance (RDA) group is working on this issue as well.

Anne thought that software should be part of this discussion. As well as workflows. Perhaps this scope is not sufficient?

Joe thinks this deals with how we process the data in the archive, but the other problems are - once we have good practices in our archive, how do we share these outward?

Chris thought that we need to think about this at a higher level - those who might not be interested in data management, but what is wrong with it and what needs to be fixed. Also what are the trends - big data, citizen science, how data is changing science. Called for a flow diagram for each perspective might be necessary. That would be chapters in a final report.

Joe mentioned - what needs to go into building a new archive.

Anne added, this lifecycle model was supposed to help us scope the problem and focus the literature review. That we would focus on higher level trends and not details.

Ruth - we are not trying to do the data decadal survey, we are trying to identify the scope of the survey. It might not be work we do here, but should capture these options and needs. (like where is technology going at the moment).

Bob - the section under perspectives and governance - if it would cover some of the issues Joe is bring up?

Chris suggested (building off of Ruth’s comment on scoping) that we just get a bunch of stuff out there and develop structure further down the road.

Steve would like to second this - building a scope will help us move forward.

Anne - I think scope includes domains as well. Steve suggested following up on Chris’s suggestion and just throw some stuff out there and then organize it later?

Chris suggested a scoping session this summer at the ESIP meeting. The meeting is in Chapel Hill in July. But we will continue to meet between now and the summer meeting.

Beth asked if there was a mission statement for this group. It seems like our scope - of not doing the decadal survey itself leaves open, what is a summary of what we are trying to do? A statement of work for a survey? Ruth agreed that is a good point and we should come up with a mission statement and put it up on the wiki. Steve agreed - post it as a header on all the pages!

Ruth says in her mind - we are trying to define a set of options for what a decadal survey scope would be.

Beth suggested we refine that over the next month. Ruth said decadal surveys include a statement of what the survey will provide - statement of task (Chris). The last earth science survey had 5 different tasks. It would later be up to someone else to determine how they will be accomplished. But we are coming up with a possible set of statements of tasks.

Cheryl is not sure how this would work as well, needs to check the last completed on and find out more about it. Paul will report back to us in a month about the processes for data decadal surveys.

Ruth - The real question is - what agencies are interested in participating? If it only ends up being NASA as opposed to NSF, and NOAA then things would be much different.

Chris suggested what if the panel that we might do for the scoping thing, would have someone from RDA, ESIP, CODATA, and some agency types to talk this through from their perspectives and use that fodder to define statement of task or tasks. Anne asked if this would happen before the winter meeting? Chris said yes, bring folks into the summer meeting to tell us what is important from their perspective.

Anne asked if it made sense that ESIP recommends aspects be addressed? Ruth said that varies so much from agency to agency. But we already have prospects from top guys in NASA and NOAAs data circles.

Steve suggested that we make a simple wiki page with the statement of task, and the cluster folks could come up with a set that could be used as a strawman list that we can use to show to this panel and capture some of the thoughts of this group going forward. Anne will make a wiki page for this topic.

Anne brought up the literature review - Chris agrees, a bibliography of existing reports is necessary. Anne said we have that but we need to keep adding to that list. Reviewed the list with the group.

Chris suggested we crowdsource the list- find people to help create the list and review the materials in the list. Ruth mentioned that we do not want to duplicate efforts, so we need to identify the gaps. The point of the literature review, to assess what part of the whole landscape is covered so we can figure out what is not covered. Anne mentioned that some of the materials are dated and the landscape has changed.

Joe mentioned DDC (?) and JIST - reports on citations and other data aspects.

Anne asked if we should throw what seems relevant to the list, and then? Joe said if we had a list of scope we could start to see where they match up and see what is missing.

Anne picked on a random and skimmed it. She made a list of what was covered by the document and hopefully to come up with common categories for which we could review the other documents. - that is currently linked on the wiki (strawman document). And Anne reviewed how does this map to the data lifecycle model.

Ruth asked in email if we can we identify gaps from this framework? Anne would like to hear what the group thinks?

Joe mentioned scope gaps - the model as a whole, but in some fields they might not have certain concepts defined. We can see that way which groups might not be covered. Different groups might not use the same terms and concepts. This might be more work than we need to do in reviewing these documents.

Ruth - the literature review is important but we might still need to work on the framework. Joe thought that this might be too detailed (Anne’s current example).

Anne - What should we try and accomplish for the next month?

• Mission statement?
• Overall scope or candidate scopes that we might include
  • preservation, training aspects, tech transfer, etc.
• How should we move forward for the literature review

• • Capture things we think are relevant. - See the list grow to include more relevant documents.
    • What aspects these documents touch on from the scope list.