 So welcome everybody. Thank you for coming along this morning to the Haas RDC and Indigenous Research Capability Programme Roundtable discussion. Hopefully everyone can see the screen. Thanks, Rhys. Okay, so first of all I'd like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay respect to the elders past and present and I'd like to say that Rhys Williams and I live and work on Ghana Country. I'd also like to introduce Rosie Hicks, our CEO who's here to participate and Rhys Williams, my colleague who's here to assist. I'd also like to introduce Jill Ben, Kylie Brass and Chris Haverly from the advisory panel who I believe are in attendance today. So the primary purpose of today's session is to test whether the proposed projects meet the needs of the research community but it's also an opportunity to identify any capability gaps that we can't fund in this current round of development and hopefully that will help to inform any future investment. We're really excited and I'm sure all of you are about this long overdue development and we want to ensure that we proceed in a transparent and collaborative manner. So during today's session I will give a little bit of background about the investment into the HASS RDC and Indigenous Research Capability Programme. You will then have the opportunity to ask questions of the activity leads starting with the Trove team at 1015 to 11 Eastern Standard Time, the Indigenous Data Network at 11 to 1145. We will then have a break from 1145 to 1245 and after lunch we will hear from the Integrated Research Infrastructure for Social Sciences team from 1245 to 130 and then the Language Data Commons of Australia team from 130 to 215. We'll regroup for a final discussion from 215 till 3 and we will be aiming to stick fairly closely to those times to enable people to dip into the sessions that are most relevant to them. As we discuss the plans I'd like you to add any questions that you might have to the shared documents and we'll be adding the links to those in the chat as we go along. If somebody's already asked your question in the document you can add a plus one to the third column and this will help us prioritise questions for answering but rest assured that if we don't get to your question today we will be answering all of the questions we receive in that document or those documents and we will make sure that they remain accessible after today's event. So a little bit of background about the HASS RDC and Indigenous Research Capability Programme. So the need for investment in both humanities arts and social sciences and Indigenous research was detailed in the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap. The Department of Education Skills and Employment or DESI subsequently commissioned three studies which identified a number of investment ready programs that would benefit from national research infrastructure funding and whilst not all of those recommendations have been funded at this time the activities earmarked to participate in this initial round of development displayed an advanced state of readiness to participate in and benefit from a HASS research data commons. Funding for the four activities has been guided by the recommended investment ratios in those DESI studies and we'll be hearing from the leads of those activities today. So as you know the ARDC and the HASS RDC and Indigenous Research Capability Programme are supported as part of the National Research Infrastructure Strategy and Chris and these investments are in response to the National Research Infrastructure Roadmapping process. We can see this in the program objectives that reflect the Research Infrastructure Investment Plan and the interest principles. I want to now touch on the project plans in particular in relation to the evaluation criteria a selection of which you can see here and we will add the link to the criteria in the chat so that you can have that readily available. The project plan evaluation criteria have been strongly tied to the increased principles so in particular keep in mind that Australia's investment in research infrastructure should be planned and developed with the aim of maximising the contributions of the research. Major infrastructure should be developed on a collaborative national non-exclusive basis. Infrastructure funded through NCRIS should serve the research and innovation system broadly and not just the host or funded institutions. Funding and eligibility rules should encourage collaboration and co-investment so it's not the function of NCRIS to support institutional level infrastructure. Oh my god! I don't know. Maybe if everybody could please make sure that their mics are off that would be great. Thanks. All right moving right along. Okay so let's have a look at the timeline for the next month. As you're aware the draft project plans along with the evaluation criteria and a copy of the NCRIS principles as well as the feedback submission facility are now available on the ARDC website. September the 27th will be the last day that you'll be able to submit feedback so please make sure that you add that date to your diary and do take the time to give us the feedback on the plans. The leads the advisory panel and I will be working to ensure that any feedback received is incorporated into the plans where reasonable but we'll also be compiling a register of needs and capabilities that we can't cover in this round and any capability gaps that we can't cover we will feed into the NRI road mapping process through DESI. On the 19th of October I will be presenting recommendations for the project plans to the ARDC board until the plans are approved by the board they are not endorsed by the ARDC and I would like to add that if we feel that any of the plans are not ready that will not preclude the other activities from getting underway so we're running about five minutes ahead of time I apologize I think I got my timings out of order in what I just told you so it's actually Trove up but Indigenous data network up first Trove up second apologies again Indigenous data network is who we're starting with so I'd like to introduce the improving Indigenous research capabilities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research data commons team so as part of the Australian Government investment the ARDC will work in collaboration with the Indigenous data network at the University of Melbourne to support the consolidation and expansion of its technological training and governance initiatives this work is led by Professor Marsha Langton Associate Provost and Foundation Chair of the Australian Indigenous Studies Co-Chair Indigenous Data Network University of Melbourne Professor Langton sends her apologies today representing the Indigenous data network we have Dr Vanessa Russ Dr Kristen Smith and Dr Len Smith Vanessa is a research fellow in the Indigenous Studies Unit in the Centre for Health Equity Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne and the project manager of the Indigenous data network Kristen is a senior research fellow an acting director of the Indigenous Studies Unit in the Centre for Health Equity Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne and the research director of the Indigenous data network Len has a background of research in demography and epidemiology and is the convener of the Indigenous data networks technical reference group so I will just stop sharing my screen and hand over to Vanessa Kristen and Len and Reese will pop the link for the question and answer document into the chat if he hasn't already done so handing over to Vanessa Len and Kristen thanks guys thanks Jenny we're really pleased to be here today and looking forward to any questions that you may have about the project plan at this point in time it's just going to be a Q&A as far as I'm aware Jenny yes so please jump forward and if anyone has an upfront question about any of the work that we've proposed in the project plan all right does anybody have any questions about the project plan at all Kristen are you looking at me hello sorry go on yes oh yes oh no I was just going to come out with a question I don't know why my voice wasn't getting through first of all but I don't want to jump ahead of anybody else no how are you okay hello everybody obviously this is an incredibly welcome initiative and I think that the structure that is in mind is clearly a relevant one because what one really needs to do is work out the structure on a national basis and deal with those kind of issues of how in fact you can in the country the side of Australia connect in with regional entities and local entities that are meaningful entities and my only sort of thing that I want to sort of put into the discussion at this stage is the extent to which museums and collections are going to be built into that particular project I'm at the ANU and as well as the issues that we've been developing in the ANU to do with the data sovereignty in particular in the context of population studies we've also been working for a very long time on linking collections with communities and developing the sort of models and the digital technology that will enable those particular kind of connections so I suppose my question and I know Vanessa has been very involved in this whole area for a long time is whether that is something that will be a significant component of the work that is in place thanks Howard nice to see you look it totally is one of the components where it starts with social architecture and we're really interested in in the user I think the IDN has been also really interested in the same issues that you've raised which is sort of the notion of the local and who is local and what are all the difficulties of each sort of site that you might go to where data is a data is a value but people don't know how to make it operable for them so we're really conscious of that as well we think it is about the user at the beginning and and how a researcher might access it but also how we make more indigenous researchers yeah so there's there's quite a lot in it I think it is you know in some ways for the idea and this is just a pilot because there is so much depth that needs to be kind of traversed but we're definitely conscious of the fact that our our sort of potential beginning our users are going to be super complex groups of different peoples with different needs and with different technologies and different kind of internet access and so on so we're really conscious of that but that's a really good question. Thanks. I can probably add there to just at least a straight line from IATSIS so IATSIS is a partner in the indigenous data network and both on our research our digital and our collections capabilities so very much at part of that discussion about where collections fit and also as Vanessa said some of this is really just a pilot some of the references particularly in terms of the technical stream are bigger than they look little things like a new map of indigenous Australia which is on our forward work playground which is actually a really complex cultural artifact as well as a digital tool potentially in the future the you know our the sore eye but there are things that are components of the work that we've been doing over the last three years through the indigenous research exchange in the indigenous data network that can really get cemented through this process through this program particularly around the vocabularies using OSLANG and the other developing the other IATSIS the sore eye in the same way you know building what we've been doing with the knowledge exchange platform and really I think there's there's opportunities to to get some really cemented programs but also I think as Vanessa said we've got to look at that pathway forward the roadmap forward for some of those critical infrastructure pieces that allow that discoverability and just also backing up what you've both said about you know indigenous research Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research is not just about universities our researchers are in communities they're in government so that sort of complex user group we really want to empower evidence-based decision-making particularly where indigenous peoples are trying to you know make those decisions for themselves and lead program and policy design so the user group is quite important and and may be different to other areas of of digital infrastructure and research infrastructure but I guess you know the learnings that we've had from all of our research as individuals and also the experience of the IATSIS massive indigenous research infrastructure that it is as a collection hopefully we'll help inform the that kind of national digital infrastructure great thank you Nick Teaburger asks in the geospatial portal will the IDN work with the existing time-laid cultural map? Yes the answer is yes Nick what we're trying to develop is a general framework which can be used to add any sort of geospatial framework to any sort of analytical layer to to the geospatial framework so it certainly includes the cultural map. Well if I could just follow on from from that and Lisa's comment about you know producing another map I mean the beauty of the digital is that you can have multiple maps and these are always contested and they're contested variably over time so something that's true that may even have been true once is no longer necessarily true today so having variable forms of the map and say these are the different maps that we have and the time-laid cultural map offers that opportunity could be more productive than producing yet another fixed Horton map Tindale map which we know you know have have been problematic so I'm just wondering if that might be an opportunity too. Yeah absolutely the we've been inspired by the work that Geoscience Australia and Sorrow done on this the Loki framework and that can be used to produce any number of maps including maps with ambiguous boundaries and contested boundaries but really does we think fill the bill. Great thank you um does anybody else have any questions in relation to the plans? I mean I suppose the issue with mapping links into that whole issue of the relationship between local communities and the way that they themselves can obviously access and have input into this and if you're looking at a region as we've been working for quite a long period of time like eastern Ireland and younger country the technology that exists is extremely variable and nearly all of the organizations that are involved in which mapping should be central to their enterprise like for example ranger programs art centers the land councils and so on often use either very different formats or their formats are under development and that's actually in the level of the sort of offices that would be in what are called the main townships and then when you get out to the homelands or outstations and so on and so forth you have real problems there not only in terms of people's knowledge and use of the technology but actually indeed of the capacity of technology in those sort of remote areas to be available so I think this is something that one needs to build in to the planning and one's got to actually have at the moment something that has the flexibility to somehow sort of coordinate and work with what is there as well as having an idea of what might be better future technology that can be applied more broadly okay this is my message does anybody yeah look thanks Howard we certainly agree with you we understand you know a lot of us as researchers working all across Australia in different communities that you know people's capacity and also their technology and whatever they have access to is very variable so we see this project as a really good opportunity of I guess at least bringing everyone together doing a whole lot of the mapping work of looking at what is available across different communities whether they be you know remote regional very remote or urban urban areas so you know it's really very much is foundational work you know we will be doing a lot of scoping to see where people are at but also building it into the plan going forward and looking at a roadmap forward for across Australia and I just probably add to that Howard that it's really important that we start to build some sort of user case studies of all these different areas so that we can start to build a bigger picture and we're really conscious that that could take a number of years so we want to kind of just try and minimize some of it but at least acknowledge that that's what we have to do to understand what each area has behind them so very good question again thanks okay Anna Johnston asks is there an update on the long list of potential project partners noting that University of Melbourne and ANU seem to be already confirmed in the plan look we're still in conversations with a lot of the potential partners as you can probably gather this has been quite a short process of bringing people together we've got some key meetings coming up in the next week and we're getting together as much detail as we can as possible but you know I don't know if Lisa wanted to comment there about IATS as partners we see them as a really core partner as well yeah so I guess really the three key groups in the the IDN which are the University of Melbourne ANU and IATS just to see the key partners we've also had really good discussions with empowered communities who are very keen to be on board and also Siro we have on board as well we've had discussions with potential partners within the University of Queensland as well as a series of the others that we've listed in the project plan so these are ongoing discussions that we will be having and really it is one of those projects we want to bring in as many partners as possible because it's it really is an ambitious undertaking and it requires everyone to get on board thanks Kristin Jill Ben asks one of the project aims is to support institutions to share data more freely and cooperatively following the fair and care data principles could you say a little more about this project aim and how you see this being achieved in the various streams we'd like to tackle that okay so look it's quite a big question it is a big question and some of these details that we are still working out with the different institutions but definitely if we're looking at IATSS and the University of Melbourne and ANU will be looking initially at how those three institutions will be doing that across all three streams but one of the core elements is going to be stream one in building those specific Indigenous data governance principles which know we've had feedback from IATSS and talking about how we really need to embed the IATSS code of ethics within those principles but we really do want to bring it across well we're going to have a round table with key stakeholders and leaders and experts in Indigenous data governance so that that process can be embedded across institutions not only within this project we see it as being broader as well and the second part to that would be we are interested in thinking through the idea of a catalogue of you know data sets and so how do we kind of do that how do you as a researcher in the Indigenous space find out where all the different data is and so is it possible to create like a some sort of index where you can go and find at least this is who has that data and then have a conversation and that they know that they're a part of sort of this broader network of research so I mean again huge huge idea but if we can launch that somehow at least get the sort of the nuts and bolts together to sort of make it start happening it's definitely something that should be driven over the next 10 years so that you have somewhere to actually you know libraries can use it but also universities can use it and so on and archives can actually have a conversation themselves about what they have or what they found but yeah big ambitious idea yeah and it's it's not it's not entirely new so for example if you think about the IATS archive and any of you who've accessed material the idea of commissions and you know having appropriate access conditions on things is not new it's just how do you take that into the digital space so so some of the work we've been doing some of you have been involved in with the the traditional knowledge labels some of the work from Jane Anderson who started off at IATS and has taken off at NYU around you know how can you you know balance I guess some of the burden on communities too so we don't want everybody going back to communities asking for permission for everything so getting that balance right between you know Indigenous people having control over their own data and ownership and authority over data how can we balance that with the the administrative burden of being the data owners so there's a bit of work to do there I'm conscious that we're also trying to identify capability gaps in today's discussion too and one of the ones that we've been really thinking hard about is First Nations data so we talk a lot about self about place-based and and the power of demographic data and particularly for empowered communities for example getting access to data about their own communities but one of the things when we don't really have the infrastructure really in place yet is for nation-based data so that simple example that I always use that we can get data about you know I don't know Shepparton but can we get data for your order so you know that getting that and that requires some long-term visions around what we ask in the census and but that's where you know loci for example has been such a great inspiration because I know that the work that we do with pbcs around the country that you know people want access to environmental data about their country so there's some things that we can do immediately that provide greater access to country data and then there's some longer term things about how we link population groups on a nation basis so there's some longer term and some short-term gains yeah the other thing is that we're hoping that probably quite ambitious that we'll be able to incorporate fair and care conformity into the metadata for a lot of these collections which again I'll help in sort of make it more concrete and you know reduce the burden let us move on from talking about things to actually maybe introducing a process of certification where you don't have to repeatedly seek approval for access right thank you and I think this is related from Dale Holland how will issues of human ethics and consent sovereignty be managed across a multi-party project are there any identified trial or pilot datasets and what consents are or have been obtained well that's a question that no one really I mean we still want to try and build that through this project I think is what are what are those components because I couldn't tell you who's doing it really well right now and we need to find that out but also how would we apply it over multiple different kind of needs based I mean there's you know the term sovereignty to me is really problematic because what does that mean to a community controlled organization then is it sovereignty that they're worried about like is it you know is it stewardship that they're worried about so I think where there's lots of really awesome research and thinking around this stuff but how do we apply it to Australia when it's so diverse and complex you know we're really different to New Zealand and Canada and we need to kind of really think through our own local issues from a user-based perspective I think that's my personal take but yeah so I think this is something where we'd like to actually work this out a little bit more in terms of how do we actually apply it how do we kind of take all those ideas and then make it applicable if it's not applicable and we can't use it it's wasting time so we do I want to take it to the next sort of next level which is kind of where all of this is it's not that people haven't thought about these things and had really great conversations about it it's just we've never had any kind of user case areas where we can go well let's try and apply that to this group I mean you know empowered communities have some ideas of where they'd like to think through some of that well maybe there's a site that we could use as an example maybe it could be in northeastern Ireland for example as we just go well what do they need what are the problems around that and then how would we apply it so so I think there's great potential and I think you know working in the different complexities around between IATSIS as a bigger organisation and somewhere smaller is going to be really helpful in thinking through all those different layers so it's a really good opportunity this project to do that. So we're also not you know not necessarily starting from scratch as I said before there's been some really good projects that we'll draw on IATSIS has been working with PBCs and native title rep bodies for a decade now on the return of their title materials about repatriation a maturation of materials have been collected through the name title process and getting through some of the legal complexities of that so there's a really good case example there we've been doing a project that I think some people here might be involved in with Northern Territory land claims information and all of those have a really strong ethical foundation the research exchange grants program community of interest that we've developed there with those community-based research projects who are really keen to contribute to the development of the knowledge exchange platform governance which will trial a lot of these elements so that's you know so there's there's great ethical community-led community-based projects that already have this built into their ethics process but as Kristen said you know we would expect that the Code of Ethics will underpin all of this and there may be some things that we can do to support the use of the Code of Ethics in this space developing resources specifically around data that we would contribute to the project as well. Yeah can I add something to both of those comments because I think obviously in general they're both saying exactly the right sort of area that we've got to be working in and it is very much a work in progress but when you mention PPC which is obviously a very relevant existing organization and entity that one can relate to and then one looks at that whole area of the Northern Land Council but in relation to sort of native title there is a single PPC which is I think labeled top-end default which operates for that whole area which doesn't really help us so we actually have to have that Code of Knowledge base in terms of those different regions and the different nature of the organizations and then work out in that context what people understand even by something like First Nation and whether that as a concept means different things in different regions so I think you know it's absolutely right but we need this kind of program in order to work out the complexities and then begin to see ways through it so I think this is one of everywhere road maps are good metaphor. Thank you. Now Paul Gruber from University of Melbourne asks with reference to principles how does the application of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander data governance principles align with FAIR for example? This will be something that we are working out in the process of the project although you know there are there are clear alignments that we can see already it is a big part of the work that we'll be doing across stream one so looking at how they can be applied so not just for the FAIR principles but also the CAIR principles we also want to be addressing the CAIR principles in their local context so there'll be a lot of work we'll be doing on that but we don't have an answer for you now. Are people aware of the CAIR principles just as a quick so the CAIR principles were developed specifically as a response to the FAIR principles if you haven't come across them yet it's worth having a look at them and that has a that's developed through an international data governance alliance global indigenous data alliance which is GIDA so you can find the CAIR principles thank you if you haven't come across them before. Okay now Kylie Brass says following on from Lisa's comment about balancing burden on communities how do we also ensure IDN is well set up and resourced to balance the burden and expectation of a range of stakeholders including wider increase. Does that relate to a lack of governance? I mean it relates to the fact that I think this program has been a long time coming it's absolutely you know essential I think the claims on you your time your expertise you know to do the work that you're doing but I guess what you stand for and how you you know obviously it's cross-cutting the work that you're doing you know it has absolute application immediate application to a range of interest entities you know I know it's not fully fledged or anything but I just sort of think that yeah I just I'm it is an ambitious project it's early days I guess and it's just yeah making sure that that you're well set up to kind of get this work done and that you're not dragged into a whole lot of different situations in which you can't focus on the work and you're servicing others agendas. Yeah look we're really conscious of that and we actually have budgeted for you know additional positions to hopefully lessen that but we are really excited to have the number of partners we have we think that the work will be nicely shared and the IDN I guess has been operating for long enough now that we know kind of how complex it gets and how political it can also get so we're all very skilled and experienced in this field of working around Indigenous things which can kind of go into really strange spaces often so but it is a really good point to make Carly we are really on the cutting edge in terms of if we get some of this right it'll apply really well to other things and we think that it'll actually have its own kind of growth so there will be need for sort of a longer term roadmap that actually ensures that it keeps going and I think that that's something we've really kind of spoken to Jenny and the team about is that that there needs to be some sort of this isn't just this and then we shut it down and everybody goes home and takes their bats and balls we actually have to kind of keep playing the game moving forward and I think the great thing about having some of our partners with similar problems that they've been working on for a long time or having resolved some things and now found other things to work on is that maybe that longevity will be built into it and I think that that's kind of my thinking around it is that the longevity component is going to be the key to it I'm not I mean there's just so much work to be done so yeah thanks good question but also I was going to jump in there and just say that really we see this as a really good opportunity to actually bring everyone together and crystallize all the work that people have been doing all across Australia in different capacities and different ways so that there is a focus where we can all move forward together that's that's the way we see it so I mean the IDN is a very broad network we're connected with a lot of people across Australia and internationally and we do plan on on leveraging a lot of the people within the network and organizations within the network as well. Peter Hayes asks does the project scope encompass development of data collection and workflow tools similar to something like red cap and that might be a question for Len maybe. Len's left the room. It might actually be perhaps for me I can respond to that only because it kind of touches on the social sciences side so and I've been working you know with the IDN team on some of these discussions so you'll see actually in the social science proposal we talk a little bit about red cap and integration with other tools particularly we were focused on things like Qualtrics and Lime Survey but red caps and other of these so what we're working on within that project is looking at yes how we can interact between you know vocabulary and metadata services some of the data capture tools that are there so you'll see the spy section of our project plan there actually encapsulates some of that idea it depends on some of the systems that are available and the API calls that we can do to some of those systems but red cap was one of those under discussion so there is kind of a mechanism within a cup well let's say certain the social science project to give that to give that some thought and then probably we could leverage that learning within the IDN project I would I would imagine that depends a little bit on what you're trying to put in get out of out of course but let's say that that kind of is in scope for some of the interoperability questions that we're exploring thanks Steve so I think we should move on to the next question which is are the research community needs being met and that feeds into are there any capability gaps so I'd like to invite any comment around either of those two questions at this point yeah look we definitely are interested in what the capability gaps are and is it you know I guess that's why the network's been quite good to actually to work with we're talking and if we're talking capability gaps within sort of data the data ecosystem yes we definitely want to understand what that is because there needs to be some either some sort of form of training skills updates or some sort of building of of indigenous people into this kind of work as well as non-indige but you know just trying to build a little community of data scientists indigenous data scientists around this work would be really great as well so we've had a very short discussion with you Q we think there might be opportunities in there to sort of look at some potential programs or to think about what capability training might look like into the future and as we go along with this project so what this project brings up might have some potential skills and capabilities training attached to it over time so yes can I just comment on that too we're hoping that we'll get help from AIDC and capability building I mean they've got a lot of expertise going back over years in training and research data management so we ought to tap into that anybody else okay we've got a couple of comments in the chat here so we'll see the comments in the chat as well if anyone's got a comment rather than a question they can obviously look at those as well yeah yeah so maybe this is a capability gaps and Sandra and Marcus both note that long-term data preservation and retention is an issue for the whole HASS sector and I believe that's true sustainability of large data sets has been a problem in in the HASS sector I don't know if anybody has any further comment on that um look I guess you know if if any of you who saw the video presentation Marcia was actually talking specifically about orphan data sets the idea has been very interested in looking at preservation and of orphan data sets which we know that they are everywhere across Australia whether they be researchers who are retiring and have got a series on their hard drives or whether that be you know institutions who haven't digitised data sets there is data everywhere across Australia we're hoping that some of the scoping work that we do will at least start working out some some of the places across Australia where they are and who the main custodians of that that data is so that we can look at how we can go forward and think about preservation and then rematriation of that data um Nick T burger asks seems like IDN is focused mainly on numerical data but is it also looking at recordings transcripts oral histories performance etc yes we absolutely will be quite a few of us are qualitative researchers I'm a medical anthropologist and you probably know that Mars here is a as a social anthropologist social cultural anthropologist and geographer um we are very interested in both qualitative and quantitative it's just a matter of what sort of use cases that we develop in in the process and also one of our major custodians we've noted the glam sector so yes it will be across both forms of data and I'm ex ex museum you know I'm still involved in state art galleries and archives and libraries so I'm really passionate about it I think someone made a comment about videos and music absolutely it's all in there but we have to start from somewhere so it's not that it's been missed in the proposal it's just that it's huge and I think anyone from the library sector here will know that we don't always digitize everything and when it comes to audio sound it's it's so vital as we know you know a lot of those old recordings from the 60s and 70s if they're not going to be digitized soon they're they're going to be magnetized to death so so we're really conscious of that it is this the project for it we're not going to have the funding for it but should we be actually talking about it absolutely so I'm I'm definitely the one banging on about that those sorts of things in in these conversations and often talking about culture and how do we save it and return it and exchange it and build on it and bring the knowledge back you know we haven't even mentioned in this conversation about it's also when when a researcher goes in and uses something in iats is how do they do they return what they learn on top of that knowledge you know what's the responsibility of everybody who participates in this whole the whole life cycle of data and and you know um so yeah we're really really passionate about it as you can see okay great thanks yeah yeah I should also I should also say that um we we would from an iatsis perspective and code of ethics perspective we would consider data to include any information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people regardless of its format so that includes um paper um as well as um audio and visual um and uh obviously you know the the governance framework that we're talking about particularly stream one and getting those principles clear um the point is for them to be adopted a bit like you know the there's a thirst within the glam sector for um uh guidance and to participate so you can see that with the take up of us laying in the codathons and things like that so there's an appetite there um if we provide the guidance and the leadership um that's kind of one of iatsis's ambit you know legislative responsibilities if we provide that leadership then people you know are in a position to adopt it so it's not a necessarily that this project has to do it all um it's about providing that that kind of guidance and examples of the how you know what what you know what works from indigenous governance and sovereignty perspective um and giving people the tools to actually step through that through their own collections now and can I uh follow on from that because uh uh the reality is that some of the one of the sort of key uses that material is going to have when it's returned to community is what people call sort of repurposing so people are going to actually be uh making it come to life again in completely different kinds of forms and this is a very very important area obviously I don't expect uh this project to be dealing with everything but conceptually it's important because there's a real difference between repurposing when it happens in the context of the every day of the community that it's returned to and repurposing uh in a different sort of arena by like outside users and so on and so forth the boundaries are not always going to be uh clear so working this out conceptually is very important because obviously in many cases the indigenous communities themselves are working collaboratively in projects that the material is repurposed for and returned for so I think having that kind of awareness but I mean I'm totally reassured by what uh has been said that uh we have this in mind yeah thanks Howard you know we're really talking well I I'm really passionate about the idea of rematriation not repatriation because it lessens the burden of care for that material in the communities if we were to return some of the materials you know from the Burnt Museum to certain communities they couldn't actually care for it because of the cost of care is ridiculous um however what if they get to engage exchange and and relearn and renew it's a totally different experience and I've got multiple experiences up my sleeve from doing that sort of work so I think um and then how do we then capture that data and then reapply into some sort of preservation conservation um and data sort of holding so so yeah it is totally um the full life cycle that we have to pay attention to not just not just one or two part so it's it's super complex but it's interesting it probably doesn't need to be said but the anything I would say in that context is that they you know they feel there's some really great use cases that help us develop the principles and the framework and the infrastructure um but it's not the job of this project to do those projects so understanding that we're creating that environment for researchers to engage with communities and for community priorities that researchers can engage with and that's certainly the principle behind the knowledge exchange platform that is kind of still being built um is is to actually connect people and ideas and and um there's a wonder if you haven't seen it there's a wonderful example of that um that we did through the Preserve Strengths and Renew project with Garajari which was fabulous so um where they you know found some old stuff in the in the archive that they didn't know existed it only just been digitized um they were able to take it back and put people through some ceremony that hadn't been practiced in 40 years they record it they reinterpret it they're doing podcasts they're doing you you know it's just the the life that that that can that those kind of old data you know that old data can actually provide and invigorate um so that's um it's not the job of the project but the job of the project is to provide the frameworks for those kind of exciting things to happen uh Elizabeth Seymour asks how does New South Wales Australian Mokotu Hub fit in with this project and apologies if I've pronounced that incorrectly I think Nick responded as well Nick do you have an update on that of all I mean Mokotu is like you know Omeka and these other wonderful display um options but they're not preservation or archiving options I think we have to be very clear on that and um story lines um there are others that are out there very popular but the risk is people are putting additional metadata and as we've heard you know this is what we want people to get archival materials and reuse them in their current practice and and refresh and you know all that wonderful stuff but if that doesn't go back to a proper repository then it's all at risk of being lost yeah so um and I think we need to get this message out very clearly because people love the presentation systems that these provide but they're not long-term solutions thanks for that comment Nick we've got about five minutes to go so I think I'd like to give an opportunity to Kristen, Len and Vanessa to make any summary comments and Lisa of course um if they would like to at this point I guess just initially uh thank you thanks everyone for your input and your comments and feedback it's really helpful um and just leading up until the point when we're finalizing the project up to the 27th we really encourage you any of you to reach out to us with any further feedback or input you have also in terms of if you can think of if you're within an organization who you think should be a partner in this work let us know and we'll have a conversation with you we're really really open and see this as I said before as an opportunity to bring people together across Australia to work on these really foundational principles thanks Kristen. Vanessa I probably would just you know I'm always banging on about this but I really want to see um an uptake of Indigenous people working in this area I think there's some really great potential in terms of just having a being a data scientist or being someone who actually understands um how all this is going to work into the future and drives it from an Indigenous position and encourages community to really embrace it because I think it's yeah I think it's a really good opportunity for mob to get involved as well as researchers as well there's a lot of Indigenous people who are not having gone through tertiary education who might actually be really good researchers as well so I'm all about you know the local so thanks thanks Vanessa. Lisa would you like to say anything? No I just thanks to Kristen and Vanessa and Len for letting me throw my hat in the ring today I'm happy to really excited to get things started and be putting our support behind the activities we've got some resources to contribute to just in terms of what's required for the evaluation certainly in this first year so I'm looking forward to that great thanks and Len finally. Well just to I guess reassure people that the preservation and salvaging existing data is a real priority I mean it's a real challenge too but certainly I wouldn't want anybody to go with the impression that it's slow down on our list of priorities it's clearly near the top because the whole concept of data repatriation or rematriation as my colleagues prefer to call it is giving back to people data that's been collected about them which in many ways in many occasions they don't even know exists. Thanks Len so we will leave the question and answer register available for everybody so if there's something that you think of that you haven't been able to ask today please make sure you pop it in that document and someone from the IDN will be able to answer it don't forget to submit your feedback so final day for that once again is the 27th of September and I'd like to thank Kristin Smith, Len Smith, Vanessa Russ from IDN for being with us today and hopefully you can all hang around for our next session which is on Trove so without further ado so the next session we're talking about is developing a Trove researcher platform for advanced research augmenting existing National Library of Australia resources this platform will enable a focus on the delivery of researcher portals accessible through Trove Australia's unique public heritage site. The platform will create tools for visualization, entity recognition, transcription and geocoding across Trove content and other corpora. Alison Dellert is the lead. Alison is the Assistant Director General National Library of Australia Collaboration Branch. The Collaboration Branch is responsible for carrying out organisation partnership functions that enables the library to collaborate with the Glam community and provides a range of services relating to Trove including the digitisation program and I'm sure that Reese is just about to put the link to the document into the chat there we go so Alison are you with us? I am indeed. Hello, welcome. Oh we've got a question already. While Trove is itself provides exemplary integration as an aggregator there is little detail of how it will integrate with other programs IDN, Iris and Ladakha and that's from Nick Teaburger. Okay can people see me if I'm talking? Yeah I can see you Alison. That's excellent I'm struggling a little bit I will say with the technology this morning at my end so if something goes wrong I will take it as yes give me a bit of time I might start before I answer the question I'm just going to do a little bit of an introduction if that's okay Jenny. That's fine okay good and actually I would like to start by acknowledging that I'm coming to you today from Ngunnawal and Nambri country which is putting on a glorious display for those who are not in Canberra this is a beautiful time of year in our local area but I would like to pay my respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal and the Nambri and extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are present here today and as Jenny explained my job title is the somewhat grandiose assistant director general for collaboration I would rephrase it slightly to say that what that means is that I'm responsible for every patrol the full set of operations at the National Library as well as a set of our other collaboration programs and the digitisation three of our all of our digitisation programs which comprises three separate things. What I want to I'm also going to say that I'm joined today and I'm going to ask him to say something in a tech by Tianan Kelly. Tianan is the project lead for us on this and up front I'll say that all of the detailed questions that we get in I will need to click to flick to Tianan to answer as he's been the person who's been coordinating work at the National Library. Hello. The difficult questions come to me that's my job and I'm conscious that there are a number of difficult questions in the space so that's if you like the breakdown that we'll be using today and I'm also because I have been trying to follow the chat I'm going to respond to a couple of things that have come up in the chat as well. So what the library is attempting when we're putting together this project plan or the process that we're doing we look at what we think that trope brings to this space and this is a discussion that many of you are aware trope has been going back between trope in the research sector or the national library in the research sector for some years now and what we think we bring as a strong asset in this space and where we can have the most impact at this point in time is in looking at how we can bring researchers who are using trope but are not using any other digital tools into the space so that's been our intention for the audience from the start. The researchers that we are seeking to empower and to work with as part of this are not people who have already been working in the digital space primarily and I'll come back to the question of partnership in a minute but it is saying that we know that there are literally thousands of academics who are using keyword searching and trope as a mechanism to produce their research. We would like to look at how we can take what the rest of this community has developed over the years which are fantastic tools but are not being used by a broad audience and see how we can use trope's platform and reach to extend them to the audience. So I want to be very upfront that that's the concept that we've worked on for some time beforehand and that's where we're coming from in terms of looking at what we might be able to achieve in terms of leveraging the strength. I also want to talk about some of the constraints because we've got a lot of constraints and those things are starting to become more of a pointy edge of the conversation and this is an odd partnership I think for both the RDSC and for the the library in that it's an attempt it's not a partnership that we've led before as a research institution we have a Gleda project. The National Library of Australia is not actually a research sector funded organisation or rephrase that. National libraries internationally have a sequence of tasks. One of the very common models for a national library is that they have primary research us primary responsibility for supporting the research sector. Australia's national library does not that's quite specific in our act that our audience and our function and our purpose is the general public. That's been an ongoing constraint for the National Library and it's partly why we offer it's not partly why it is why we offer a lot less support to the research sector than most comparable in well not than a number of comparable international national libraries. I'll also make the point that that's not something that's been decided by staff at the National Library and I want to come back to how we see the research sector and our connection to public service in a minute but it is a factor in the way that we're organised. The other thing I want to say and I have been listening here but I want to say more explicitly even though we'll be careful is that the current climate that we are working within is pushing that difference from a political level you know it isn't moving away from it that is we are very clear on what our minister and our process and we are a public sector organisation expects from us and that is been increasingly that our mandate is to serve the general public and not necessarily the organised research community. So all of that is part of the context that we're working within and part of the context that we're trying to juggle in how we move forward. Trove has been a great service to both the general public and the research community. The things that I love about Trove when I use eyes here I'm not speaking of half my institution I'm speaking for myself is very much that I think it lessens the gap between an academic and research community and a community that like research and might move in that direction. I think we actually bring research together into other areas and that's part of the strength and the process. We're also aware that the product and the impact of Australia's research community and producing output actually results in enormous amounts of public good and engagement and that's part of our mandate in a way that isn't represented in the next. I'm going to make all of that because I understand Janet and Kelvin's point earlier but the National Library it's nice to know we're trusted and it's nice to know that it's a trusted and the-earned repository but actually those points about culture are real they're not about the decisions of people who work for one organisation or another but the National Library is constantly poised in this difficult situation around the research sector and many of you know that part of the the push for us to be involved here was a way to try and resolve some of that tension to say that there's funding that comes into the service which is not coming out of the normal appropriation and the budgets then that gives us a mandate to do some work for the sector that we'd really like to do but it's not that easy when you're internally to look at how it might work. Yeah now I've got to read my handwriting briefly here which is not going too well. So yeah all of that is a sense of constraint plus a public service organisation means things more experience for us and also I will point out we're just we don't work like a research organisation. This culture is quite different to ours and it's an interesting process to engage with it that we're still upscaling very few of our staff and our process actually come at this point in time out of the epidemic sector and I think I'm going to acknowledge that because we will be looking to make some changes and I think that cultural difference is a bit of the issue that we're trying to get that we're trying to bridge at the moment as well. So all of that is to say that there are there are some things today that I'll take brief questions on that are actually probably likely to be sticking points as we look at the interpretation of the Encriss principles and the National Library's role but I don't think that's the most useful place of today to deal with we'll deal with those as we move forward and there is an environment we're trying to work within and I am being recorded but within that constraint we're aware of from where we put forward the project plan and I'll have an I'm not reading the chat screen at the minute I will look at it and read it in a second just a limit to the number of things I can do at once is that we do we have taken some we've had very little formal feedback actually but we've taken quite a lot of the informal feedback in the processes and we're starting to think about what we might look to change as we move forward probably the key thing is that we do acknowledge that what we took as a brief here probably to produce a product we'll need a partnership process I will say up front I haven't spoken to Rosie and Jenny about this but I think it means it's likely that we're going to need longer than the October deadline to work through the process and we're hopeful that wouldn't hold anyone else up but we'll have to look at how that works here so we are going to need to look at how we can do this more as a partnership within an institution and we are going to need to look more at how we work within the research output sector and the processes we move forward so that's the piece that we can take both useful feedback on and working through where I will come back to that we would like to continue to pursue though is that the concepts and the processes and particularly our sense of audience is how we'd like to move forward one of the concrete questions that we did get before and points that were raised is we know how badly the research community want more apis from the National Library and more backends coming out of what we do and we could have gone down a direction in this context of talking about producing more apis I want to be very upfront about the reason that the National Library is not putting that forward and that is because we think that the best route for demonstrating value to our audiences and being able to do this again is if we can demonstrate that we have brought into the base of researchers using these tools and we're not convinced that the API is the most effective way to target that it's not because we don't want to do the API we do want to do the API actually the API is less work for us we like the APIs because they don't result like dealing with end users is a lot of what we do so there's no issue about that but it is about this project and this moment in time and how we think we use this project as a building base to the next project which would come out of that space I will add to that in particular the API that we most get asked for for the web archive does put us in an enormous amount of privacy and legal work and that would eat through a large portion of the budget in a very unexciting way before we would come out to the outside so that's a constraint for us in that sector as well I also want to acknowledge that largely what we are doing has got some crossover points now partly we want to address that through the partnership so I will say we'll be looking at a different tax so we're not looking at rebuilding things that people have already built as much as we are forming some partnerships where we can pull it in but I want people to understand that part of that is because actually the expertise has been fantastic and we honestly think that there's quite a lot of work that we can pick up and repurpose for a community that would bring large numbers of academics into a fold of being able to do new research questions because we can make what's already been done more accessible so that's the way that I would put that there's absolutely no disrespect intended to people who put previous work in quite the opposite this is such an innovative community and it has developed so much value and process so I want to acknowledge that that may not have come through and that we can pursue the partnership piece anyway to do that at that point I might stop and have a look at the chat screen and take any specific questions again just noting give me a minute to take in the information I've got about four screens working at the moment so I will do that but I might yes so just or if Jenny wants to summarise questions for me that would be awesome I think we'll start with the question from Nick Teaburger which has got plus three upvoted now so while Trove is itself provides exemplary integration as an aggregator there's little detail of how it will integrate with the other programs being the Indigenous research capability Iris and Ladaka my understanding is that he's one of the pieces of feedback we'll integrate and look at Nick in terms of moving forward integration has been posed as the key thing that we're looking at in terms of how we can move forward and again it's partly an artifact of the fact that we came up with the project lands probably a little bit in advance actually Tianan do you have anything you'd like me to add to that nothing additional really yeah we are really excited to pursue a few different sort of avenues of where we can actually integrate a little bit more unfortunately we just have not had the time to actually develop those pathways yet Ian McCrabb says can the design documentation suite for the project use cases technical architecture be made available for review absolutely would be the simple that am I on I'm being talking sorry absolutely we can but I'll make the point that part of the point about the partnership is we might slow down a little bit from here so we'll make it accessible as soon as we can I'll also add one of the constraints that we're working at because we want to build some of this into trove as well as to make it and I will go to we really do want to build it into trove because we think it will we think it's going to help the whole community to do that that's why we want to do it but troves backend is absolutely accessible on we're not we don't have any proprietary code or pieces but it is a mess so what it means is that a lot of the time when we make the code bases accessible and transparent people get back to us and throw their hands up in horror so can't help that but to the extent that we build this discreetly we'll share and we're very happy to be just transparent over all of that thank you Richard says I take Alison's point that the NLA should serve the public but aren't researchers part of that public both researchers in the former university space and informal researchers who follow interests and passions in a less formal way absolutely they are and where we build services for aimed at an audience that people participate in and I'll go to back to what we started trove as a keyword search facility was built for the general public and is actually being used by a very large portion of the research community where we get into sticky things is where we build functions that are only going to be used by that audience that's where things get I would just use the word sticky and right I'm going to jump forwards now to a question that's come up under the other research community needs being met and Anna Johnston asks what methods have NLA used to identify research community needs especially given their broad and ambitious definition of that community I can answer that question so we have done some initial work with the community to actually identify what the needs were we have a bit of an idea generally of where community requirements lie both from some work with the community but also from the feedback that we receive on an ongoing basis from members of the community so the methods that we used and are trying to use going forward really are sort of based in trying to engage with the broad sort of research community the other piece that I'll add and again I want to note we want to slow down a little bit here and target since part of the book the version of partnership is we'll be targeting doing more intensive work with a particular community I don't want to say more than that at the moment there's a couple of things in the option but the other thing that we can go back to and rely on is we actually did a survey in 2018 of truth in fact we did two one of which had approximately 375 researchers working in universities respond to and give us the sense so we're actually relatively confident on reaching some of that broader audience it's difficult because one of the things is that that audience tends to tell us that what they want is better keyword searching because that's what they're doing right so that's your line between consultation imagination and so on so it's not in some ways I think we're more confident about reaching a broader audience than understanding what we could offer them and that's just a normal part of that's the line between people who want already using a service want to do what they're currently doing a bit better and we can move into the future I'll note the comments about the API yes those things are true they could be seen redeveloping the API is a really large look it's just it's a job in and of itself if we could have tacked it onto this of course we would have done it but that's not a realistic prospect at this point and again it's not saying it's not important it's just not what um what we think is the best thing to do right now if we've got a huge pushback then we'd really have to consider on that front but I would go to my personal view rather than the institutional is it is less likely to get us to another stage of funding than other projects can I just come in do you mind me just coming in on that one this has been really helpful listening to this thanks so much Alison because it does it lifts what's on that page and kind of makes me confident I guess about sort of the next stage of development of this work which is great because you know there's so much to gain from from this piece of work I guess what I'm just thinking about as you're talking is yeah and you know this I'm sure will develop in the next sort of phase as well but what those targeted partnerships look like I guess we're often struggling with kind of thinking about a domain level and then you know lots of individual research researchers and I'm assuming that that Trove survey in 2018 is in effect the kind of grassroots you know you're getting and you can aggregate from that but you're perhaps not reaching you know into some of the the research users that you're seeking to expand out to in this sort of phase so you know it's it's I'm saying you know the academy of the humanities is here to help and certainly you know you know if you are interested in reaching out and I'm sure you know there's social sciences would be would I can see Isabel is in the room as well there's a few few people engaged but yeah I mean what we can do to sort of help input into that and you know in in a kind of advisory or bridging sort of capacity out to research sector and just sort of you know feed into the processes very happy to do so. Yep I'm not going to talk more about partnerships because I might bugger them out so we're in early stages it's just the nature of today but yes and I will point out Kylie you gave us the list of email addresses for the 2019 survey so we'll be very much in in favour of working with you. All right Hugh Craig asks could you say some more about the geospatial tools you are planning and where you will get the geolocated data as input for them. Okay so as part of anyway I'm going to get the name wrong of the project but about 12 months ago we actually quietly ran the entire back end of Trove through a machine learning algorithm to attach geolocations to all of the content that's using gazetted place names at this stage rather than coordinates or anything more sophisticated but the gazetted place names are pretty good at a level of granularity across so we already have that data in the back end of Trove at the moment we just haven't been sure about what to do with it for more reasons than anyone's really came on finding so that's where we've got the data from we do not one of the things that we're very and I will say this if anybody wants to because we usually have more offers of partnerships in the control app but one of them is we are looking at where we can partnership to get the expertise to know how to turn and work with that geospatial data so as I said what we've got in the back end of Trove is placements attached to pretty much all of the content and there's a lot of content in Trove where we have that but we how we would turn that into something interesting we noticed some interesting researchers doing some work in that space and that's one of the things that we might pursue through partnerships. Great thank you and okay right moving right along Paul Gruber from University of Melbourne Trove has great potential to be a launching place for an emerging generation of researchers for example in high schools colleges and undergraduate programs how can we leverage its significance for this purpose can we make fit for purpose training and materials for this cohort and indeed for the general public. Yes um I could say sorry go ahead oh no yeah just to go in that that that is definitely part of our ongoing aim to make Trove as fit for purpose for the general public as possible and to actually provide them training and materials specifically for high schools colleges undergraduate programs that would require a little bit of additional sort of work from our end but yeah overall as as far as trying to build better capacity for the next generation of researchers we are we are trying to we are investigating avenues to actually try and get those people excited about using Trove definitely. Thanks I might just remind everyone if at all possible please try and put your questions into the shared document because I'm just about going cross-eyed trying to work between the chat and the shared document here so if you can that would be greatly appreciated. Okay a critical data source that is locked away from the public and researchers are historical birth deaths and marriages can we contemplate an integrated national program of a historical register of the Australian people. Australia led the world in the 19th century and the registration of vital events and they contain a unique range of historical detail on a colonizing and colonized people. This would require partnerships with all state territory and registers. I think that's definitely falls outside a scope at the moment but it's a great idea and I'd be welcome any comments from Tiana or Allison on that one. Yeah I think it falls out. I'll go actually because I will point out it I mean that would be a fantastic thing that is also within scope for what I would call my day job here Janet so it's not that is that's actually something that would be used by many more people than just the research sector and it could be a partnership that doesn't have to come out of this kind of work or this kind of part of the process. If you wanted to send me an email it's allison.della.com.au with more details on that I might have a conversation with you in a different context. I've got a quick question around the geospatial work that you were mentioning. Have you tested for accuracy? I mean I'm just thinking through if you geolocate articles within Trove how do you actually do you search them for place name and then match it to the Gazetteer and how do you ensure that you've got the right place name? Do you make the assumption that because the article was published for instance in Queensland that the place that is mentioned is also in Queensland? I can answer that one. Janet and I have a mutual acquaintance that actually developed this and yes he matched it against the Gazetteer specifically and then done a run a very clever little little program over the top that has then excluded say for instance overseas sort of place names or try to get as much accuracy built in as possible usually by then also looking throughout the full text that we've actually got the location from searching for things like Queensland as opposed to just the town name so that you know places that I think there's multiple Richmans in Australia so that that is matched up to the correct location rather than just you know the Richmond and it all in Victoria for instance so yeah yeah it's not 100 accurate nothing ever is but there's a high level of accuracy in there for a very clever guy. I think I might know who you're talking about Tina. Very clever guy indeed. Okay here we go. This is from Tim Sherritt. If the current plan is being expanded with new partnerships and greater integration and won't be ready for approval in October could you sketch out what the process for the development of the plan will be? Not today just because we're not ready Tim but I am happy to commit to both we will be very transparent through the ARDC and also if you we again if you make contact we'll run you through when we've got it but I've been making it up on this you know we just we've really been through a bit of a process of thinking in literally kind of the last week as some of the feedbacks come in so it's just too early and there's too much else going on and we will still have to take that plan to the ARDC board and off the top of my head I can't tell you when the meetings line up so there's a lot of um we have to take that into consideration as well Tim but we'll keep you posted yeah um okay I'm not sure who this has come from but this is a long one brace yourselves there's possibly an unproductive dichotomy between API work and services for the general public for example having gazetted place names now accessible at the back end is fantastic news exposing that data in an API should be step one for building new services for the public on top of it there's a lot that can be done these days client side e.g. with javascript libraries if you can get the data to the client in a controlled way that's the API's job and that's from Sandra Silcox I'm going to take that as a comment on the decision about the API versus autofocus so I don't think I've got anything new to add to that okay again acknowledge the point I think I've covered everything if I missed anything in the chat I'll just note there's been some really helpful comments by Marcus so thank you for that I was just going to say there are some comments in the chat which we'll which we will collect together obviously but I haven't pasted them because I know questions normally um the expansion of metadata in Trove is a real opportunity Marcus would you like to elaborate on that yes I'll give you one very small practical example uh when I was trying to use Trove in doing historical musicology I had to work very hard to find any records that contained the names of all the performers of any of the pieces that Trove had put in and I grabbed the opportunity to show that it could be done by finding one um what people may not know is that since 2006 if you want to do anything with music you've got to worry about moral rights which means you need to know who all the performance are so taking a slightly different view on how you gather metadata for different domains would be highly productive I could give others but that's just one example thanks Marcus right sorry can I ask Marcus when you say you showed how it could be done did you find that data in a form that was already within somewhere within Trove or did you look it up and add it or and work it out I spent a lot of time because I've been involved in library science since the beginning of dictated science abstracts and have contributed continuously in sort of quite low key way so I always try to use Trove when I can um so when I was doing historical musicology work and recovering the actual music I thought well libraries are what I love let's see how they've done it and very very few of the few music records in Trove actually had the full record of all the performers I did find a couple of them and so I carefully put it into the thesis intentionally because I wanted to show that it could be done if if things are to be done with Trove for that particular narrow segment of music that virtually nobody knows about that's a joke then in that case expanding the metadata that's captured would be prudent I could do the same commentary in other areas I'm glad that GIS has already been covered I was doing GIS and teaching kids in the early 90s and GIS is one of my real interests so I'm glad to see those that tagging has gone in I'm just giving an example moral rights matter there is a second order problem this is one Trove is undoubtedly aware of that is when you produce data or aggregated data now there are some quite difficult both privacy and IP issues that can arise mediating those might be something that would be worth some investigation it's not an easy area either of them I just picked a very simple example of where expanded better data would increase utility that's all that's Marcus are there any other questions for Alison or TNN it's all right to me okay well I might give Alison and TNN opportunity to sum up at this point we'll make any further comments that they would like to make and I will make that offer to continue to send the feedback and the process in that I am aware I dropped some new things here so that that will take some times people some time to think through I'll make the point which this illustrates there's a huge amount we can do in this space with Trove or with anything else I think it's really important that we focus on something that is deliverable we'll have what a government to inject some of my terminology is measurable benefit to the public straight away because that's what Desi will be looking for and that we think about how to use and I don't just mean this is as we as the NLA I mean that we're thinking about how to use this to demonstrate the value of further investment rather than solve all of the problems through the specifics and I think that will go for all of the projects so that would be my final point thanks um Tully has Tully Barnett has asked will we get a chance to have an event like this about the new project plan in the future um and I have said yes we will and ARDC will facilitate that so we once the National Library is happy with their revised draft and have got their partnerships in place we will certainly run another session just for the Trove section of work or for any others that feel that they require it um right any other comments from anybody well I think um if that's the case um are there any more capability gaps that that um you know are there things that the National Library could be building that fall out of scope that we may be able to feed into the NRI road mapping process so let's give for five minutes free for all what can you think of that you'd really love Trove to be able to do that it doesn't do now and we can't fund right immediately don't be shy I'm sure that people have got tons of ideas expanded fellowship program okay I'm just going to add things to the list as they come up anything else the Web Archive obviously yeah Web Archive API on the list okay let's add that to the list okay somebody is adding a research lab for public humanities research somebody has mentioned expanded metadata useful discussions with folks from honey who pioneered some useful work trying to aggregate people and other core entities across aggregated sources digital exhibition apis hey everyone's going crazy now of so many ideas it's like a Christmas wish list for Trove yeah how many times have you seen this before Alison I bet you see it all the time I was gonna get that's uh look it's yeah and that's a good part it's it's difficult as I said it's not just from the research sector but everybody has a sense of how much more could be done if we got some significant investment in this space um I'm I'll point out I think it'd be very useful to record because I saw the digitalization comment data sources that people would like copies of I don't think that we have ever broken a barrier that says that that's considered part of research infrastructure but it is actually quite useful then for the National Library to have so it's all free to go if you like okay so there's some interesting ideas there people Australia I'm not looking at the same document but whoever put people Australia in is absolutely welcome to contact me to discuss the libraries initiative to do people Australia earlier and what worked okay and a whole lot of suggestions around API development sorry Jenny Steve here um uh for those who are the uninitiated here people Australia is what exactly so that was my suggestion and people Australia would be an authority list of people which actually started at NLA and was at NLA for a while and then I understand got closed because of lack of funding um is that right Alison not quite um actually so people Australia um existed in two forms there was an authority piece that is under the hood that's actually still in throat that it underpins the um can it it's an essential part of the trade infrastructure in that how we connect people identities to others what we closed down was the public site access of it and it wasn't because of well everything is because lack of funding obviously a point but it was actually lack of usage um interestingly it had infinitesimal usage versus supporting it but that authority piece is still working under the hood to manage the way that trove identifies individuals and so on um the we actually experimented with some machine learning around identities at the same time as we did the geographic platforms which was a way of taking that into a new form and being able to enhance it um I will say the privacy implications made our eyes bleed and we had to move away um those those issues around because we are a public service around what we can and can't do with with so on came there but it is some yeah in terms of what you're interested in is that authorities and the management piece happy to discuss in more detail because that hasn't been turned off okay that's all good thank you um national lead on digitization so digitization falls outside of the scope of what we're currently um doing in the has IDC an indigenous research capability program uh and uh yeah acknowledged that deadline 2025 is nearly upon us and I'm sure that the national library are peddling as fast as they can to save their magnetic um sources of tape uh yeah well I'm not sure actually um who's still here but if Vanessa is still here in particular the National Library has actually got its own magnetic tape actually under control we're one of the few NCIs that did this started earlier but we're working with the other NCIs we're actually looking at the moment for a different project I'm doing for um Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned and controlled material which is on magnetic tape which is vulnerable so I'm going to shout out if Vanessa still here she mentioned it if anybody knows of that material and could send it to me that would be helpful for totally different purposes yeah thanks Ellison I'll send you an email great right um Tim asks in terms of deadline for submissions feedback submissions on the 27th of September should we submit thoughts on the current draft plan or wait for the next I would say if you uh wish to I think it would be appreciated if you submitted feedback on the current plan and that will help the National Library inform their reworking of the draft and then we will ask you to submit feedback again on the next draft uh yes and Benjamin Smith um and I'm sure that Allison is aware of this there's um preservation quality digitisation service for magnetic recordings I'm sure that Benjamin must be talking about the LEAF project I think it was a LEAF or was it a linkage um for the massive digitisation project in WA and they would be happy to work with the National Library assisting in digitisation Benjamin do you want to say a couple of words about that am I right in thinking that's the ARC project that's running over there yeah thanks Jenny I was just um I just thought I'd make people aware that the five UMIs in WA have got together to set up a digitisation service that specifically thanks Jill sorry that specifically looks at magnetic media but it also can do um uh film all types of film um and transparent medium um and that's the digitisation centre of WA at the moment it's it's mainly the massive backlog for the partner organisations um which is the five universities and the two state organisations that we're looking for as well as working with other people and other other projects that we get um thank you very much next tea burger asks where do those files live after digitisation the ones that we digitise yeah yeah so we written them to the um the the owner of the the physical hard copy so the copyright resides with the original copyright holder and the digitisation centre doesn't retain any copyright and the materials that are digitised thank you all right well we've got about one minute to go so um thank you everyone for the input into this morning's session we're going to have an hour's break and hopefully you can rejoin us after you've had some lunch this afternoon we've got um the social sciences and the linguistics people talking through their plans so please join us for that thank you very much Alice and Della and Tianan Kelly from the National Library for joining us this morning and talking us through their plans and I think we've got a really lovely wish list for moving forward for phase two of the HASS RDC so thanks everyone and um as as previously we'll leave that document up there so if there's anything else that comes to mind pop it in there and Alice and Tianan will have ongoing access to that and don't forget to put your feedback in 27th of September and we'll see you after lunch everyone thank you okay welcome back everyone for those of you who don't know me my name is Jenny Fuster I'm the HASS RDC program manager for the Australian research data commons this afternoon we'll be hearing from the integrated research infrastructure for social sciences and the linguistics data common language data commons of Australia sorry Michael a little later on and then finally at the end of the day we've got three quarters of an hour to regroup and have a discussion around everything that we've heard and seen today so without further ado introducing the integrated research search infrastructure for social sciences this platform will expand existing social sciences initiatives and provide a coordinated governance model for access to data it will improve the capacity of researchers to access preserve and disseminate quantitative and qualitative social sciences data sources and will drive the development of systems and tools for capturing new and emerging real-time or near real-time data and representing Iris is Dr Steve McKeckin Steve is director of the Australian data archive based in the Centre for Social Research and methods at the Australian National University and so I will hand over to Steve who may want to make some remarks before we get going. Rhys has put the link to the Google doc question register into the chat and so please feel free to add your questions to that document which is what we'll be working from prefer it if you can put them in there then in the chats because I've only got one set of eyes thanks everyone. Thanks Ginny. Rhys that that link you just posted seems to go to the El Dacca link once I've just yeah so all right so I can follow on there. Sorry everyone sorry that's all right thanks for that Rhys yeah thanks Ginny yeah I thought I might just do a quick review of what we're trying to do with Iris just as for those who may not have had a chance to read through the full detail of the plan itself so I'm just going to flash up a couple of slides that we've presented in the previous session the introductory session we did here just just to frame the discussion for today and remind everyone what we're trying to cover and what the emphasis is here so I'll just quickly share my screen for the discussion here so we should be seeing yep presentation mode here I won't flash into main screen because I've been lose a bunch of other things there but just just as a some highlights here um so yeah Iris is the integrated research infrastructure with the social sciences um so we've got a number of partners involved number who are on the call today and we're continuing to engage in discussions with other partners as well as part of the program itself um the just to focus on what it is the the issues that we're trying to focus on in Iris in the initial stages here so the key the key effort that we're emphasizing in in Iris is the integration challenge so social sciences is fairly well progressed actually in terms of data data access and and findability but integration remains a key challenge for us most you know a lot of social science researchers want to be bringing together multiple sources together and need mechanisms for doing that so that's really the emphasis that we've highlighted in the proposal that we've put together here um so integration interoperability really trying to align with somewhat of our colleagues internationally doing as well picking up particularly on work that's been done in Europe and to a lesser extent in the in the US we also draw a lot on government data sources but I mean we've talked quite a lot already today about the glam sector and the gallery's lives archives and museums and you know social scientists use those in a number of different ways for different purposes but a key resource that we haven't touched on much today are those those outside the cultural institutions are more in policy and program departments so thinking particularly about the Australian Bureau of Statistics as a major generator of data and similar agencies like history of health and welfare and history of family studies but also policy and program departments and you know department of social science services department of health and the in fact the the overarching agency responsible for increased the department of education skills and employment you know for some examples are all producers of data that are you know heavily used inside the social sciences um alongside that a key because we work a lot with humans a lot of the available data actually needs to be kept confidential confidential and has serious privacy considerations so we've got to think about some of the the challenges of act you know with having data accessible within the the fair model of findable accessible interoperable and reusable but at the same time accessible under relevant conditions open is not always a conversation we can have in the social sciences so you know bringing together uh some of the thinking there and that was kind of touched upon in the the previous sessions as as well so as I say so we've been focusing on a in a sense a two-phase approach so from 2021 to 2023 and that's the the program we're talking about today but also looking into the future about what can we do from in the next phase what's called the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap so the focus in the first stage is really on that governance and access um long-term environments creation dissemination and use of data and data data integration environments how do we connect different data resources to each other and metadata resources to each other um so in the in the longer term stages focus on a broader range of social science data sources qualitative data and social media data in particular being in the uh an emphasis that we haven't focused here on this initial plan but we'll you know are looking at in the longer term as to how we bring them together capturing real-time data sources into other things and the like and then looking particularly how we bring those together with secured data facilities both physical and virtual that exist in a number of organizations uh and and facilities so we've been working with a basically a research process model um as the basis for how we think about where the different work packages that we're that we're looking at so really you know focusing on a how what's the research process why and how these tools fit into that process uh and where we you know where we bring together some of the resources and you know this is a quick overview of where those packages fit into the the overall research program you'll note that we haven't focused too much on analysis tools and that's that is by design um and I'll say um the the the point that we're focusing on is getting data to the researcher for analysis uh and then looking at the the later stages uh in that phase to model of analysis itself becomes a question of where and how you do that analysis um so it's like we are looking to demonstrate a program uh projects to sort of align the analysis tools in that work package four but as I say that the emphasis is really is connecting data and resources through to the analysis environment rather than analysis tools themselves uh so there's half a dozen work packages that are described in the work in the plan itself uh and we have an emphasis on two different elements of project management the basic project management but also technical management of the system uh so certainly an emphasis here on a technical architecture that will allow us to connect up different systems and different technologies and different existing resources we have a number of well-established social science resources uh in the community uh in Australia and internationally so technical management is is much about connecting those resources having a framework for doing so then there's some specific work packages uh the two you know heavy lifting parts of the vocabulary access and management services or we've entitled vassal uh and geospat social uh looking at spatial and temporal data integration bringing together uh different uh survey sensors and other data spatial data collections uh in integrated environment working with with oren and and uq in particular in there then we've got some demonstrator projects that focus on how do we you know how are those going to be uh leveraged within particular domain or particular you know addressing particular types of problems and then uh two proposed projects around survey data management integration we touched a little bit on this this morning talking about bringing content out of existing web-based tools and then curation tools for the management and and and uh validation of existing data uh data sources as a so fundamentally what we're trying to do is identify what our problems are suggested solutions oriented around access governance sensitive data technologies and information standards uh with an aim to establish you know fair data in the first instance quantitative data as opposed to qualitative data recognizing that those often require different solutions so looking at how we bring together content together um and reusable pipelines and that's where the curation and integrate survey research programs might fit together and and leveraging both existing and new national research infrastructure technologies um and then let's say the impact being establishing reference data is particularly focusing around the census data there's a 250 years of census data so that's one of the the emphasis that we've got here but both current and past census data but certainly other reference collections we make pretty heavy use of major data sets in the social sciences how do how do we make and maximize that use um looking at how do we then feed into policy responses uh in the longer in the short and longer term so how how does our data and how does our use of data and our use of infrastructure assist in the delivery of social and economic policy public policy here in Australia uh and then how do we actually maximize the the return on investment both for data collected in the research domain but also in government sources as well and tying into the national uh data access and transparency uh legislation coming out of the department prime minister and cabinet the officer the national data commissioner at the moment so let's say I'll there's a quick summary there I'll then so happy to open the floor to questions at this point I think they've started to pop through um let me drop the sharing and I'll then sorry open the open the questions okay so we've got um we've got a question from Sandra Silcott here that says could you say a few words about how Vassal might relate to ARDC's existing vocabulary services uh yes so it's intended to work directly with the vocabulary services so we're really focusing on here um the is the how do existing tools so as an example how might a survey researcher use the ARDC research vocabularies Australia um to import um reference metadata from the vocabulary services and also be able to push content into research vocabularies Australia so it's intended to work pretty interactively with those so you start building up libraries of things like questions or response domains of standard classifications is really the emphasis there now that does two things one is it say it allows us to reuse the metadata that exists but it should um under that framework also facilitate um the capacity for machine interoperability going forward if two groups are using the same reference metadata and they're known to be using the same reference metadata then we have a basis on which to to bring together both human interoperability but also machine to machine interoperability going forward so it's a it's embedded Vassal is intended to you know leverage very much research vocabularies Australia and we'll be talking to Adrienne Burton and Rowan Bramley about how we might do that thanks Steve now we've got um four questions from Rob Acklander ANU and Shanika Karunasekira apologies for your pronunciation I'm sure that's not even close oh thanks okay so question one based on the project plan it appears that building capacity for social media data is scheduled for phase two rather than phase one um and she's they say can you confirm this oh and then it's pretty clear that this is correct from the slides just presented just now so do you want to comment on that Steve yeah um so yeah Rob that that's yeah direct directly the case for two reasons the the first one is certainly there's the question of just dealing with scaling going forward we have an 18 month time frame here and how do how do we what could we achieve in 18 months was one of the considerations here that that the the timeframes that we had available to us meant that social media probably we weren't going to be able to get what we needed done within the time and budget available so we had to make a decision about where to prioritize the second reason for that and I noticed a couple of the colleagues from QUT and yourself are on the call is um some of the some of the existing resources that already been put in place ARDCs mates and investments were recently in this space and those projects are coming through in the next 18 months so I think establishing what the the framing might be for requirements for working more actively with social media data that work can be done over the next 18 months and that is a really framing up how to make a a more a clearer investment into you know as part of the roadmap program and building that into that roadmap a road mapping program was our emphasis here rather than trying to um squeeze too much in that they say we thought we say we thought it's unlikely we'll be able to achieve in the 18 months of all the tools um question two leads on from that so given it seems that both Lidaka and Iris and um Michael will be presenting on Lidaka next but feel free to jump in Michael if you want to um given it seems that both Lidaka and Iris are planning to include capability for social media data will there be some coordination or sharing of social media data capability between Lidaka and Iris or are the research community interests considered distinct enough that there won't be any overlap or inefficiency so so I'll start with that and I'll leave it then I'll turn to Michael afterwards so this is one of the questions that I think is really um you know uh this is part of the reason I was just just referring to is scoping out what are the the communities and the sets of needs and where they might overlap is part of that um scoping activity that actually needs to occur and I say we could try and do that as we went um but I think you know uh that that deserves a much larger effort because as I say it seems to me there's a significant investment to be made there and doing the the planning work over the over the the the period that we're talking about here uh and I say and Reese has just touched on the other projects that are there allows us to do that properly and actually you know time the investment correctly within the the larger you know the larger future investment we that we hope will occur and we'd be hoping to contribute to Michael did you want to comment on that at this point or come back to it after you've in your own session it's probably useful just to talk about it now if that's okay with you Steve what's interesting about social media data is it crosses over the humanities and social science it's it's it's just you know everyone uses social media data in a way um so I think our approach in in El Decker is um similar but but possibly slightly different so we're trying to engage directly with ARIDC funded digital observatory and build working relationships with them um so we're starting a kind of joint office hours across some of the platforms the the text analytics platform digital observatory and also TLC map so we're we're just trying to find ways where we work together and start scoping out the kind of analysis um landscape so obviously we're interested in most interest in text analytics but actually network analytics are quite relevant when you're doing work on language data but we prefer the communities and research communities to have that expertise you know to be working together with them so I think trying to build up those relationships and and certainly from our perspective we see social media and the platforms associated as a beautiful bridge between the work we're doing at the humanities end with language data commons and what you're doing at the social sciences so really explicitly a bridge so we're all on the bridge right um in terms of um how how to engage with the other groups um so the digital observatory projects being led by QT Melbourne and UNSW they're the key partners new cues and kind of consultative role on that project um and I think in the digital I don't know if Marisa's here she could actually speak up and say they've been doing the scoping work with the social media research community um so they're you know it it's probably sensible to get directly in touch with them because that helps us build up the necessary networks that we need um and so we're not we're not getting out of scope for what we're trying to do without DACA I guess right so we'd leave we'd rather leave leading social media research communities to social media research communities I guess is the conclusion that that's helpful okay so flowing on from that these projects are to be funded under the HASS RDC and data commons suggest that data are stored and available to all researchers subject to access rights that may apply to particular collections how will this work with social media data for example twitter when the social media platforms place strict conditions on sharing of data collected via apis Steve yep that that's this is the same you can see why we didn't start with social media first this is a core part of the problem Rob as I as you know that um fundamentally there is work happening in a number of countries that is is think you know this is there's partly a privacy and confidentiality consideration here that is associated with social media data sure that's that's one of the issues um but fundamentally that's commercial intellectual property rights that I think are much more problematic here um that I think you know I've seen some work and I have you know some relationships with colleagues in Germany and in the UK I think Gasis has done some work here on thinking about archiving of so Gasis is the German social science data archive for those on the call um who've been trying to do some work in this space on understanding what to do about those limitations Harvard have done some work for example on I think called social science one which is looking at you know doing direct deals with they did particularly with Facebook and then they spent two years not being able to get the data out of Facebook so we did we have proposed in the integration activities this is a discussion that actually happened amongst the the groups the groups so the integration activities partly are thinking about the idea of well what are those things that cross over the projects and Michael's touched upon part of the question of how you know what those issues are there one of the things we touched upon in there is both legal frameworks and a roadmap for thinking about those you know what what do we need next and this this is pretty exemplary of dealing with those sorts of issues how are you know what are the legal considerations we're going to have to deal with before we could get to that point so the fundamentally needs to be a piece of in a sense policy work done to to bring that discussion along and say okay what are the what is it that we you know are actually able to make available how would that be done and what are the models that are there before you know before we could be housing anything and as I say there are a number of folks who are on this call who can contribute to that conversation right and say that would be make a very nice you know piece of work that would fit within you know to me that would align with that set of activities there are the various complexities you know I say and I haven't talked at all about the problems of scaling the activities when you start thinking about you know processing of social media data that go on here as well a piece of work that fundamentally you know tries to scope up or what you know what are the challenges that are there saying and picking up the you know those that are being actively involved in this conversation you know for a while now I think would be fundamentally a you know a very important output to be establishing and it's a to me it's not just a social science activity here social science have a major part to put you know play in that discussion but it is something that crosses over the the hash domains you know more generally Michael did you want to comment on that I guess just two two small points from an LDAC perspective I know people working in social media get worried about the archive worth because that's quite difficult right but I guess when there's curated sets of users that's a really really useful tool and that that has been done in Australia right so the Australian Twitter collection is essentially a curated set of users so that's useful the big challenge is version control and also the ability to to be able to do his historical work to go back in time with the social media we really want to be able to do that so I guess that's our stake in it perhaps from the language side to say thank you and Rob I will go on to question four even though you've said happy for us to bypass it because I think it's interesting so what plans do you have for engaging with research groups in Australia who specialise in services and tools that enable researchers to conduct large-scale real-time social media data collection via API's and also provide analysis tools for example Rapid at University of Melbourne and Boson at ANU I was saying I think that needs to be part of that integrated discussion fundamentally I'd like to actually bring a working group together to do some of that planning work fundamentally so as I say I think we could count amongst those that are already here a starting group for for how we might establish that I think we saw similarly a discussion on preservation questions in the previous discussion here but I say if I say I think bringing together that group trying to get that planning work done how we support that within the ARDC program Jenny so I'd say let me know how you want to further that conversation I guess fundamentally but I say to me it's a critical thing that needs to happen where we fit with that within the program I guess is that is really the question that that we'd want to explore but you know so we've had some initial discussions with I was meeting with some of the folks from the Center for Automated Decision Making who you know partly cover off some of the QUT team here as well but we had so we haven't got into detail there but as I think putting that forward and figuring out how we fit that into this program you know would be a good output coming up with that integration discussion. Can I make a comment Jenny? Yes thanks Michael and Steve for the responses I just feel that this social media data are such an interesting and important source of data for both social sciences and humanities and as as the discussions just as we've just heard it's unclear how they fit across the humanities and the social sciences or the both both sets of communities have got a stake in them I guess I'm just putting it out to the ARDC that you know maybe there is a need to fast track this in some ways I'm a bit concerned to hear that I understand why it's being pushed back for all the reasons that Steve mentioned but it kind of concerns me that we may not be having concerted efforts to develop capabilities or should I say support existing capabilities and expand them from beyond to 2023 it just seems quite far in the future but I completely understand why it's happening this way because I think Eldakar and and and Iris are kind of have got core business in other areas in terms of other data sources and in some ways the social media data are interesting but they're a bit sort of not core business in some ways and so I can understand why the effort and the has to be made towards these other data sources and other research communities but the concern I have is that social medias it's an evolving growing space and you know Steve's already mentioned Internet of Things that's even expanding it even further and I guess I my question is maybe there is a need to somehow fast track this through another project or I guess I just put it back to the ARDC so thanks for your time. Jenny can I come in on that as well sure Kylie Brass from the Academy of Humanities I agree and I wonder whether I mean you know and it's Jenny's position and obviously Rosie's as well just sort of think through how this I mean obviously there's a program of work underway here the beauty of what Jenny's achieving at the moment is capturing that capability that isn't part of I guess this first phase of projects and that's like a gap a big gap I wonder who has mandate you know in in a way to kind of like drive that agenda and I think there is crossover totally with what Steve's doing I don't think it belongs with Steve's work totally nor do I think it belongs with Eldaka although there is crossover there obviously there's been a bunch of work happening at QUT I mean that's been a major sort of epicenter of that work and and the other place I would single out is and I'm sorry for you because I'm not I'm not picking up but I'm just talking about what I'm familiar with I guess in the landscape you know with the work of Axel Bruins and Jean Burgess and and and whatnot but also with ADMS so the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society and I think one thing that I think has got to happen is that this finds its way into the roadmap you know so in a way it's the sort of so yes I think there's it's it would be brilliant for a space in this program to you know identify some of that stuff that's not and it is cross cutting it's not owned by anyone project but it's you know it's something to to scope and and and prioritise in some shape of and form but also for this program of work to feed that into the roadmap which is I know something that you're keen to do as well so I think they want to would want to hear that. Thanks Kylie. Thank you can I just one point um so I probably push back slightly um against the idea Steve that we're waiting until 23 or 24 to do the social media thing actually it's happening right now so QT is working with Melbourne and UNSW on a national platform for social media it's actually happening right now they're doing that work I can't speak for them I think they're best speaking for themselves when we're thinking about a roadmap it's pretty clear that the government when they're wanting to invest they're looking at you know readiness uh and so on so part of readiness is that there's a clear pulling together of past and current investments in this kind of area um so it strikes me that there's there's a lot of work or maybe not so much work um but bringing together social media researchers who have these kind of investments and capabilities coming together and and putting forward uh you know the next phase of investment I think that's the kind of discussion and we're happy to be involved because we see a kind of linking over um but it's not because we don't think it's important it's it's just simply out of difference to the expertise of social media researchers that we're not trying to leave in the space um I think it's incredibly important I would love to see some more APIs and trove to some of the uh the data there but as we've heard it may not happen this time around so it's not we don't think it's important we think it's absolutely important but it is really out of difference to the people who should be leading this kind of work so we're really happy you're here today um joining in and joining in the discussion raising issues yeah I think that's a fair summary Michael is and I guess I was talking specifically on behalf of virus there to you know to touch on that which is like it was a pretty clear you know as I I knew the question would be Cummings that's kind of why I wanted to frame this discussion very early on that there is you know it's a question of you know fundamental question capacity as well um within the within the context of what we're trying to do um but yeah I I would concur with what Michael's saying there there is some pretty active work that's going on there um and say I think we could you know sort of extend you know Rob's earlier question about how to bring that group together I think we could bring that to get grouped together fairly effectively uh and again I think it's right that's neither Michael or myself with other you know the obvious people to leave that discussion it's that it's actually you know it's kindly touched on it's what is the you know has more broadly consideration there that was all that was always part of the the challenge we have is where does it fit here it fits everywhere and which makes it hard to fit it anywhere is is part of the problem um so that's you know thinking about that work and doing a you know really good policy and and planning piece there I think again that that would be my position um I think that Rosie Hicks has got her hand raised so we might see what Rosie has to say um lovely thanks Jenny just checking on that on mute I'm sorry for jumping in but I think it's terribly important when we're using the word roadmap to be really careful about the definition here um we've spoken about a roadmap for a particular project activity uh over the course of the day and then they're very important things um the the question we're looking at here in the notes are there any capability gaps um can this be incorporated into the roadmap I want us to be really careful to understand that the ALDC has no control over what goes into the national research infrastructure of road mapping or roadmap you know we've got an expert working working on that moment however um we absolutely can feed this in as part of our submissions and response to an exposure draft and I'm delighted to do that because I want to make one other really important point it would have been possible to just fund for completely separate projects um we're hearing from four projects today they could have been completely disconnected what you are doing as a community today um is an absolutely fantastic step forward in addressing this as a whole of sector activity and the the real gems in this are the things that come about because they are at the edges because they do overlap because they are in danger of falling through the cracks so you know please take it from me that we're delighted to have these issues brought to the fore today um and uh it's exactly what a national research infrastructure is able to achieve that we don't do any other way thanks Jenny thanks Rosie okay just follow up quickly on that Jenny um which I mean Rosie's point is absolutely correct to say we don't we don't you know they say with when I talk about a road like we have talked in the integration activities about the idea of a road map for bass and indigenous um as a as a piece of work to what does this thing kind of need to do that is actually you know separate from but should feed into that broader national research infrastructure roadmap so you're right the language matters here and distinguishing quite what we talk about there is is important there um what I would say to those who are on this call here is you say you will get the opportunity for feedback into the national research infrastructure road map going forward uh you know the timing is you know the exposure draft is coming soon so say the capacity to feed into that program is is um uh is there uh as well in in the near future say we don't quite know what the date of that specifically is but responding to the exposure draft and pointing out this is a capability gap might be a good thing to be doing in that you know in your responses there uh be one part to be in there but certainly I think within the the constraints of the the has an indigenous program we are keen to kind of have a um where's the shared roadmap for for us uh within that those constraints as well thanks okay really quickly because we've only got five minutes but um Paul Gruber says love your work one criteria is where possible project plan should improve opportunities for Australian researchers working on challenges that impact our region including the ability for Australian collections and research to work in partnership with our Pacific neighbors is it possible at this point to build such Pacific partnerships at these early stages that is I'm concerned about a focus on US and European links here that may preclude future past Pacific partnerships uh okay so yes it would be I mean I would say one of the challenges here is that the infrastructure you know partly that we're talking about here does not exist in some countries like or it is very you know so so I work a lot with groups in Indonesia uh in Taiwan in uh to less extent Singapore etc um and there's a very big jump between these places to say it's they have bigger problems to be dealing with um that said how do how do we support capability building across that region absolutely um that similarly I say one of the we haven't figured out we're working quite closely with colleagues in New Zealand is say you know as the simplest example of you know of that um there aren't a lot of investments at the infrastructure level in this space in the country you know across the Pacific region that we're talking about here but certainly we have some connections that we can draw upon there uh and that question about capability building across the region and then possibly how do Australian researchers work in those regions actually use some of the infrastructure um ADA has actually got quite a lot of experience in doing that uh in fact and you know we can kind of draw upon that there are networks that exist but it's as I say it would largely be in the area of capacity and capability building as a as opposed to partnering on directly on infrastructure itself it's uh in a number of the countries that we might be interested in it's just not there you know frankly and so it's often provided from you know other locations but you know should be part of you know should be part of the discussion as something we've done for quite a long time great thanks Steve okay so we've only got five minutes left um so I might give Steve an opportunity to make any summing up remarks that he might want to make at this point uh yeah so I think at this point I say if it's certainly though that we've got our plans out there and we're certainly keen to talk to anyone who's interested going forward we've brought a number of partners along the discussion number of whom are here today uh and certainly if you have an interest in this going into the future um yeah we're really keen to see both I say in the short term your responses to the the the work packages and the plan that we've put together for now but as I say I'm very keen on thinking you know uh three five you know years ahead what do we need to be you know feeding into our planning into the future and I think we've had a a good long discussion about you know a couple of those possibilities already today um but you know if you're interested you know how you might use this infrastructure you know where partnering might occur uh or you know commentary on the the plan itself you know we look forward to that response and uh look forward to working with people in the future thanks so yeah it's a reminder that we will leave the question register open so please feel free to continue to add questions um and I'll make sure that Steve is aware of that and we get them answered for you um don't forget the feedback submission due on the 27th of September I think we are all looking forward to receiving your feedback so is anybody else got any remarks before we move on in a couple of minutes to the language data commons of the Australia project okay well we may just wait for a minute or two so if somebody wants to sing or or share a talent because um we have advertised the time so I do want to go up on time so that if people want to listen to Michael they get that opportunity um Paul says can we draw India in our plans in any way so just a final and can you expand on that in um Paul in one minute or less that's that's not a small question it might not have a small question India is one of our major partners and I was just wondering and they have a huge it capability I was thinking we as ADS in as a nation um you know why how can we draw in India I suppose and leverage a lot of India researchers and the India infrastructure I was thinking um there's a lot of talent in India uh certainly on the IT side of the equation there and to say we did work with we've got a couple of comparative research projects that include India as a site there I mean it's uh so you know certainly on the development capabilities there might be some possibilities there as a site for social science research it's it's it's not one thing fundamentally I think is the question that's there it's a bit like working with say with Indonesia you know it's you know the breadth both the size of the population the breadth of activities that have happened there uh makes it make for some interesting challenges there but I it seems like as I partnering in the different parts of the of the region would be worthwhile furthering the conversation I think yeah I guess my my spirit of it was because these are pilot programs would be nice to start building in this early on before we kind of forget about it later on and and you know strengthen existing relationships at the expense of building capacity and capability with our neighbors and trading partners so that's all thanks Paul okay well thanks very much Steve and thank you everyone for contributing questions to that session so we're going to move on now to our final project plan session and as I said at the end of the day we'll regroup for a group discussion so developing the language data commons of Australia this platform will capitalise on existing infrastructure rescue vulnerable and dispersed collections and link with improved analysis analysis environments for new research outcomes and representing Ladaka today we have Dr Michael Haw Michael Marco Farmy you know the professor Michael Haw is what I probably should have said both of those things anyway Marco Farmy and Dr Peter Sefton Michael is professor of linguistics and applied linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ and is our project lead Marco is the program manager of Ladaka and the Australian text analytics platform and Peter is the technical lead of Ladaka and the Australian text analytics platform which is also known as ATAP just in case you needed another acronym today anyway I will hand over to Michael who will give us a bit of background about the project and thanks a lot Jenny so I just wanted to acknowledge the lands from which I'm joining you today they're the lands of the Yaga and Dorival peoples up in Queensland and I don't want to give another project summary but I just wanted to share two slides to give a bit of context to the LDAC has our DC project that that perhaps went apparent in the project plan which was a bit more focused so I'll just share that and as I share I also wanted to give a shout out to some of the other LDAC team members who are here as well in the room they're very welcome to speak up and add to what I'm saying here so just just to give a bit of context we're talking about this project here the language data commons of Australia has research data commons project so the LDAC has RDC project this is this is death by acronyms here right but I think what's important to understand with this particular project plan is it has it's actually building on a number of past and current investments so I won't go into all all the sort of past ones but the current investments would be four actually that are quite relevant to this one so there's an investment in the Australian text analytics platform which has a remit which goes well beyond language scientists into into has some even outside of has researchers wanting to use text analytics we have a language data commons of Australia data partnerships project which is starting to you know pilot how we bring together all of these different institutions with with all of the different technical and governance and some frameworks there's a NINGAR platform which is an RAC leaf project which Nick T burgers is leading which is working with primary source materials manuscripts and so on and making them more useful and available to researchers and communities and finally there's an indigenous lab research on indigenous languages project where we're partnering with trying to increase the capacity of indigenous researchers involved in this area on this project so it's kind of coming together and of course as Steve mentioned phase two or first phase three is the sort of national roadmap and wanting to obviously have a footprint in that and if I was going to summarize what we're trying to do in the project in very very simple terms it's really about finding language data so language data is often hard to find because it's scattered across different places so an example would be um so for a particular indigenous language um there may be records of it that have been collected by linguists by anthropologists by our historians and by missionaries just for instance so there's concrete examples of those and people have put that data in different places basically so for a community or a researcher who's trying to understand and get hold of data it's all over the place so this is this is a big issue finding the data increasing reusability so even when you find the data it may not be in a form that's easy to use so a very simple example would be in Trove they've done OCR on on some language data but of course we all know OCR makes mistakes when it's English data you can use spell check and it's like that right but when you're dealing with other language data you don't have a spell check for some of the Australian indigenous language right um and so uh Eldak is about for instance providing tools so you can you know using an LNLP to be applying spell check to those collections to fix up those OCR mistakes so that's just about increasing reusability of the data then of course this is something we hear a lot constantly I would say every time we're engaging with indigenous stakeholders it's it's about repurposing language data so linguists have often been using language data for description communities are not so interested in linguistic description they're wanting to repurpose their data to contribute to the cultural interlates of their communities and so on so that's kind of the broader context I guess the second thing is we're really keen on building up an ecosystem and we see this as the way we talk about it as a 10-year project 2032 is actually what we're thinking about this coincides with a decade of indigenous languages we're in that decade of indigenous languages so we really see this as a step-wise progression building up capacity amongst researchers and communities getting access to data and tools and so on so one way of thinking about this is that there's been a lot of work here on this is you know flattery since copying things as you know the serious form of flattery type of thing this is from Australian Biocommons just someone recognizes this it might be eerily familiar so I've converted into terms that make sense I think to humanity scholars so in the Biocommons there's the wet lab so our equivalent is we have archival and feed work humanities people go out and they they're digging into it but there's also kind of public humanities arm to things which you know communities are interested in their own data and what's going on with it and I guess particularly in the language sciences there's been the growth of what you might call data driven humanities where people analyzing data collections and that's a critical contributor to research outcomes but it's not the sole driver of it so there's still a lot of qualitative interpretive work going on what's starting to emerge is what we might call data intensive humanities where the research is fully dependent on advanced data intensive analytics and then finally these are these people who are like gold I think they're called bioinformaticians I think we could dub them humanities informaticians where they're really working at the high end of things are there's very few people like this in Australia and indeed not so many around the world I think they're all hired by Google and Co who pay a lot more money than universities could ever pay so these these are really precious people fast and of course this feeds back into the kinds of things where people are dipping into the archive so we our aim I think with Eldaka is really trying to to work across the whole range of users and although we we talk about things like machine learning and APIs and so on we really have in mind the long tail of researchers who are actually working here a lot of the time in the wet labs and and perhaps dipping their toes into data driven and so we progress along and we've seen that with Australian Biocons it's very successful in terms of shifting the kinds of research that can can be done in addition to traditional sort of biological environmental science research which doesn't stop because you still obviously have to go out to the field so just was wanting to give a bit of context I'm assuming you have read the research plan so if you haven't then quickly have a read now but we're we're really looking forward to questions and I'm just clicking across no questions yet I'm very welcome to raise questions either in the young text box or just if you want to ask us questions and all the difficult questions will go to Marco and Peter and I think Nick is here as well Has anybody got any questions for Michael, Marco, Peter or Nick? Yeah well I'll quickly answer and then I'm sure Peter's going to give a much more eloquent answer yeah absolutely the reason we didn't include it in our project plan was it would have taken a lot of space to explain it and we didn't want to put something out there that would would would just raise more confusion than anything but I believe Peter you're presenting the architecture model at the research conference in October so that'd be a public way and of course you can obviously contact us as well so Peter do you want to Yes it will be made available so we've been focusing on building a prototype but the yes it'll be public soon. Okay look I can ask a question and I'm not sure whether it's entirely relevant to the program that you're doing except that there has been an enormous amount of relatively recent research on the diversity of Australian Indigenous languages there have been relatively few really comprehensive for example dictionaries have been produced now in the case of language which which has spoken well by a large number of people those kind of dictionaries are important sort of adjuncts both for the relearning of language but also the maintenance of it and also the translation of text and so on and so forth and I'm thinking in particular say for example of the Yongomata dictionary which is already something that is online which is excellent but was produced by out of hard you know dictionaries that were produced 30 or 40 years ago and it seems to me that it would be a good idea to target some of those areas where there are Indigenous languages which have very large communities of continuing speakers and build into those resources that are more current than the ones that exist so in a sense it's sort of surveying the nature of the Indigenous community in relation to the repurposing that in fact you were talking about and that the use of those into very different kind of categories according to the nature of digital resources that might help the trajectory that's happening at this moment in time that's my I think that's Nick T Berger's kind of jump yeah it's a really pertinent question to almost everything we're talking about this is research that's gone into creating dictionaries and dictionary is a great example of something that needs to be renewed periodically every you know 10 years or whatever I mean is how it says and you know a repository like I don't know there could be a repository somewhere in Australia that could store digital data from dictionaries Australian language dictionaries so when I worked at IETS as we ran a dictionaries project and asked people to deposit the files so this was back in the days of CPM and DOS and you know that those files could then be reused and repurposed in different ways because they came from structured data for dictionaries so you know absolutely this is something that needs to be done Eldaka isn't going to be a repository primarily it's going to be a sort of platform and access to existing repositories but IETS is would be a logical place where digital data of this kind should be stored IETS is currently running dictionaries a well-funded dictionaries project but as I understand it they're not requiring the digital data to be stored they're only funding the production of books yeah yeah and look I can link this back into the previous discussion that we had about social media because again if you look at uh Northeastern Ireland and uh if you look at literacy in younger language uh there are very very few books works even sort of pamphlets being produced now more were being produced 40 years ago than there are today but the social media use of younger language is absolutely everywhere so there's an enormous resource now about language as it is being spoken and used that could if one would be able to link that in to that process of if you like sort of updating dictionary production language uses there be an extraordinarily beneficial thing so again a slightly lateral comment but I mean I think it is something that is looking towards the affordances provided by digital media if one can overcome a whole series of sort of you know problems of permissions and so on and so forth yeah thank you okay um a question from Rob Acklin Michael in your earlier comments you mentioned linguists have an interest in social network data online networks or otherwise can you please expand on this comment do you see the current partners can provide this capability or is this more for phase two and I think by phase two Rob probably means post June 2023 yeah so I guess linguists are like everyone in the humanities and social scientists and and see social media as a really rich data source for studying language and changes in language and it's quite interesting because you know traditional social linguistics which focuses on you know traditional social linguistic variables like gender and age and all these kind of things it is obviously really different in our mind communities and so that's where network analytics are absolutely vital to understanding what's going on there and we know there's groups overseas in Finland and others who are doing real interesting work in a space which we'd like to learn from you know for the linguists right um so I don't think the linguists are anything anything special in terms of being interested in social media data but like everyone else um trying to build up capability to access it um you know grab the data work with it work with it ethically and so on like not just grabbing it's not the right term but being up access it and get it into forms where you can analyze it so I think there's a lot of similarities although I think one of the differences I've noticed is probably linguists might see social media not so much through the network analytics but as just a big chunk of language use and for us that's that's really big data obviously because it's massive amounts so I don't know that that helps so I think there's a lot of synergies and possibilities there but I would caution that probably the kind of tools we're looking for are probably at the simpler end and perhaps what social media researchers at the top end of town are doing I mean we're just looking for some some basic tools to get into it you know beyond the copying and pasting from twitter pages and all sorts of horrible things that humanities researchers still do um and so the current partners can provide this capability um I think as I said before I think there's a lot of value in in your group and Shanika's group working together with some of the other currently funded through AODC funded projects and I think working together with the centre of excellence for automation I would say with the language data commons the centre of excellence for the dynamics of language total I really paid played a really pivotal role in supporting what we're doing so being able to connect in with the centre of excellence is a really good way of showing a national spread but I just can't comment on that capability if I may just comment back um yeah I was actually not just referring to social media networks I was talking about social network data more generally like I um so to what extent my social network analysis as a subfield actually I know it's how it may actually be built be built into the capabilities of Eldaka but um but also just a comment that with regard to um you made the comment that linguists tend to think of social media data as it's more a text source of text and and then you referred to that that leads to big data techniques for kind of analysing text from a I guess a computational linguistics perspective but what I'm getting at is that there is an interest in knowing not only um you know what text is being produced on social media but who is actually producing the text who's who's authoring it you know and and how are positioned you know on Twitter for example or in social networks more generally like are they in the position of power of some way and that's where social network analysis and measures of network centrality are relevant so I guess like I I'm just continuing on with my theme that um there's kind of additional capacity and capabilities in Australia in this area and it's I'm very keen to make sure that we can connect in with what's going on so thank you just to add a little bit to what Rob says with Rapid we did work with the US Army they had a grant specifically in the language area they were interested in looking at code switching in the social network to identify how people code switch to get the ideas across so we have built in capabilities for language tracking in that context so if anybody is interested it's available at the moment yeah that that's super exciting um I mean I think maybe just echoing what Rose you were saying I mean this is the great thing about coming together and we can see the sort of capabilities so I think we're aware of of the power and importance of social network analytics but there's less specific expertise in our group on that so we're really keen to because you know bringing these things together is going to be very powerful but as I said we really need to be building off kind of current investments as well of which there are some so yeah I agree I know there are current investments but those current investments may not be in the area social media analysis takes different forms and so the people for example at QUT may not be doing social network analysis or may not be focusing on networks as such and so that therefore brings in a different set of tools and different capabilities so I guess I guess I'm trying to take the opportunity of this forum to just indicate that there's a diversity of researchers working in this space who have been funded by the ARC who are part of current plans for centres of excellence and so um yep so looking forward to continuing that conversation okay thank you um Kylie Brass says Michael can you say something more about work package 4.2 the process for developing strategic partnerships with key national stakeholders especially Glam Ray a joint roadmap for long-term preservation yeah that's that's a great question Kylie and I'm glad I'm glad you asked it and I'm not surprised you put an interest in that one um so I guess one of one of the tricky things with with LDACA is um because it's a funded project with an end date um it's not like we can set up a long term repository because we don't we don't have funding to do that and I think I think the consensus is really the answer is working across Glam or at least the Lambert if I'm right the libraries archives and museums they're long long-term custodians um in our view um of course university libraries are part of that um but there's this obviously some real gaps between what we need in terms of long-term preservation of language data and what libraries are currently doing in archives and museums um so perhaps our approach and with we really welcome the advice of the advisory panel on this because there's a bit of expertise necessarily right about how we might do this um but but our view is is a kind of ground-up approach is best um so rather than top down and trying to do the whole nation uh which is not going to happen in 18 months and which is be too difficult we think a ground-up approach where we're starting to work across some selected ones so um some university selected university libraries so we're we're targeting Queensland right now just because that's where we've got some context so some some of the university libraries uh try to connect in with the state library try to connect in with state archives and there's also some museums which hold data and just start to explore how um you might be able to work across those so one one issue is around the format of the data and is it preservable digital objects on which I think Peter and Nick would have a lot to say um but there's also just finding the data and finding the data could be as simple as just applying standard kind of metadata codes like Auslan to the data and getting uh uh those archives on board so that that's and just starting the discussion so we'd like to to be talking with the um the association of university libraries about how they're seeing this issue of research data and their responsibility um we see language data is kind of a cultural data so there's a bit more of an imperative than them holding on to you know a bunch of astronomy numbers or whatever um which obviously that'd be a bit worried about because language data is here forever right um we want to keep it forever um so that that does seem to be potentially within the realm of libraries but it's just working that through yes yeah yeah I saw you on that drill so uh specific suggestions would be back are really welcome on that point thank you okay Tim Sherritt asks does the integration of binder hub into the Australian text analytic platform mean that you'll be creating a local instance of binder hub and if so will this be open to users and users beyond a tap that's a good question but I'm going to just add a Peter so we we are currently reviewing the um the platforms binder hub and others um to work out what's the most appropriate uh technology to use I'm not an expert in this but we have people working with our team at Arnett and surveying what's available um HAP will be available to everybody and this is all based on open source software and one of the primary primary goals for everything we're doing is to make sure that any analytics pipeline um will be as reusable as possible probably not possible to to absolutely guarantee that but we want to take great care to make sure that we have fully described research objects um that can have some hope of working outside of any particular platform but we don't know what whether it's binder hub or not thank you um right so we've got from Paul Gruber um Ray work package 4.4 stepwise capacity building of Australian language researchers a series of engagement and training workshops online training modules and research support for researchers working with text can undergraduate students in a sense be included that is can materials be made authorable modifiable so that teaching academics can use it in their own local BA degree programs for example yeah that's a really good question and um I think probably the answer is absolutely because LDAC is an open science community um and I think it's also in our contract that the uh it's supposed to be national riot so we can't just keep it for small groups um so yeah absolutely um I mean there'd be some kind of I don't think it's particularly important in an undergraduate classroom but there's some kind of citation uh kind of things but yeah no absolutely that would be the idea I mean we can't run the workshop obviously for the undergrads um we can run them for the researchers but yeah the researchers grab them bring them into their classrooms get the younger you know scholars on board with us early that's perfect right that's that's kind of the stepwise change indeed it is uh okay looking at capability gaps just a couple of comments that they've got some gaps in storing social media records in indigenous languages um and gaps that we've already discussed in the development of dictionaries okay are there any further questions for Michael or his team are there any more gaps perhaps yeah or items for the wish list as Ruth says yeah I'm someone's writing parenity that's yes this this is this is the biggie that's the age old parenity problem yeah um we're really really keen on that happening um so you know it's one of our goals to to keep plugging away at that issue um I guess that's the best way we can put it um but I do think when we're responding to the increased draft roadmap that will be something we'll be raising that um an increased capability must provide this kind of long term uh sort of storage and preservation of high-value collections because otherwise I mean that's that's core to the increased capability Rosie's going to speak up um Michael this is such a topical uh discussion it's so important across um every area of research and so if I may I'd really like to to first comment and then ask another question increased capabilities of finite we don't know that we exist beyond 30th of June 2023 um obviously my day job is to do my very best to make that happen um but it is the same for all increased capabilities and indeed how can we create new national research infrastructures if we're not prepared to close old ones and with that in mind um I don't think increased capabilities of the answer but I do want us to be really clear about what we think the answer should be um and I I you know I have conversations with Desi and I say that's fine just commit to funding us uh to 2050 and researchers will feel that that is and even if no I'm actually I mean I say it jokingly but I'm being um perhaps not in entirely flippant by saying if you choose to fund ARDC to provide this capability to 2050 then you've got a reasonable answer but I can't see that happening very easily so what do we do about it that I mean this this is one of the biggest questions right now and I think it was a great thing to be discussing just fix the whole thing for us here Mike so so I I guess the involvement and maybe I don't know someone from Trove is here we would like to speak as as one of the key stakeholders and and you know Glam um but if we see um Trove as part of our increased capability which I think we are then uh Trove National Library and all all the libraries and archives and museums they're the long-term custodians um especially for a humanities type of data it's a really natural fit um so trying to find a way for us to bridge the gap between the sort of public facing mandates of Glam institutions and the obviously the research focused aims of increased capability I think that's the magic um sort of bringing together where we're trying to aim for here I would say an increased capability which has a seven-year um investment timeline it's a whole lot better than to um but yeah um libraries are longer but T and do you want to it's me actually oh sorry just got me Tegan is on some incredibly well-deserved but no in here as exciting as she hoped to leave um look I might need to repeat I'm not going to repeat the whole little bit from before but for those who may not have been present I take the point but I mean one thing is the National Library is not and has not for a really long time my entire career really been in a position to pick up and store and manage projects um and services that have been created by this community as an ongoing we do have some responsibility for published material and also manuscript material which overlaps with the linguists a bit because that's where most of your data is right but that's not true of other disciplines either so even I think in an environment where we have different kinds of funding we are unlikely given our current role and articulation of that role to pick up responsibility for data sets that don't cross over with our collections in an innate way which as I said for some of these communities they do and for some they don't um I don't we aren't going to be the catchall and the solution to the long-term sustainability as much as my beating heart says I'd love it if we got a different mandate and a different way of set up and I think the National Library would be a great location it happens internationally but that isn't the environment that we're working within so yes all I can say is I don't think that's the magic bullet either I think they're really hard questions personally personal statement again not from my institution my career has largely been marked by seeing some fantastic projects which have died because they haven't been able to be sustainable right it is the 20th anniversary right this week of Osblit which is a wonderful initiative and a fantastic thing Osblit was one of seven projects that were funded in that round and I think there's only two of those that still exist so it is a significant issue for this community to not to continue to build things that can't be sustained and yeah the library won't come in and be the white knight on this one where we can get stuff into Trove I think we will maintain Trove and we will start to guarantee that we can what's in Trove will be maintained into the long term it's going to be a bit of a shift in our space too um I noticed that there's a couple of people with hands raised but I just want to uh go back to a question from Nick and I'm going to ask Rosie Hex to address this so Nick says can I DC not be the advocate for a national data service that guarantees long-term and ongoing curation of research data um thanks Jenny I did put a note in the chat for Nick there as well I am very comfortable going into the exposure draft saying that this is a national requirement I think this is very very straightforward um the and I will go back to Nick's comment just prior to that uh European research funding can go for 15 20 50 years and no you know if we look at Sonoto that's not the answer to our problems that um CERN does make the statement that they have projects funded for the next 20 years and therefore it is a reasonable place to be retaining the data now um I feel very comfortable with saying uh this is what's needed for that to be successful in the Australian space noting that ARDC itself um if we look at the Nectar Research Cloud for example doesn't run the hardware um that would actually post the data but certainly being in a position to partner with others to ensure that happens um you know this is a it's actually a strategic decision as part of a national research infrastructure roadmap we absolutely agree with the need we've been having lots of discussions internally about um how the importance of discipline based repositories provides the additional skills understanding expertise for a particular discipline but it doesn't fit well with a single institution uh a university we normally look to universities in this space a single institution holding all the space so the technical shape of the solution I think would still require crafting and could be done in a way where we um consider sensitive data restrictions jurisdictional data restrictions that there's a lot there but I think going into this roadmap I'm saying you need Michael I'll raise you I'll go out from the seven years and say we need a 20 year horizon to have a robust solution for Australia I'm comfortable with us doing that I don't know where it will land back to you any thank you um so Alison raised Oslit which is turning 20 uh Richard from uh Osley has just pointed out that they're turning 26 and agree wholeheartedly that community engagement goes a long way in sustaining research infrastructure but there are a lot of platforms that were set up around the same time parody sick os stage api and um uh it's it is a hard slog to keep them going is what I would say it's a lot of hard work and Osley's got the um fortunate position of having um a number of benefactors I believe um whereas you know some of the other disciplinary areas such as os stage which is as you are probably all know close to my heart is a little bit harder to extract money from your community because they're actually struggling themselves so so yeah there's um there are problems in sustaining these kinds of research projects for sure uh yes you are integral to the legal profession Richard I agree with you okay uh now a couple of people had their hand up and that is uh Claudia I don't know who came first so I'll start with Claudia thanks Jenny um no worries nice to see you yes see you too for those that don't know me I'm Claudia funder from the research service at art center Melbourne with the Australian performing arts collection so in the glam sector and performing arts community there um I just wanted to back up what Ellison said in terms of the longer term repositories with the glam sector everything we seem to do just keeps getting cut and is very project based and anything that's sort of more long-term or business as usual is getting harder and harder to get the work done and get the money for the work to be done particularly during COVID times as I'm sure many of you are in the same situation where we're all relying on the government and no other sorts of funding and everything else is looking a bit precarious so um yeah the glam the other thing about the glam sector is that everybody has such different collecting areas and collecting policies there's no one place that would be a repository for this stuff um it would by the nature of those organisations even if they do like work long term to be quite disparate and broken up a bit thanks thanks Claudia uh Steve um yeah I was going to yeah sort of follow up I think Rosie said a lot about actually what I was going to kind of touch on there the uh I I think the the question I come to which is kind of the summary which is if it can't be an increased capability what what can be is you know it has to be something that is a you know a permanent institution of some sort or a some combination thereof and that probably needs the but to be the basis of the discussions I think that we have going forward this is another one of those you know we touched upon what to do about social media but this is another one of those discussions that really kind of needs a framing for across the well across the Haas community but as as Rosie pointed out it's not a Haas problem on its own either you know it's you know we're not the only discipline that are dealing with this problem fundamentally um it can be done say 88 40 years old this year um so you know we've done it for a little while um I I think probably let's say the evolution that happened in the social sciences is they started out in the sorts of structures that we're talking about they've progressively moved into um actually partnerships between government and academia on you know basic service provider models um so there are probably models that we can look at um to try and pick up uh what what works internationally um but I think that's again another one of those overarching discussions that we probably want to pick up after this you know in the context of both the the IDN and the the cross project discussions you know which repository is where and and and what will each of them do has been part of the discussion or we don't have a clear answer for the reasons we've just discussed fundamentally so again that's another one of those kind of framing discussions that we need you know it's not a quick discussion but needs to be you know have a shared position I think that's probably the space we want to do look at going forward. Thanks Steve and I think Peter Sefton may have had his hand up too. Yep um so I just wanted to respond to what Rosie said as well uh there is um there is actually a kind of a backstop last resort for putting data which is the institutions my understanding is that um as institutions that have signed up to the Australian Code for the Responsible Conducted Research are actually at least for research under that which would be all the funded main funded research that they're responsible for providing services for researchers to meet their obligations to keep data and so there is a there is kind of an architect there is a there's a policy framework which says that institutions should be making services available to help people with data management and storage for the appropriate length of time um I think we know that um it's patchy and a lot of institutions don't have those services or don't have very mature versions of those services uh there was some discussion in the chat earlier on about the institutional publications repositories that were ceded by um funding Arrow and APSR and Rubrik um which which got got those things started in the Australian University so I think most of those persist now um so it wasn't ongoing funding so I while it's really important that we have places to put things like language data which might be more centralized um we should also probably be focusing and I've spoken to Rosie about this um you know we could we could also look at a parallel program to make sure that we have that institutional support so when somebody does something that needs to be kept and it doesn't matter about the discipline this is not a has thing um there's somewhere for it to go yeah thanks very much okay well we're running right to the end of Michael's session which got a little bit hijacked by some um concerns that that go across the board I think but Michael would you like to uh say anything in summary before we go head back into those more general discussions yeah um I mean I really appreciate the the general discussion that we've had here uh because um parenity uh long-term preservation of language data is this a really key issue that we're we're we're sort of building up workflows and and trying to upskill people to to work with that but we we can't actually solve the problem ourselves right um so we're really happy to be talking about that um just uh circling back to the project plan itself of course we really welcome um any feedback you have on what it is we propose in this plan of course remembering it's an 18 month plan um and so some of the constraints are around um you know it's it's not like fishing in the ocean there's not so many skilled people so we have to design things in a way that are actually doable in 18 months in the sense that we know there's actually people we can hire to do the work so there are some kind of practicalities involved here that we have built into a project plan but like I said we see this this is a we'll call it a 10-year project for the moment it's the 50-year project but let's just launch the 10-year one at the moment we see this as a 10-year project and so we're really you know all the suggestions that you bring to us um you know maybe we're not able to act upon them right now um it's not because we don't care or we don't think those things are really important um but you know it's a way of building it up and you know continuing on on the plans we have in the longer term and you know what we see El Dacar is a really important uh kind of hub within the humanities end of the humanities and social sciences research day of commons um but we know there's a lot of other humanities researchers out there who have great expertise and we're kind of looking forward to you know next stage of connecting and what that work is on. Thanks very much Michael um I noticed that there's a couple of new questions that have gone into the um the question register so we'll make sure that those get answered for you um so check back later on there. Yeah the short answer on our net is they're funded in the same way um so they're not funded for 20 or 30 years either so they're they're similar sort of issues. Okay all right well thank you very much to Michael Marco who's there somewhere I believe and Peter Sefton for filling us in on the language data commons of Australia today and now we're just going to head into a further general discussion around everything that we've seen today so thanks to all of the project leads for coming along today and sharing with us and thank you to everybody who's participated in the discussion as well I think it's been a really useful day and once again I encourage you please to take the time to provide your written feedback to the project leads um and the as I said the advisory panel the project leads and I will be working through that feedback to make sure that we incorporate as much of it as we reasonably can in those plans and we'll be generating a capability gap register so that we know what we might not need to be doing um as we look to the future. So um does anybody have any points that we haven't covered yet today? Ah can you talk about what you intend integration to be? Okay um we can talk about that um I would say that the one of the first cabs off the rank in relation to the integration is the exploration of a tool called CI logon which will enable an extension to the existing AAF capability um and I might ask Peter Sefton if he would be willing to talk us through that work if he's still with us. Yep I just came I just turned my video back on. Okay so the one of the really um key things and again this is not just for HASS or um it's for anything anybody who's dealing with non open data um we lack infrastructure in our sector to actually um provide authorization services for who gets to see what. Now there's a spectrum of uses for this so there's some very um very highly sensitive data which needs to be kept you know away from networks and you know um you may not be able to take your phone in if you're going to go and look at it and those sorts of things but there is another tier of data which can be put on a network you can have on your laptop but you have to agree to licenses and you have to you know you have to maybe be vetted before you can look at it so for that for that tranche of data um that covers a lot of what we'll be doing with the language the language data and a lot of other stuff in the HASS sphere um we're looking at on the LDACA project and um and the text analytics platform at Waze that we can provide protocols for making sure that the right people get to see data so that could be under care principles and fair principles who is meant to be looking at you know who's allowed to download something and and to be able to separate the concerns so that you have a collect an institution might be responsible for looking after the data and hold a repository but may not be able to authorize somebody to look at something and that would certainly be the case if you wanted to deposit things at the NLA they wouldn't be able to work out whether someone's part of a particular cultural group um so it's one one simple way we're going to test in the LDACA project is being able to make sure that everything is stored with a license so every piece of data has a license so license will say who's allowed to um who's allowed to use that data and download it um and then we can have a separate service which is where CI log on comes on comes in where the people who the custodians of that data can maintain their own cohorts of people their own groupings so starting with um a linguistics project we can make sure that the chief investigator of that project can name the researchers on the project put them into a group and we can store the data and then when somebody wants to access it we can check whether the the person trying to access it is part of that group that's distributing the storage in one place at the storage and management in one place and the and the sort of authorization in another place uh so we want that service which the AF the Australian Access Federation can offer to see how that works with um with research projects but it may also work the same model may also work for giving people from various cultural groups or other outside things um so you know you could have a collection with where it's available only for a paid subscription and you would want to check whether someone was in that group of paid subscribers or just check that someone had agreed to a license so that it's an important thing for us to to for the sort of middle not the long not necessarily the whole long tail but kind of middle bit of the tail of people who need to have uh appropriate access controls on data thanks peter so I should clarify that the integration stream or the shared work packages stream is there to benefit all four of the activities so these are activities that will benefit each of the streams and work towards it becoming a coherent research data commons so ci logons as I said the first cab off the rank will also be working on the indigenous data governance and rolling that out across the four activities which becomes another of our integration activities and uh we are looking to the future to decide on some other activities as the as the activities reach a little more maturity in in their plans and actually get underway so uh watch this space nick are there any other questions or points for discussion is everyone just probably just exhausted by now really we've been here for hours if I can ask um what does success look like or I know these are pilot projects but there's often been an emphasis on cutting edge research so I was wondering what the what the blend between being cutting edge and being pilot is in the sense that there's a long tail for HASS researchers I suppose what does success look like um success for us looks like achieving what we've laid out in those plans for a start and also being able to demonstrate that the HASS community can collaborate clearly and um so that we open ourselves up for future investment through the through increase I think that looks like success to me yeah so in HASS are we trying to tell the federal government that we're capable of this and then please give us more money in the future for example yes this is a capability test in a way I suppose um Jenny yes shall I jump in yes please yeah um thanks for that question Paul I think it's one of the most important things we have to keep in mind um we've heard about some really ambitious projects today and I think if there's that that troubles me most um it's trying to boil the ocean in 18 months how how do we make sure that this particular phase uh is successful and that comes back to having a really shared vision of what success is so if I may I'm going to go back to 2016 and in 2016 I had the privilege of being a member of the expert working group for the roadmap um which was was absolutely amazing um and at that time and actually at that time I worked in nanotechnology and nanofabrication so a lot changes in five years um but at that time what was really clear is that for national research infrastructure and I'm being really specific here we couldn't as an expert working group identify the national capability gap that required investment through inquis didn't mean there weren't gaps didn't mean there weren't needs it was the expert working group at the time could not say this is where we need to uh go forward what the expert working group could say is there is a need within pass uh work needs to be done to identify those projects and of course over the last few years that's where several pieces of work have been undertaken um including uh a piece of work by ARDC and by my academies as well um and as a result of that work we have this incredible opportunity um through this activity and the funding associated with it to demonstrate yes as a community uh these four projects uh demonstrate that we have shared needs that cannot be met by a single institution or a small group of institutions they are genuinely national needs and so within these four streams we have heard today of some really exciting work but we've also heard about some shared challenges the repository's question uh the social media question Peter has just spoken about the authentication and authorization questions the indigenous governance questions for us to come together as a group identify these issues and say well across these four projects it's allowing us to explore some of this space that's the sense that it's a pilot for me more than anything else thank you and success for me would be and I'm being really specific as the CEO of the ARDC success is that this community's needs get recognized in the upcoming roadmap and whether it's the establishment of a new increased capability in 2023 whether it remains with the ARDC for a little bit longer yeah there are different pathways but it's it's recognizing that so that was a really long answer Paul but it's something I think that's worth sharing um with the entire group really important question no but on that point uh again are we trying to foster cutting-edge research or in a sense bring together our community just because there's a tension there I think sometimes as as an academic I want to you know get published rather than spend three months on I'm meeting the parliament or doing a communications plan or you know this type of thing is kind of what I'm that tension right there you know okay that's a really good question and this is also not confined to the current community um there is a real hit associated with building and developing research infrastructures to an academics career yes and it ultimately comes back to a personal decision you know which path you want to follow uh and this this is something I'm quite certain will come up in the roadmap the career pathways and professional recognition for staff that support research infrastructures throughout their career is a really difficult unrecognized field and having the appropriate professional development recognition reward associated with a career pathway in research infrastructure is is something that we've been talking about I mean I'm approaching two decades in Encriss it's been talked about for a very long time is this roadmap going to be the one where something really happens that terribly important cohort of staff which by the way of course includes all of the ARDC team so that's just a big thank you from me to all of them today oh thank you okay thanks Paul and thanks Rosie um Ingrid um has directed a question at Kylie Brass who I don't know if Kylie's still with us I am still here so it's a question about um the work that Rosie just mentioned um a kind of preparatory work that we did that essentially became the scoping piece um and um the ARDC were obviously commissioned as well to do a piece of work that fed into the the shape of the research data commons it wasn't you know the only game in town in the sense and we did a piece of work the Academy of Humanities on mapping international research infrastructures I have spoken to Bernadette Kelly at the department again this morning and she has undertaken to get that up on the website she doesn't see there being an issue making ours available um so that's what I've been told at the moment it's not something I if people get in touch with me directly I can share the report um she said to me but I can't make it publicly available and the department will so they're not um it's one of the things that's been in the backlog of of um to get up on the website so that was encouraging um there were three studies done so Kylie do you know if they're only going to make your study available? I said I said um there were three studies done there was one done by Dandolo there was ours and there was yours that ARDC one um I've apparently the Dandolo piece is not you know it was more of an internal piece that was feeding into some thinking that the um department was doing is that's my understanding um and I I know nothing further sort of in that sort of space so it's ours was a sort of um quite comprehensive sort of research piece as I understand yours was um and there was a lot of consultation around yours I think that um you know yours and ours are in the same boat in terms of making them available ours has no costings associated with it yours probably does in which case there'd be some things that they would need to to take out um but I I would say um that that it would make sense for both of those reports to be made available I impressed on her you know that otherwise it just looks like we're sitting on stuff when we're not and there's nothing I mean to my eyes in our report that um that can't be made public you know from the point of view of how it would be useful I guess into some of the the discussions around the national research infrastructure roadmap and you know some of the international models so it's a yeah um I think the ARDC project and ours falls into that category yeah I agree and I think for the purposes of transparency it would be really helpful to have both of those reports made public and as you say if they need to redact the financial information that's in the ARDC one I don't think that's very hard to do um Rosie I may leave that conversation with you to have with me it's fine I'll just confirm with Bernadette that she's viewing them as a pair yeah that would be lovely thank you very much and I think then everyone can read them and um that gives you some more context to the program as it stands today anyway thanks Kylie thanks Rosie I'm muted are there any more questions just a follow-up comment on that Jenny my my recollection is there's some discuss we're back to our social media discussion earlier there is actually some discussion of what might be the some of the social media requirements at least in the basic stage in some of those earlier documents as well so um yeah I mean I didn't mention merely because say because they're not public documents but yeah I think you know initial thinking at least on that has gone into that it's not advanced but you know it does start the conversation at least so yeah Michael yeah um just just on the um the whole has question um I just outlined one worry I have about that and my worry is has is really large and diverse and and no one would ever think of saying what should we do for science but yeah you scientists just get together and figure out what you want I don't think that would be quite hard I suppose from the bits of science I know at least so I understand that's the place we're in and we want an investment in has but the more we can think about I just worry that this could get so large already the number of relationships we have to have in turn only with Annelle Dacker and as we reach out to other partners it's really it really gets quite large and so I do think eventually we're going to have to find ways to of course connect capabilities but perhaps having one huge mech capability may be a little unwieldy um I don't know who's going to be CEO of that capability but actually one heck of a job right um so I know that's in a sense probably not what we're shooting for and and it's kind of a pathway and so on but it's probably worth thinking about how we deal with the just the scale actually what we're talking about here that's a very good point um Rosie do you have any comments on that completely agree Michael uh it makes about as much sense as let's have one increased capability for all of science um I'm going to not say anything okay I think it's going to be pretty interesting to see what um the 2021 expert working group come back with in their exposure draft and it would be um I'm helpful for me to comment prior to that thank you I don't manage that very often Jenny no that's true I just come in um sure there was someone it was Howard but let you get him first yeah okay I was just going to say I think um has is a construct it's a convenience you know it's not um helpful at times and it's helpful in other ways it's barged us in we've wedged the door open a little bit so in a sense it's ours to manage what that might mean I guess how that is translated into the roadmap I don't know yet um so in the past there have been has capabilities scoped in there's been there was another form of words that was used another point in time I think one of the things that has um two things I think that haven't been successful for us we've run a deficit argument a bit we haven't got we are missing out you haven't funded us rather than leading with what we actually have been able to do very innovatively across um the system big time and um and I think that's been recognised now and I think that there's a lot for the infrastructure that we have built to actually feed into the roadmap and for the roadmap to understand what you know has collectively can offer wider interest and that you know modern research is about a whole lot of multi-disciplinarity I also think that what you're doing and what this program's doing is grounding has in its domain where there's overlap obviously as well and so in the doing you know um and on the ground these things will start to sort out I yeah um I mean there might be points at which you need to centralise things and points where that doesn't need to happen so yeah I mean I think at the moment I'm yeah I'm I'm I have a sort of mixed attitude to using the term has you know but I guess a means to an end Dave um yeah hello yeah Howard and then Allison I think yeah I I'm struck by sort of two issues and what they might how they might relate to each other and one of those issues is the issue of the sustainability of products such as parodies and so on in the long term that have been developed the other is the nature of career structures that enable people with expertise and their professional if you like life is associated with the maintenance of those particular products rather than as an aspect of their life as a researcher or user and so on and so forth and in a sense there's a major kind of gap that exists which is the distribution and a storage of digital information so in a sense if you had a national distributed data repository and digital information distribution service that was linked into local kind of regions then that would be the area in which those already if you like developed resources could be located and if you do an analogy with something like radio which is an old-fashioned medium in some ways it is obviously now digital but you actually have something called your new radio which operates right the way across northeastern Ireland because it's understood that radio is an important medium of communication and so on and so forth so resources will go into that but if at the moment you are looking at ways in which you could distribution house digital information that may be the songs and that kind of data that's been recorded but it could also be the existing population data that is you know used by different communities and so on and so forth that you could actually have a system like that when governments think of well let's create something like that they always tie it onto something else so they say oh well let's have the Northern Territory Library's service operating such and such but of course those institutions have other core businesses and suddenly you find gosh no it doesn't do that anymore and so on and so forth and also it's not dedicated to that particular kind of thing so it does seem that the level of institutions that can actually solve and support some of these particular problems you do need something different now I say that sort of you know coming from the left field because obviously it's not the primary objective of anything that we're doing but it may be for some of these things the solution that has got to happened anyway that's what I think thank you and Allyson are two comments on the house issue that might be pertinent or not the first and obviously I agree I think it's far too broad on all of the purposes the first thing is that one of the things that actually Hassan social sciences work differently to science and where this is an advantage is that the data sources are much more common across the whole so the sorts of data that you're talking about aggregating potentially into a capability actually are used by researchers in quite different disciplines and that's not it's not obviously never happens in the sciences but it's much less common so the astronomers manage their own data because that's a discipline that has specific data that it needs but there is some logic here to having some data that is managed across particularly for the social sciences who are often using government data which is privacy protected and holding government agencies not the business that's unlikely so that's just one thing that I think can be leveraged in working together and that it is worth acknowledging is that the security and the safety of that data the corollary of that of course is that a lot of the data that's needed by both humanities and the social sciences is not created by those researchers which is also a little bit different to a lot of science disciplines and therefore mediates itself towards having an external form of management or control but the other thing which is I mean I speak briefly just as a public servant because I do spend most of my life in the public service and some of the decisions here are being made by public servants I actually do think that these projects should have some outcome that does contribute to cutting edge research or research done in a different way to the way that it has been before and I think that that should be connected to public to a measure I'll go back to measurable public servants love things that are measurable to measurable impact because I think one of the things that we're also I think there's a lot of things that are being struggled with around the humanities here and some of it is about the humanities relationship to infrastructural stop and certainly the humanities relationship to the digital but the other thing that it's worth acknowledging is that I also think there's a lack of understanding of the way the humanities itself actually produces research and what it does and I'm talking more about the humanities than social sciences here which I think have a more solid grounded so I think it's not I think the main point but I think part of it to fire the imaginations of the public servants who are involved in doing this it is the to produce something out of this that can be pointed to and said we got an answer to that research question and that meant that this community can do something different would be very powerful in and in building more understanding of who we are and what we do so I think it's the main purpose I do agree about that piece but I wouldn't underestimate the importance of being able to connect this to a research output and that output in turn to something that is you know that actually has changed something about the way that this country works and on that note I'll leave it thanks Alison and Robert Ackland has got his hand raised as well I just wanted to make a response to Rosie Hicks's comment earlier on Rosie you suggested that there's kind of a pathway that that an academic has to take either you go down the pathway of becoming a sort of a provider of an e-research professional shall we say or you stay on a sort of a research pathway because of the costs associated with the research impact that's going to be associated with providing tools and data to a wider group of people and I take the point you made that I also think that there's a third way a third pathway and I'm not sure that this ARDC approach is catering to this third type of researcher and that is the researcher who is both an active researcher but also someone who makes their tools and data available to a wider you know publicly available and this is done typically through open source software through through github or through CRAN developing packages for for AR that get hosted on CRAN and this is a way that leads to measurable impact because people don't download and use your software unless they find it useful and the same with datasets and I think that this is kind of where computational social science researchers in computational social sciences can excuse me can gain impact is by sharing their data and code through through these these repositories and so I just feel that the ARDC approach tends to focus on archives and repositories and big infrastructure and I can understand why because there's a lot of it works for a lot of data and a lot of research communities but I don't think it covers all the bases and there are other people who are falling through the cracks I think and it's in some ways it's forcing researchers to become consumers while I think the technologies of today and this is kind of the promise of e-research right back from the mid 2000s is it's it's meant to allow people to become both consumers and producers of research tools and data and the technology is there and I just think that in some ways this is not being really it's not it's not reflected in the ARDC strategy approach to funding infrastructure and also I just feel that it makes it difficult for those of us who are active researchers to keep across everything because because of this perhaps it's viewed that there is this pathway that you need to take if you want to become involved in infrastructure you need to become an e-research professional and therefore you need to be spending all your time participating in roadmaps and making sure you're part of the right conversations and I guess it just concerns me that that might yeah as I said some people might be falling through the cracks perhaps I'm talking about myself here but yeah thank you Robert no Jenny I'm going to to have the reply to this one if I may of course Robert it's really important that I communicate to this group that the ARDC is not a funder you know historically and next to an RDS the previous organizations offered a lot of seed funding for activities the ARDC is not a funder it's a collaborator as a national research infrastructure and it's absolutely vital that we share this understanding because it's why would you do it through another organization why wouldn't you just do it through the ARC or the NHMRC for example so it's really important that that is is the starting point but notwithstanding that coming back to the points that you've raised Robert there are two aspects I absolutely agree that the ARDC and indeed the NCRIS model doesn't currently address the activities that you're describing in the way that a researcher could be creating software or code and and making it open stack sorry open source open stack in the case of the meta research cloud the open source the ARDC is not a funder and doesn't support that particular type of activity right now as a research infrastructure we do employ staff and our staff headcount is approaching 80 people at the moment that we employ them to collaborate on activities for their expertise and and note that for our staff the KPIs that they have would not give them successful academic pathway and I think that doesn't recognize the enormous expertise and the enormous contribution that they make to the research infrastructure landscape and it's really important that this third stream is broadly acknowledged across our sector and I say that because there's a couple of institutions a couple of universities that are really making some good strikes forward to recognizing this particular blend of skills and expertise and that absolutely welcome it and that that's what I'm looking for more in the future so you know the national research infrastructure is not designed to support the career pathways of individual academics rather it's and I come back to this again it's supporting things that couldn't be undertaken by a single institution or small group of institutions so that's where we're looking at the the national but I will pick up on Robert that you raise that's the situation as it is at the moment and I think that where we are in code and research software you know it could be a decade behind where we are in the recognition of the value of data and I think we have recent and at Reese's just putting these links here in the chat for us I think that the recognition of research software as a first-class research output and the national agenda for research software is an activity that we're really focusing on right now and that the future shape and contributions of the software engineers are still still a glint in the eye and I think things will change as we go forward on that pathway so there are ten in summary and I don't give short answers you might have tweeted that in summary I think there is a change we need in the future but I also come back to what's the role of a national research infrastructure there and I wouldn't encourage everyone that's on Zoom this afternoon take a look at that research software agenda for Australia it's another part of the ARDC's work for the the current six months and of course going forward thank you thanks Rosie so we've got only a few minutes left of our sessions so once again I'd really like to thank everybody for participating in particular our project leads and the others involved in those four activities please remember that the question registers will remain open so if you think of anything that you would like answered please pop it in there and we'll make sure that it gets answered for you and don't forget to submit your feedback so feedback again closes on the 27th of September and we really want to have as many voices heard so please do take the time to submit that feedback for us moving forwards obviously the plans will go to the board or those that are ready will go to the board in October and and we will keep you informed of the progress along the way anyway and as you've registered for today we will be sending you the link to the recording for today so you'll be able to have a look back if you need to over everything that we've discussed I might leave final words with Rosie Hicks perhaps Rosie would like to sign us out for today thanks Jenny I will just make one logistical comment so we I think today have the feeling that three of the four plans will go to the ARDC board in October of course we wait for advice from our advisory committee before committing to that so we have set out a very clear process and I wouldn't want to to short circuit that at all what I think it's really important to say to the group today though we've structured this really carefully we've put a lot of thought into being able to move the four streams at different speeds we're having some excellent conversations with Alice and her team about how we move that stream forward and I think what we'll be doing after today's meeting is confirming target timeline you know I'm not sure how I'm not sure what the error bars are on that at the moment but we'll certainly look at that we look at the timing of future board meetings and communicate to this group pretty quickly what the timeline is for that trove stream and I just want to come back to a comment that was made earlier today with regard to responding to questions on all those projects please don't miss this opportunity right now we might have revisions and iterations but don't wait before letting us know your thoughts on the current status of the plans because they're essential in helping guide us along that pathway so that that was a little bit of detail there uh and I will conclude then by thanking everyone for their contributions not just today but along the pathway for everyone that participated in the workshop preparing the draft plans to the advisory committee um to all of you that are in these conversations um we're only just at the beginning of a really important journey and I would give also my thanks to all the ARDC team that are working on this and particularly Jenny of course you are our most important asset and so many many thanks and have a great afternoon everyone thank you