 and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging. Welcome everyone, I understand that due to a quirk with Eventbrite some tried registering at 11am rather than 12 noon so I'm sorry that we had that shaky start but with no further ado it's wonderful to have you here today. And I am going to share my screen. Not that this is going to be PowerPoint heavy. There we go. All right, so the purpose of today's update info update is really to ensure that we maintain open lines of communication. I just want us to make sure that we're all on the same or shared understanding of where we are with the house and indigenous research data commons. We're all here because we heard the wonderful news in the 2020 research infrastructure investment plan, the support for the first steps in the house and indigenous research data commons. So I thought it was really important that we didn't leave too long a gap before we brought the community together. So, first of all, we all know that funding was committed by the federal government back in October. And the ARDC will be the lead agent in this space so this morning I'm going to just share a little bit about what ARDC is working on at the moment, where it fits. We are going to provide the broader context what's happening in the national research infrastructure space at the moment, and what are the indications for this work how this work has the opportunity to provide a really strong foundation. And then where we're up to in the specifics of this activity. As I say, it's more of the general information sharing and update that we can obviously have a question and session at the end. There we go. The I might not want to do that. I'm not sure what that's sharing. I'll just stick with this. So the Australian research data commons incorporated as a company limited by guarantee back in May 2019. You'll understand why I'm emphasizing this a little bit further on, but it's a not for profit. And we have very pleased and very pleased to say that this slide is just out of date because we have reached 19 university members plus CSIRO just last week. So we have the membership across the country. And you can see that our staff are hosted by universities across the country as well. And our DC very, very simply has the purpose to provide Australian researchers with competitive advantage through data. We talk about a mission to accelerate research and innovation by driving excellence in the creation analysis and retention of high quality data assets. So that's the mindset that we bring to these activities. So in this establishment, we've worked with five different themes. The commitment of the members is really embracing the shared vision, as we're delivering it through these five different themes so you can see them there. Data and services, storage and compute software and platforms and people and policy. And of course, in writing all of that we have the coordination and coherence. And just a moment talking about where we sit with the four themes and how that will lead into where we have the interconnectedness of the research data comments. So ARDC, it comes from a very, very strong heritage in joining together and NECTA and RDS. So three previous absolutely visionary research infrastructures coming together and providing a portfolio that includes some ongoing services such as the National Information Infrastructure, the NECTA Research Cloud activities in the skills and the policy space that really underpinning contributions that work across every discipline. And then on top of that, we have the platforms and software and the data and services open calls that we ran in 2019 and 2020. Many of you will have engaged in these open calls and we have a series of projects that are currently underway. And I know that some of you on the call today are active participants in those projects. So it's in concert with these in parallel with these that will be working on the past indigenous research data comments. But we're all doing it under the increased larger research infrastructure framework. So the merger of fans NECTA and RDS came following the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, which also spoke about the need for investment in the HAAS space as well. And one thing that I think since 2015 is a huge change, but it's incredibly positive that the government have committed to a particular cycle in the research infrastructure roadmaps and that's what I want to highlight today. And we have the 2016 roadmap, the government response to that within 2018 with the research infrastructure investment plan. And that was the, that was the plan that brought the ARDC together. And it was also the 2020 research infrastructure investment plan that created the current funding for the project we're talking about today, the 8.9 million. But that particular cycle of a roadmap followed by two research infrastructure investment plans is a pattern that has been set out by government. The first is the roadmap to investment plans. The first is the government response to the roadmap and the second is a top up or new activities that were identified in the roadmap. And so now this leads us to the 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap Consultation. This is running at the same time as the HAAS and Indigenous Research Data Commons activity is an enormous opportunity for us as a community to demonstrate the foundations for future and increased support in this sector. So it really is providing us with the opportunity to shine a little bit about the timelines. At the end of 2020, the Enquist community were asked to consider some chapter headings effectively for the research infrastructure roadmap coming up. All of the chapter headings or the possible framework so one of them was the same as the 2016 roadmap. Another example was to use mission driven. This was for investment. Another one was based on international models. However, one of the things that unites all of those is a commitment to the research infrastructure. But we're now. This is very, very front of mind for us at ANRDC. Early February, we are in what's known as an ideas jam. The department have recognized much like today's discussion that consultations during 2021 are for the best part going to be online. So they have, they have appointed a consultancy external consultancy to help them with the online delivery of the roadmap in consultation sessions. And the platform is being tested this week, last week and this week. So we're in week two with an ideas jam for the Enquist capabilities where we're really posting some of our thinking for what could come in the future. The expectation is very much that the bugs and the quirks and the learnings for this online platform will be ironed out now. And a broad consultation phase will be taken over the coming months. I mean we've put March to September here. The conclusion and the submission of the next roadmap is expected in October of 2021. That's all we know about the timelines at the moment, but I am stressing it because I do feel we are really focused on laying excellent foundations with the work that we're here together to discuss in the past space. So keep that in mind. Going online, the scope of work that we're dealing with at the moment, it absolutely isn't a blank sheet of paper. We don't have a contract from the Department of Education at this stage, but we do know that these four particular activities of what we will be asked to deliver on so it's, it's really quite specific. The way that we take these forward of course is what we're up to developing now, but we have a very clear, very clear task given to us by the Department of Education to deliver in this space. So you can see the four of them here. I don't suppose there are any surprises because it's exactly the same text as used in the government releases and on our website as well. So we have the high level description of the projects. We don't have the contract yet, and I understand that one of the things that's being tweaked is simply the increased guidelines that will support the contract. So we're just waiting for that. We're not concerned by that. And indeed, the next step is that ARDC will undertake recruitment of a program manager to advance us to the next stage. Now, we have a well developed position description for the program manager and we anticipate that we will be recruiting very, very soon. So very short term, as soon as that is finalised. And then we'll have the program manager on board in advance of contract. The first thing that we will be required to do under the contract for each of these four components of the project is to complete an activity plan. Now, an activity plan. Again, it's not a blank sheet of paper. It's a very specific template with word limits that the Commonwealth will be requiring us to submit. And we will have four of them, one for each of these components. The activity plan sets out what will be achieved in the project, what the milestones will be, what the funding will be. So it really is a short document, but it's an important document. And the role of the program manager will be working with the relevant communities and stakeholders to put those activity plans together. So it is the first step, but it's a big step. Now, with these different activities that we've got here, the four different streams, there are obviously different foundations, different backgrounds, they're each at different parts in their own journey. For example, I spoke about the ARDC open calls, the data assets creation and the platforms for analysis of software, and already the linguistics data commons is being supported by completely separate ARDC projects. But that's fantastic. It allows us to get a very rapid start, use it as a launching pad for going into the next stage. Some of these other areas, there will be the need for more discussion and more consideration to understand what's possible in these first stages. So that will be the work of the program manager with the stakeholders and with the research community. And a couple of other things I want to talk about before we go to any questions is what would be the structure that we envisage taking place here. So I mentioned that we've done the open calls, but at the same time, we have another ARDC program which is called the translational research data challenges that we've run in the past year with a rather different format. So the translational research data challenges instead of working through open calls has had very focused consultations, working groups and discussions to really bring together the identification of the needs and the scope for a particular project. And I do think that we would be striving to follow that consultative pathway to really build consensus in identifying what's required for these projects, rather than any notion that we're going to run open call and people will bid. And these are isolated things that go away into silos. So this is really the time for building very, very strong links in the relevant community. That's the aim. We'll see how much convergence we see in those ideas as we move forward. So that's about how another important consideration to talk about is the co-investment expectations. Now we're in increased capability. The plan will be undertaken as part of the input, the increased guidelines and the increased principles, and they do require us to maximize co-investment as we are able to. We have already in our programs recognized the impact of COVID, the very difficult financial conditions that are facing the sector at the moment and the constraints that people are challenged with. Therefore, in recognition of that, of course, we're very sympathetic and trying to balance the need to secure co-investment, which we still have to strive to do with the pragmatic approach for what's possible. And recognizing that we still do need to secure cash co-investment, but there are other ways of having very, very valuable in kind, very valuable, actually essential in kind contributions for these projects to be successful. So I think those are really some of the key messages we've spoken about the defined areas, the timelines and the next steps and the co-investment. And I think that is actually where I will pause and take questions. Now, we have a very large number of people on the call today, so thank you very much for joining and participating. It's sitting at 100 people at the moment. So if you could drop any questions into the chat. And Ian Duncan, our director of outreach, is going to moderate the questions for us. So Ian. Thanks, Rosie. So we've got a couple of questions from Douglas Roberts. And the first one is, do we have an indicative timeline for the activity plan completion? No, we don't. So the, I think actually we don't have the timeline for when we expect the contract to arrive with us. And this is something that I'm chasing. So that's the, that's the big unknown when the contract comes through. However, the first step is actually the appointment of the program manager, because we can progress and start the discussions around completion of activity plans in advance of that contract signature date. So with the expectation that the recruitment process takes place in the next couple of weeks, or certainly opens in the next couple of weeks, we will be looking to have someone on board, certainly before the Easter break. And their first task is those activity plans. So we will just keep working away at that. The second question and do please tap your questions into chat if you've got any. The second question again from Douglas is, will the department expect co-investment from state governments as this has caused challenges for other increased facilities? The question I can answer by simply considering ARDC's operations already, the nature of research infrastructure has made it much, much harder for state governments to invest. And at this stage we haven't had to, we haven't been held back by the absence of state government funding. It would be very welcome, but it is not a prerequisite for the program to go forward. There's one from Howard. Trove is excellent, but much of the indigenous data is in museum collections in Australia and globally. Will that material data also be included? Howard, that is a specific detail about the particular program that I'm not in a position to answer at this stage. We'll certainly hang on to the question, but I can't give you an answer today. One from Steve McKetkin. Regarding co-investment, there's been a significant level of co-investment into the various ARDC and related programs, so platforms, data partnerships and so on. It may be beneficial to look at how the co-investment in those projects may be considered in combination with the co-investment expectations for the HASI program. Steve, you're trying to count the money twice. Yeah, not getting away with that. I can see you on the screen. We will do what we can and be pragmatic about this. It's definitely worth a try, Steve. You can't count the same dollar twice. Okay, one from Katrina Grant. In terms of the Trove research platform, what other corpora are in scope? Focus on Trove precludes a lot of other collections. I can't comment on the specific details other than saying that we have to follow the identified components as I've set out previously. Can I add one thing to this? It's really useful if people remember that this is a foundation set of investments. You're absolutely right. Trove doesn't cover everything. The social sciences stuff doesn't cover everything, and it's aspects of those particular pieces. And so, as Rosie referred to earlier, the road mapping is the opportunity for showing how these early investments really can make a high impact and fit really nicely together for the community. So you write that there will be a whole bunch of collections and bodies of data and applications and platforms, which would be fantastic to have. And these first ones will provide a basis for some of those and also really, the really important bit is to show that there can be success in developing them. Okay, so another one from Nick T. Berger. Can we envisage that the three name programs excluding Trove could be considered capabilities in the next roadmap? I'm reading the next question as well, which is throwing me off. We can put them forward as ideas for consideration as capabilities in the next roadmap. I think the idea is, are they at the right scale? Is there some way of connecting things together that's required for scaling? To put this in context, there's less than two dozen capabilities at the moment, and I think we do see those numbers decreasing. But I'm not a member of the expert working group this time round, and I'm really reading the tea leaves. Nick, I don't have much more information. But if we think they should be then we should definitely be saying it. From Christopher, had a have philanthropic forms of funding being considered universities are research providers, not funders. Every, every type of contribution is absolutely valid in this space. There are some cases where philanthropic funds are the most appropriate funds, and indeed we're exploring them in the translational research data challenges. The other RDC component that I spoke about earlier, so it's all in scope. Another thing, why not industry? Yeah, all of this is possible. Just before we get on to Kylie's question, there was a comment from Steve, so fair enough. He's not trying to count things twice, but that there has already been quite a lot of requests for co-investment. I think, again, as Rosie referred to earlier, that's why we're really trying to be very accommodating and flexible in terms of what co-investment is and means and can be. And it's cash is king, but it's not the only valuable co-investment. Okay, so question from Kylie. Can you give us an outline of governance structure and advisory processes for the program? Kylie, that's a critical question. And at this stage, this is, it's not something that we have matured, ready for conversation. It will be an important component once we get the program manager on board. Richard's an ARDC question. The Indigenous Data Network has mentioned in the Indigenous task, does IDN have a specific role in this activity? Yes, IDN does, as outlined in the dot points. Thanks, Richard. Another one from Howard. Many of the Indigenous community users are in remote regions with poor digital connection. And in the case of cultural data, including language, how are we going to facilitate access? Howard, I don't know the answer to that. But if that's one of the challenges that we have to consider to be successful in this part of the project, then we'll have to redress it. And I think it's not confined in the current environment, even with people working from home in big cities, I'm seeing some technological challenges. But keeping that in mind, they will need to be other ways of making sure that input is heard. Yes, anybody else got a question? Oh, here we go. Anna Johnston, is there an expectation that all four programs will be consistent in their approach and development? While some of the identified programs seem to be researcher driven, e.g. the Linguistics Data Commons, the Trove program would seem to be led by the National Library. So, very, very clearly, this is being undertaken as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. So we're doing this to create the environment and the assets for research on data. Obviously, that data comes from many different places. So I would say that it's a research infrastructure. However, I think we need to be very clear that within that, each of these projects are going to be really quite different. And that's okay. That's okay. There is a set of requirements that we have to meet. We have to meet the increased principles. We're going to need to make sure that we have the activity plans on an annual basis and the progress reports against those activity plans. But beyond that, we have definitely the ability to nurture and support each of these projects in the way that best suits them. And if you think about it, the activity plan, we have to put down exactly what it is we're trying to achieve, and then come back and report against it. And that there isn't any intention to have a cookie cutter approach across each of the four. Notwithstanding that, we do feel that there is definitely the opportunity to enhance connection between these projects across these projects. Or with other projects in a way that shares knowledge, shares best practice, enables people to build on the work of each other and not have to devise each of their solutions from scratch each time. So docking in to even the broader e-research infrastructure space is something that we will be hoping to drive forward with these programs. All right. One from Angeletta. What's the overall timeframe allocated to the HASS investment? My expectation at the moment is that it's to June 2023 as the conclusion of the project. That gets harder and harder when we don't have the start date that since ARDC is able to support the recruitment of the program manager and drive forward those initial discussions on the activity plan. We're really working to make sure that that's not the impediment. Nick Teeberg again. Is it likely that the funds will be split four ways with ARDC keeping some how much Christian Mark for admin? So the first thing ARDC will recruit the program manager and that will be funded from the 8.9 million. We will not apply any kind of top-slicing. So there's not going to be a percentage cut on these things at all. There may be some absolute costs that are incurred to undertake the project. In the digital world there are a lot less. We're not paying for the tea and biscuits for the consultations. We're not flying a program manager around the country in the way that we would have done previously. Obviously, I do think that subject to the constraints around borders, the ability to have this person engage deeply and face to face where possible with people will be very critical. So direct costs that would come from the project. Yes, but there won't be any kind of administration overhead in post. Do I see the funds will be split four ways? Definitely be split into four, but I don't have any preconceptions about whether it will be evenly or anything else. That's something that we will be looking at the activity plans. What are we delivering in the activity plan and how much does it cost to do that? Okay, Sandra Silva asked, following on from the theme of foundational investment, could you clarify what any expectations the department and ARDC has that partner institutions are providing baseline facilities? For example, institutional research data repositories. Keeping in mind the context of HASS being long tail, many researchers and many collections. How does ARDC its role, if any, in ensuring this kind of baseline is in place at the institutions and that those facilities are supportive of overall national research data reuse objectives, both fair and care for Indigenous. That's a really long question for me, Ian. Sandra, maybe I can paraphrase, but you tell me if I get it wrong. But it's basically HASS is, you know, HASS data becomes more valuable as it gets older and there's a lot of it and often small, not big collections, some big, some small. Is the question to what extent is ARDC making sure that the institutions themselves are providing the underpinning infrastructure to make sure that all of those pieces don't get lost. And also that the institutions are more generally supportive of fair and care. So do we have other programs that encourage institutions to be good data custodians and good data stewards? Sandra, you're very happy, you're very welcome to speak here. I can see. Yeah, look, yeah, look, that's a good summation of Ian said there of, I'm just wondering what ARDC's assumptions about what support is out there already for HASS. And I think you vaguely alluded to it in a previous answer, sort of generally about the research space. Okay. I'm wondering, are you with, you know, what do you expect institutions to be providing? Yeah, I think expect is probably the difficult word here. Because I think what you're talking about is a question of whose responsibility is it longer term to deal with the tsunami, as it's been described of data, not just in the HASS space. Some of the collections might be smaller in the HASS space, but you know, they're still acute. So what you're, what you're touching on really is I don't think we have expectations, but we have concerns that somewhere in the system. It has got to happen. So the way that we are addressing this at the moment is we're working to change the conversation from saying to institutions or others, you must provide X amount of storage to a consideration of what is it that's being stored. We ensure that the storing of data, and by that I mean fair data is optimized. And so we have done one pilot program, we're about to launch another very, very soon that works with the institutions and the increased capabilities to identify collections with particular associated metadata and work with them to incentivize the improvement of metadata associated with that collection, and then pay for that to happen. Now what we would like to do is to be able to submit into the next road mapping process. We're creating the framework where you can make a very considered judgment about what it is you're storing. And with that improved knowledge, you can better understand how much it's going to cost for that to happen. Okay, so I don't think we're saying we expect institutions to do X, Y, and Z. We say there is a real need, the need continues to grow, and unless we put in place the framework whereby we can make reasonable decisions about what's stored and what isn't stored, we won't survive this. So by being able to say that data that's being collected from a microscope, you've got 100 image but actually, we know how to recapture that we don't need to keep 100 images, we might keep one image and the protocol for re acquiring that data. In contrast to another collection that we can't re acquire. That was a bit of a long answer but it was a long question and a really big question that's relevant to all Australian research. There are another couple of questions from Marco and Ryan which are similar in the sense of the sustainability of the outputs. If your questions weren't answered, if you could just drop a little note and then we might do a written answer to that, that's something which would be good for us to write down. There was also a comment from Douglas Robertson about that critical nature of governance, which I think we absolutely agree on. Really, that's a key component. Peter Riley has a question regarding the Indigenous data network dot point. Really is the point into the dot point that references the name role of IDN is the IDN therefore the single or primary vehicle pathway or pathway through which Indigenous research capability is expected to be supported. I think, again, we're at the stage of I'm not presupposing what will be in this project but certainly the conversation will be started with the program manager and with the IDN in the formation of the activity plan. But Len Smith makes a comment which I think again refers a little bit to the underpinning infrastructures that it really is key to make sure that those ICT infrastructures also the people infrastructures. There's a sustainability path for those. If I paraphrase that incorrectly, Len, then let me know. Stephanie von Govill has a question. How will ARDC move these foundational or quite limited in scope in some aspects activities to broader scale and application. So I think the point here is some ARDC itself is only funded through to June 2023 at this stage the same as these particular projects. When we're going through the activity plans, there will be things that we're capturing and saying yes this is in the scope of the project at the moment these things aren't in scope and then we would submit those to the road mapping process. But at this stage, I can't say what the federal government investment will be beyond June 2023. I certainly can't say that I will see these activities as an ongoing ARDC stream. I think on their, if you consider a hassle and indigenous research data commons, I could definitely see that being a capability on its own. So a new increase capability running but but I don't know. I don't know. Christian from Katie Wilson will care and fair data principles be managed for accountability or monitored at some level and if so by whom. ARDC is underpinning work is to advance the fair and care agenda. Obviously that the fair data agenda has a longer timeline behind it but all of our workers in that space. The data retention program that I mentioned previously is absolutely at looking at how we improve the metadata associated with a particular collection. But it won't be a case of ARDC or anyone else externally policing something in the activity plan. There has to be some consideration given to what this is what we are building. This is how we will judge it. Interesting question from Peter Riley so extending on from the care and fair are increasingly emerging focus within indigenous data research is indigenous data sovereignty is a complex and systemic question and one that warrants a national consideration including around storage and custodianship of any data that relates to indigenous Australians. Do you see this as a component of this next stage of work. Maybe do you mean this stage of work or the subsequent stages of work. Maybe you could. I'm I guess both this this stage and and then following on into the next stages. Peter, I think that the concept of data sovereignty is a critical consideration, and one that the design of the activities has to consider in the same way we think about sensitive data in the health context. Data has a particular information payload associated with it. And I would expect that this is a key consideration and it's the reason that we don't build a single massive data center for storage and say absolutely everything in Australia has to sit in this space, which is a terrible pity Rosie. Yes, I know I so didn't drop you in there. I have a question from Stephanie. How will our DC connect with all the other government, government agendas with respect to indigenous data and digital platforms so it says, and I delay productivity commission and so on. Who is coordinating here is our DC going to take up this role. Yes, and that will sit within the remit of the program manager. Obviously, a critical part of the communication strategy and so building those linkages and working to ensure the transparency and openness of the next stages of the program are completely critical. But I do see it is key responsibility on ARDC to make sure that we get the right people feeling that they have every opportunity that they want to contribute to the discussion. Good question from Ingrid what are the hallmarks of success through this program for the ARDC and for the four groups outlining. So there's two things. One, we write an activity plan and do what we said we do. That's really simple. And as a result of that we create some fantastic outcomes and the ability for significant support for both those and the broader scope is picked up in the next roadmap. I'm not saying anything particularly surprising there, you know, do a really good job and demonstrate that this broad cohort, I'm not going to lump all the projects in together as a very, very broad cohort, but is recognized as the mature and appropriate vehicle for future investment. I don't have any more questions in the list. Has anybody got anything they'd like to put forward. Okay. So, the purpose for today was obviously not to leave too long a gap, following October's announcement and bring us together and start some of these conversations so thank you for all of your questions. Obviously you'll see that the details in each of the projects I'm unable to answer at the moment, because we do need to appoint that program manager and have the full of discussions. But nevertheless, it's appropriate to capture these questions and take them forward going into the discussions. And Chris testing of the ideas jam is ongoing at the moment, and in the same time, the finalization of that position description is really in the next few days. So I think the important thing from today is for me to say that as soon as we have this job advert published, and out there. The first thing we will do is circulate that link to you and ask you to, again, pass that on to your networks or stick your hand up. There could be someone there today that's just the person to join us as the program manager. I don't know. I can't see all the faces, but you might well be listening so the position will go out very shortly. And it will be open probably for somewhere between two to four weeks and we'll press on with that. So that's the next step. During that time, we are still very, very happy for you to log questions with us. But some of these we really won't be able to advance until we have the program manager, and we can move forward with some constructive and productive stakeholder discussions around writing up those activity plans. Okay. So thank you all very much indeed for joining us this morning. It shows the depth of support and commitment for these very important projects. And I look forward to speaking with you over the coming weeks.