Karin Quadros1, Paul Bonnington1
1Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP) project is a national collaboration to deliver a secure, trusted and scalable environment for data governance, control and management services for data custodians and secure remote data analysis environments for research users.
Such an environment is needed to overcome significant barriers to making sensitive data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, providing assurances to other data custodians regarding confidential and secure data handling, and ensuring researchers comply with ethical and regulatory requirements.
Since its establishment in 2021, the project has enabled research users to make an impact. The platform has supported research, health and government sectors to collaborate and share sensitive data. For example, human and planetary health researchers are using the service to collaborate across organisations in Australia and the Pacific to share data to support the development of sustainable water and sanitisation solutions in Fiji.
The ARDC SeRP project has also faced challenges and there have been some lessons learned. A fair and sustainable pricing and legal framework must be established for a federated model to succeed. The project also requires long-term engagement by project partners amid COVID-related resourcing impacts.
By utilising the project’s governance framework through an advisory panel, committees and working groups, the project is successfully navigating these challenges and maintaining momentum to provide a strong foundation for a federated secure research model.
Biography:
Karin Quadros is a Senior Business Analyst at Monash University Helix Platform, a technology research platform that enables sensitive research data capabilities through flagship health research projects. Since 2021, she has been the Project Manager for the ARDC-funded national capability for secure research collaboration.
Karin has a Bachelor of Business Systems and a Graduate Diploma in Psychology and is passionate about using digital innovation to accelerate health research.