Dr Rebecca Farrington1, Dr Tim Rawling1, Dr Jens Klump2, Dr Lesley Wyborn3, Dr Paul Gruba4
1Auscope Ltd, Melbourne, Australia, 2CSIRO, Perth, Australia, 3The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 4The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
With research expertise in computational fluid dynamics, she is passionate about developing community-led data and compute-intensive research initiatives and supporting the people behind them.
Australia’s research data community is a complex system with members, operations and funding within government, industry and education settings, across scales from individuals to significant national facilities. We operate across institutional and geographical boundaries on timescales from weeks to decades. Complexity in research projects, where the relationship between inputs and outputs is innately nonlinear, is commonly recognised. Yet how can we explicitly recognise this complexity at an organisational level while ensuring our projects and infrastructure continue to provide for researchers within budget while maintaining operational and governance standards? How can we map between our aspirational and operational goals?
AuScope created its Research Data Systems portfolio at the start of 2022; since then, there has been the launch of the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, the Australian Digital Strategy, a change in federal government, and all the challenges 2022 continues to deliver. AuScope must contribute and align with new initiatives and programs while maintaining coherence with the long-term principles, goals and operations articulated in our 10-year strategy, the Australian Academy of Sciences Geoscience decadal plan and many others.
Using AuScope’s Research Data Systems portfolio as a case study, encompassing complexity typical of our community, this presentation will outline the framework used to scope, plan and (eventually) evaluate a complex portfolio composed of multiple programs and projects.
Biography:
Rebecca is the Director of Research Data Systems at AuScope Ltd, Australia’s national provider of Research Infrastructure for the Geoscience community. Prior to this, she was a Senior Research Fellow within the School of Geography Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and an Academic Convenor on the Petascale Campus Initiative (Chancellery) at The University of Melbourne.