 I'm Adrian Boatman and here today to talk to you about the ARDC Open Call for Projects and in particular to programs in that call of transformative data collections and the institutional role in data coins. Okay, down to our content. To get straight to the concrete of what are we talking about, it's an Open Call for Projects in these two areas. One area called Transformation Collections and another area called Role of Institution in Data Commons. Very practical, offering up to $50,000 per project. The project should be completed in September. We're open right now for applications and that will close on the 1st of May. In total, we'll be investing about $2.1 million in this, it's available for the call. The spirit of the call is short, as you can see, to three month projects perhaps, to do something in these two areas and for us to learn from that and share those learnings. I'll get back to more details about what that means. Anyway, they really inform our future directions and we've got some summits and other kind of roundtables and meetings further in the year. So that's in a nutshell what we're talking about. Perhaps we should get a little bit of the context. Let me just remind you that these slides and this recording will also be shared after the presentation as well as the questions will be formally shared on our FAQ. The context for this programme of work is the context of the ARDC activities over the last year and moving into next year. At the top there you can see, at the end of last year, we were very active in a whole set of public consultation. A lot of you on the call today were probably involved in some of that public consultation. We went to each of the state capitals. We interviewed some of the big national research infrastructure facilities. We did a lot of outreach there to get feedback from the community about some of the strategic directions of the ARDC. Those who are watching our website and I encourage you all to do that will have seen in the just in the last week or so. We've posted a number of documents that outline some of those strategic directions. That's what we've been doing over the last couple of months is clarifying those strategic directions with our board, with the department, some of those high level strategy. Let's now settle in that sense on our website and we will be consulting further of course and refining that as part of continuous improvement. However, having established those directions now, we're thinking about, if you look at the purple box that says in quarter one, here we are, we've done the strategic directions. We think that the new programs will start later in 2019 and then into the outer years. Between here and there we've got two pieces of work that we want to do, these discovery activities and a set of summits. The discovery activities are projects like the ones that we're talking about today that answer questions or stimulate activity in areas that we want new programs in. We want your experience or feedback or some examples and that's why we're doing these discovery activities. So they're meant to be small, lots inclusive to get our partners and stakeholders involved in developing our new programs, the bigger and larger substantial pieces of work that will begin towards the end of this year. After the discovery activities we want to bring people together in a number of summits or brown tables or events to discuss some of those directions. And all that leading to those new programs that obviously will kick off towards the end of this year and into the business plans of coming years. Just a little note underneath there at the bottom you can see whilst all this new stuff is going on, we are committed to service continuity. So all the events and support and services infrastructure that you've been accustomed to receive from ARDC and its predecessor organizations are continuing those on refining them in light of the strategic direction and they will so we can continue to do stuff in the meantime and they will benefit obviously from this consultation and support the new programs into the future as well. Alright, so just to now have a look at what those strategic directions are is that this is all part of the background to these projects that we're talking about today. I encourage you to have a look at our website and some of those strategy documents. In a nutshell, the ARDC is transforming digital infrastructure to support leading edge research. We have a number of strategic themes, areas of activity, data and services, storage and compute, coordination and coherence, software and platforms, people and policy. And together we're trying to work with the whole sector to build Australia's research data commons which is again much bigger than any of our own activities and involves the whole sector. So that's in a nutshell what those strategic directions were about and there's more detail on our website. So given those strategic directions now, what are the particular discovery activities that we're thinking of? For the moment we have two confirmed sort of portfolios and a set of others that we're under consideration. So the first one, these data and services, that's what we're talking about today. You will have seen there's a computer and storage set of discovery activities which really focuses on 11 question areas. And we're considering other discovery activities in the other areas of that strategy that we talked about there. So software and platforms, coordination, cohesion, people, policy and other stuff. So the first one is what is the subject matter of today's webinar. If you're also interested in computing storage then come back for another webinar on the 18th of April. And if you're interested in any of the other areas then stay tuned and there will be some ways of keeping in touch at the end of this presentation. But don't tune out now. This is the key activity for now is this data and services. Step back slightly, so why did Darten figure so prominently in the strategic directions of the ARBC? We see that it is a key way for us to really benefit the whole research system because we are a national infrastructure provider. In two ways, can increase research innovation through these significant data collections that drive new research over the next decade. So for example, a longitudinal study in a particular discipline area could actually be the powerhouse of research innovation for a number of years to come. So that key role that we see data being able to play at a national system level is around research innovation. It's also improving this idea of research integrity. So how would I reproduce the findings or the conclusions? How would I test or see for myself or adapt the conclusions of previous research? And for that we think a pervasive sector wide data arrangements that ensure the persistence of all the things that underpin journal articles and other research findings. That is a very good contribution that data can make to the whole national research system. So that's just a step right back as to why we're doing this within the context of the research system. And you should keep that in mind that that's our overall goal for those long-term activities and the two programs we have today actually line up with those longitudinal objectives. All right, so let's talk about those. So now that was all background. There will be more details about probably why you've come here today, but that's part of what we have a webinar to give you an idea of all the stuff that you don't see on the page, on the website. So the first program is called transformative collections. What are we trying to do here? We're trying to help to either establish or develop or improve the sustainability of an existing significant data collection. And as we said, these are the kind of collections that will drive innovation in Australian research. What is this category of these transformative collections and why is ARDC again interested? These are the kind of collections that enjoys strong community support. They have a scope which is clearly beyond a single institution and it's very clear that they drive and enable research. This is obviously not all the data in Australia. It's a particular category that we're focusing in on for those strategic objectives that I talked about before. Now, why those three things are important? If they don't enjoy strong community support, then we're not going to be interested if the community is not. If they're not clearly beyond the single institution, then that's not national infrastructure. So although it's very important that we come into a different kind of infrastructure that we would not necessarily be involved in. And for this particular objective, remember, I had that objective where we wanted to increase research innovation. If the collection can show that it's really driving a whole research program into the future, then that's the kind of collection that will help us to deliver on that desire to increase innovation in Australian research. So if that's the category, then we're interested. Now, the kind of things that we're talking about, I said, so that's, you know, and we will be interested for years to come. In this particular set of activities over the next little while, which are discovery activities, you're relatively short. What are the kinds of things we're talking about? Well, if you have an activity over the next two or three months that can show how you build or sustain a community ownership of these collections, then that's an activity that we'd be interested in partnering with you on. The content strategy. So what we mean by that is this is a longitudinal study. You know, what is the content of this collection that will help to drive research? For example, standardisation obviously makes that new collection that much more valuable as it can be hooked into discipline standards, discipline standard concepts, technical standards that apply in your particular area. All these things are going to make this transformative collection that much more transformative. And then we're very interested in these ideas of sustainability. What are the key things there is how do you get the knowledge of the institution involved with it? So there are the areas of activity that are open for funding. So what are we expecting out of you if you apply for one of these projects? We want you to take a small valuable step. This is not an academic exercise. We want you to do something for a particular transformative collection. This could be, and here are some examples. These are examples only that are given. But you could do something in the next three months. Formalise a leadership for a group for a collection that doesn't yet exist or exists, but hasn't been embedded in the community. You could perform an audit, do something with a standard. You could transform some data and aggregate it. Add an access interface to find good practice for something which could be a distributed national collection where open to all sorts of things and there's more details on the website or in the types of examples of activity. So that's the first thing. You've got to do something and it's going to be valuable. It's going to be in those areas that we identified. You will have to share the learnings of those. We have some kind of report that will say, okay, given that you did something for that collection, what did we all learn about the issues enablers? What kind of code did you use? Could that be reused by others? What methodology did you take about in order to do this? And can that be used by others in your area or others in other areas doing some of things? And we'll ask you to present at the summit or other events. And that's the summit which is tentatively scheduled for September 17th. Program 2. It's the second program of activity in this area. Institutional role in the data commons. What are we trying to do here? The key thing we're looking at is how would you enable all these other research outputs such as data, software models, materials? How would you allow them to be captured and managed in a systematic way in order to, for that research integrity and reproducibility objective that we were talking about? And if you think about it, that's not necessarily a centralized ARDC national infrastructure, but it is a national system. And that's where we believe that the institutions can play a critical role in this national data system. If we can somehow ensure the persistence of all these underpinnings of the research conclusions. So that's a much broader kind of almost a safety net thing that we want to have in place as part of a national system. It's potentially a little bit more than what an institution would do just as part of its business as usual. And in doing this immediate good project, it would be maintaining those materials, perhaps making them fairer, findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable for the greater good of science and research system beyond the project. So they're the kind of areas where we're looking to see what is the role of an institution in this idea of data commerce. The more pragmatically what we mean by that, fundable areas here would include changes to data, infrastructure policies and procedure that support better research, sensitive data is a big challenge at the moment, so we've identified that as one of the key areas. It doesn't have to be sensitive data, but we've identified it there so that activities in that area can be prioritized. And then this whole idea of how does an institution linking to national discipline and other international systems. So what kind of deliverables there? Again here it's a three-part theme. We would like to see how you can demonstrate how your institution can go that extra mile and actually play a role in the data commerce. So that's something potentially a little bit more than what might be required just to do the research and going an extra mile perhaps to make more data fair through changes to your policies infrastructure procedure, improve the fairness of sensitive data or integrate into national and more global systems. We will ask you to share those links as in the other program and also to present at the same data summit in September 17th, which is a tentative day. All right. There's a particular note I just want to make about this second program. It's only the second program, the institution role in the data commerce. We've got some rules here. The eligibility is only for a higher education because it's an institution role. So we're talking about institutions. The way we're using that to define that is the higher education support act. There's a list of providers, higher education providers. That's the list that we'll be using for institutions. Also those for Commonwealth funded research agencies. There's another rule there that will take one project per institution. Part of what we're doing here, as I said, was to stimulate activity across the sector to really make this a system-wide thing. So we'll be encouraging activity from a broad range of institutions. So we'll take one from each. Why? Again, remember the objective here where we are trying to explore what the foundation role of a long-lived institution can be in the persistence of these outputs of research. And also we've been back into the first program, the role that I have in some of these long-lived collections as well. So we really are actually trying to stimulate institutions. That's what we're working. But you should note, the other program has no such element of the criteria, and nor do the other discovery activity programs that I talked about earlier. Right, two more things you should just keep in mind. The ARDC is funded under the National Research Infrastructure Program. The Chief Scientist did a review, and this is what he says National Research Infrastructure is. It's these nationally significant assets, facilities and services that support leading-edge research. So if you want your sort of application to resonate with us, then you have to understand what box we're working in. So for example, in the first program around collections, I could see how they would be nationally significant assets, particularly if they're beyond the remit of any particular institution or where they go beyond. Then the ARDC would see, yes, we do have a role there to support that kind of infrastructure. And then remember the second part? That's where I was getting to why did we want collections that were specifically aimed at creating new types of research. Well, that's because as a research infrastructure program in Encriss, and we are required to support leading-edge research. What does this mean for the institutional program? It's interesting. I think ARDC is probably one of the most out there and interesting national infrastructures where we see the data comedies as this new nationally significant asset facility and service that will really help to support leading-edge research, and it's a national system. So that's why we're stimulating activity in the institutions to see how they can support that. But you'll need to take into account that obviously if you propose something to us that looks like it's just a change to your own institutional infrastructure for your own purposes, then it won't resonate that highly with us. If you can show us how your institution is contributing to that national system, the examples I gave there was by making your data fair and available to this national system for integrity, reproducibility, innovation, etc. Then that will align with our very broad idea of this research data commons as a national infrastructure. One last note. So what if we have these leading-edge research infrastructures? Why would Joe Logs be interested? Why would Joe Citizen be interested? On the left here, this is another diagram from the National Infrastructure roadmap. On the left you can see this cycle here which is really talking about how research infrastructure and research institutions and world-class universities and industry work together to make a really good research system and that's what we've been talking about here. How to get better efficiency, integrity and innovation into the research sector. And that's what all these arrows are about, making that really ticker along very nicely. However, just having good research when we're talking to the public or to the government as a whole, that's not enough. We do have to show how this research is translating and that's what this arrow here is translating out into social, environmental and economic benefit for the nation. And here are some examples, food security, increased health, longevity and well-being, reduced carbon emissions, they're just examples. So you will note that in one of the criteria we're looking at, can you explain to us how this research sort of translates over into those areas of social, environmental and economic impact. And again, why did we ask you that question? That's because as an infrastructure program, that's what we're being asked by the chief scientist in the Department of Education and the Australian government to explain to them how your fantastic transformative collection transforms research and then has some kind of a broad impact. All right, so that's the kind of background. I'll just now go over the details of how you get involved and then we'll be starting the questions in probably just a few minutes. So if you start to think back questions now would be the time to note them in that have a look in your GoToWebinar thing, you'll find a thing that says questions. All right, how would you get involved? Here are the key steps. You need to read the background information. We're sharing the slides here. I apologize, the slides, there's a lot of words on these slides and things, but that's because we want to share them out there and make sure that people know how to get to things. So anyway, first up, read the background. There's a link there where we've also got some frequently asked questions which we will update over the next month. So good to keep an eye on those. As we get a question, we're going to do this out in the open. So if you ask us a question we may not get directly back to you. That's because we're publicly updating the FAQ and we'll get back to you when we've updated that so that as a general rule, if anyone has got information from us then everyone will get the same information. That's the way we're trying to run this call. So that particular document and the FAQs and the website is the way to get all the background. On the website as well, there's an application form that you can get from that site there. So you have to fill out our particular application template and then the third step we need to submit it and that's another part of our website where you go to submit that. Most of that stuff is linked from this middle part here that particular document will give you links to most of these other things and I'll list it at the end. But anyway, the UP steps, if you want to get involved read the background information, ask us more questions, read the FAQs, it will be the stage we're at at the moment. Here are the dates just to remind you of those. So the applications opened about 10 days ago. I'll close on the 1st of May. I apologise that there's Easter and school holidays and now the Civic Duties are in elections fitting in that busy month of April but they'll be closing there on the 1st of May. We're not looking for a very detailed thing here and we're not looking to negotiate with lots of people around this. If it's a good idea, we will take it on face value and try and get a contract very quickly. So we're looking for about two pages from you. It's meant to be a very detailed set of documentation so we're hoping a month, even a busy month like April will be good enough for you to provide that stuff. Depending on how many, I said that will be after the 15th of May that's the target we're looking at if we get 200 applications and it may well take us a little bit of time to go through that. There is a panel just through a little aside here. The ARDC is inviting about four or five people in each of the programs to help us to make a decision there. So there will be a panel where external people will be in the majority, there will still be ARDC people there sitting through and helping to make the decision but the decisions will be informed by the sector. So again, we need to get all those people together so it may take some time into May. My rough thing is that hopefully by the end of May you really will have the charity to know that you're on the track there and you've got May, June, July and August to get on and do the work. We're closing at the beginning of September and we will want the learnings and the presentation at that summit in September. All right, if you do have a, if you want to contact us about this that's the email here on the left, submissions at ARDC and there's a number of ways for you to stay in touch there on the right. Please subscribe to the newsletter and we'll get updates about this and other programs and just a bit more information about what we're doing if you have our newsletter. You can follow the Twitter handle there and we have that website which is pretty much where you'll find the homepage for most of the materials that I talked about today. So that's the background information time and just to repeat then that this URL, I don't know if you can see my cursor, but if you can't on the right hand side stay in touch, the very bottom link, there's a webpage there and most of these other things, you know, the email address and the FAQ are linked from there. A little bit of a trick. Make sure you scroll all the way down. We've had some feedback. There's a big blue thing that comes in the middle. Don't stop there. I'm going to write the way down the link for the FAQ, the link for the download of the documents. There's a whole set of stuff right down the bottom of that page. So make sure you, the link for the FAQs is actually on the page so keep scrolling until you find it. Thank you. And we look forward to working with you all in this interesting program and beyond.