Tools and Services over Data: Coordinating an Australian Approach

- Notes from the BOF session at eResearch Australasia 2015

Andrew Treloar (ANDS Director of Technology) and Nigel Ward (formerly Deputy Director at NeCTAR, now eResearch Services Manager at QCIF) ran a BOF session on “Tools and Services over Data” at  eResearch Australasia 2015. The aim of this BOF was to provide a venue for an ongoing discussion  between  data  providers,  data  service  providers,  and  data  service  users  about:

• how  to  more  efficiently  and  effectively  connect  data  to  tools  and  services  over  data
• how to better coordinate activities over  the  next  funding  period.

There were about 30 people in the session. The session started by asking attendees why they were interested in this session. Andrew and Nigel then gave a presentation  on why ANDS and NeCTAR care about Service and Tools over Data. This was followed by a discussion on what areas the participants felt we should work on; in particular what elements were missing in the Australian services and tools landscape.

The following areas were identified in the discussion:  

• Standard vocabularies
• Managing information about groups of people (for use by other services)
• Service interoperability (specifically making it far easier to achieve)
• Working with data derived from people (that is, confidential or private data)
• Data literacy for tool builders
• Data literacy for tool users

ANDS and NeCTAR will discuss further how to tackle the above issues, and then engage with the community. Stay tuned!