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The outcomes of the Data Portals Project

The outcomes of the Data Portals Project. James Doughty NERC Data Management Conference 18th February 2009. Today. Introduction What was the Data Portals Project? Project background Outcome Positives Knock-ons Improvements The future. Introduction. www.diass.co.uk. Project.

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The outcomes of the Data Portals Project

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  1. The outcomes of the Data Portals Project James Doughty NERC Data Management Conference 18th February 2009

  2. Today • Introduction • What was the Data Portals Project? • Project background • Outcome • Positives • Knock-ons • Improvements • The future

  3. Introduction www.diass.co.uk

  4. Project Background • Collaboration across NERC and beyond (RESC (Met Office data), Defra (CSL data)) • 7 months from start to finish (August 07 – March 08) • Funding split between NDG and the new demonstration portal (@50:50) Visit ndg.nerc.ac/discovery and www.edp.nerc.ac.uk for more... Outcome • A new demonstration portal • focussed on overlaying visualisations • plugged directly into the NERC Data Grid infrastructure • used off-the-shelf visualisation software (Google Earth, Con Terra) • Wide variety of visualisations of data • Improvements to the NDG infrastructure • NDG Medium Sized Initiative

  5. Positives • Raised awareness of data visualisation and data infrastructures at NERC executive board level. • Fuelled the debate on the scientific use of data visualisation overlays. • Jon Blower... he’s next... • Further demonstrated the flexibility of the NDG infrastructure and capabilities. • Demonstrated to parts of Defra how a distributed spatial data architecture could help satisfy the needs of INSPIRE.

  6. Positives • Further demonstrated that NERC’s data management community could work effectively together. • Demonstrated how different datasets from different organisations using different data structures could be interrogated via a unified data model (CSML) – CEH ECN and Met Office Station Data. • Demonstrated the importance of having good data structures – much easier to share and visualise if done well. • Implemented suggested improvements to the data discovery interface. • Demonstrated the benefit of using web-design specialists to improve the user experience.

  7. Positives • Portal was deliberately ‘Neutrally Branded’ to illustrate its potential for re-use • IP rests with NERC • Portal software hosted at BGS and is independent of NDG infrastructure • Branding (logos and links) occurs at metadata level, not portal level • Relatively straightforward to rebrand and re-use appropriately

  8. Positives • Demonstrated the potential of using data visualisation to promote science in schools • In 2016 this year’s GCSE students will be 22ish • Oxford University Press, Nuffield Curriculum Centre – GCSE Science OCR Syllabus • 800 secondary schools (25%), 400,000 students “Develop a programme in partnership with others to engage education departments and curriculum developers to enthuse young people about science” Page 25 NGSPE - People • Agreement by the Data Portals Project Board to recommend a funding stream to help other communities build their own portals (or re-use the demonstration portal?)

  9. Knock on effects • Interim funding for NDG – NDG MSI. • Appointment of 1 year post at BAS to improve visualisation capability. • £30k Development Fund Project at CSL to improve visualisation and data portal capability.

  10. Improvements There was... • No strategic context “It should come as no surprise to senior management that short-term, quick-fix, unprioritised funding can do more harm than good.” Fix – robust NERC Information Strategy and clear long term plans There continues to be... • Disjointed integration planning • CEH, ERFF • Electrocomponents plc (2000) 2 senior FTEs.

  11. Fix – increased executive and management focus on data at NERC

  12. Improvements There continues to be... • Inadequate marketing, user engagement and community communication. Fix – NDG to improve look and feel of all user interfaces using external web-design and specialised marketing support. Fix – NDG community newsletters via NDG-Community and NDG-Technical mailing lists Fix – NDG Workshops Data and Information Modelling (19-20 February) Vocabulary Services (25th February) Scientific Data Services (18-19 March) Scientific Metadata (tbc) Data Management Futures (tbc)

  13. Improvements There continues to be... • An understandable imbalance between “research funding” and “operational funding” • NDG support operations currently £30k pa • NDG Research/Projects £2m over 6 years Dilemma Continue to grow your own operatinal capability or Find appropriate partners to help you

  14. The Future • NDG Futures Workshop • NERC Information Strategy • Is not yet clear to many…

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