(Inter)National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategies

The Australian Research Data Commons was formed in July 2018 from the integration of the NCRIS ANDS, Nectar, and RDS projects as a result of the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education. In 2018, the ARDC was significant capital and operational funding to invest to “enable critical upgrades to virtual laboratories, research cloud storage and data security, [thereby] providing a strong basis for the increasing volume of complex computing demands across government, research and industry.”

In order to guide this long-range investment activity the ARDC has conducted over 30 stakeholder meetings involving around 350 stakeholders during the closing stages of 2018, covering NCRIS capabilities, HPC facilities, institutions, eResearch organisations, and state governments to develop a strategy for the next generation of NCRIS eResearch activity. The draft outputs of this process will be made available for discussion in December 2018 with the final strategies deliverable at the end of March 2019.

The challenges facing the ARDC are not unique, and our colleagues overseas are asking the same questions around effective approaches to national collections and infrastructures. One aspect is how we might leverage the 2017 Agreement on Science, Research and Innovation Cooperation which outlines how:

“The Australian Department of Education and Training (DET), the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS) and MBIE will continue discussions to inform and align each other’s research infrastructure roadmaps where appropriate.

Australia will consult with New Zealand on the development and implementation of the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, with the possibility of collaboration.

New Zealand will consult with Australia on the development of its Research Infrastructure Roadmap. ARDC would therefore like to take this opportunity to engage the NZ eResearch community in a joint conversation about progress, ideas around aligned strategies and activities, and discussion on suggestions and priorities from the audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Ian Duncan (Acting Executive Director, ARDC)