Digital Infrastructure Programmes
NOTE: ALL FUNDING FIGURES IN THIS WORK PLAN ARE DRAFT AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS
IMPLEMENTATION AND PLANS PROGRESS.
Contents
1
Digital Infrastructure ....................................................................................................... 1
2
Programme Blueprints ................................................................................................... 2
2.1
Information and Library Infrastructure ..................................................................... 2
2.1.1
Information and library resources, services and systems: emerging
opportunities .................................................................................................................. 3
2.1.2
Digital preservation and curation ...................................................................... 3
2.1.3
Resource Discovery ......................................................................................... 4
2.2
Research Management ........................................................................................... 5
2.2.1
Repositories ..................................................................................................... 5
2.2.2
Research Information Management ................................................................. 5
2.2.3
Research Data Management ........................................................................... 6
2.3
Research ................................................................................................................ 7
2.3.1
Research Tools Programme ............................................................................ 8
2.3.2
Research Support Programme ........................................................................ 8
2.4
Digital Infrastructure Directions ............................................................................... 9
2.4.1
Strategic Directions .......................................................................................... 9
2.4.2
Technical Directions....................................................................................... 10
2.4.3
Legal Directions ............................................................................................. 10
2.4.4
Access and Identity Management .................................................................. 11
2.4.5
Identifiers ....................................................................................................... 11
2.4.6
Curating institutional assets / institutions using open approaches .................. 12
2.4.7
Programme management .............................................................................. 12
1 Digital Infrastructure
The objective of the Digital Infrastructure portfolio is to develop an infrastructure that
supports the requirements of research and learning. Digital Infrastructure includes technical
services, standards, software tools, supporting policies, practice and regulatory frameworks.
It allows for the appropriate creation, management and exploitation of information, resources
and services to enable effective and high quality research and education.
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The Digital Infrastructure programmes provide the direction for, and to develop, the
infrastructure that the higher education sector requires, ensuring that technology is exploited
and related practice developed to improve resources and services for research and
education. The main focus is on shared technologies and services that improve efficiency
and effectiveness in terms of digital resources and content and how these can be better
managed and used so that research and education is enhanced.
The two main JISC strategic objectives that the Digital Infrastructure programmes work to
are:


To provide cost-effective and sustainable shared national services and resources
To help institutions to improve the quality, impact and productivity of academic
research
The programme work aims to:



develop digital service infrastructure at a shared JISC level, this can be centralised
and hosted nationally (and sometimes international infrastructure will be appropriate);
it can also be developed in a shared way across local HEI provision. Exploiting the
network with integration into the web and the use of global services is a key part of
the approach to support maximum re-use, efficiency and the collaboration required
for research and education
develop technologies, approaches, policies and practice to create, manage, share,
integrate and use information and technical services for education and research.
develop and lead strategy that will help to lead change that takes advantage of the
opportunities offered by technology and digital infrastructure to improve information
curation and use and support research and where relevant other aspects of
education such as learning.
There are 4 Digital Infrastructure programmes. The blueprints for each programme are
represented in section 2. Each programme is broken down into a number of strands.
This workplan was agreed by the last meetings of the JISC Infrastructure and Resources
and the JISC Support of Research committees in May 2012.
2 Programme Blueprints
2.1 Information and Library Infrastructure
Information and library infrastructure has been key to the delivery of the JISC mission since
its inception as it is a core area where shared practice and services can serve the research
and learning missions of universities. There has been a broad range of activity that has
resulted in infrastructure, practice and policy across information provision, such as digital
preservation, curation, sharing of institutional assets, e-journal infrastructure, library
management systems, resource discovery and licensing. Collectively this activity has
enabled the delivery of what might be termed a distributed digital library for UK higher
education. There is now an opportunity to mange this activity in a more holistic way to help
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to better address the current needs of libraries. However it will be important not to lose
some of the breadth of vision that is required to enable necessary change in information
provision. Therefore whilst much of the activity will be focused on ‘library’ requirements
there will be activity that supports the integration of information and services on the web and
that deals with distribution and re-use in a broad sense. This work will deliver all three of the
digital infrastructure aims: service infrastructure; improved and fit for purpose technologies,
policies and approaches and change through developing shared understanding and
approaches.
2.1.1
Information and library resources, services and systems: emerging
opportunities
The rationale for this activity is to identify and address emerging opportunities and trends to
help academic libraries in their delivery of relevant and appropriate services to their users.
The work aims to ensure the ease, efficiency and continuity of access to scholarly resources
as required by researchers and students continues, by enabling libraries to identify and
adapt to the changing information ecosystem. Some work will seek to implement shared
services and the associated change other activity will look at newer trends and related
solutions.
Activity
Supporting the eBook ecosystem
Activity data services and efficiencies
Policies, roles and skills in support of
research and learning
Timescale
August 2011- July
2012
August 2011- July
2012
August 2011- July
2012
Shared services – shared cataloguing,
resource management, de-duplication etc
August2011- July 2012
Other activity underway with allocations set
aside- Electronic Resource Management,
Mobile, Usage Statistics, JORUM
August 2011- July
2012
Total funding recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
Costs
£1.6m
2.1.2 Digital preservation and curation
The digital preservation programme will carry out advocacy, partnership and innovation
development work to ensure UK Higher Education has ongoing access to the digital
information that it needs. The work programme addresses some ‘here and now’ issues, for
example shared infrastructure for e-journal archiving, and some longer term issues, such as
how curation can be supported in a cloud environment. One of the critical issues in
managing information effectively is the cost benefit of doing so and this will be one of the
areas of focus building on the work of keeping research data safe, LIFE and the feasibility
study of the costs observatory that is currently underway.
Activity
Timescale
3
Costs
Activity
e-journal archiving
Timescale
August 2011 – July
2012
August 2011 – July
2012
August 2011 – July
2012
August 2011 – July
2013
August 2011 – July
2013
Preservation business case
Web preservation
Information Management costs/sustainability
Skills & training
Supporting existing activities including – the
ejournal archiving services PECAN and
PEPRS, LOCKSS, Preservation of complex
objects
Total funding recommended from AY
2011/12 (core) (rounded)
Costs
£1m
2.1.3 Resource Discovery
This activity supports the Resource Discovery Taskforce (RDTF) vision and aims to enable
the accessibility and re-use of resources in a flexible way that results in students,
researchers and teachers benefitting from flexible and innovative services for the managing
of resources and their discovery. The approach underpins more efficient services and
reduced duplication. Alongside this the concept of the ‘data driven infrastructure’ is
supported through this approach and the lessons from linked data and trends in open
bibliography will be exploited. The work will result in clear guidance, improved practice and
approaches to enable the RDTF vision and broader resource discovery and use
requirements to be met; some of this might be via JISC services.
Activity
The Discovery project
Timescale
Sept 2011- March2012
Discovery Community engagement
August 2011- July
2012
August 2011- July
2012
Developing services and tools designed to
implement the RDTF vision
Projects to support the publication of open
metadata from libraries, museums and
archives.
Costs
August 2011- July
2012
Total funding recommended from AY
2011/12
£1.1m
(core)
£1.2m
(capital)
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2.2 Research Management
The aim of this programme is to produce and support the development, take-up and
embedding of more efficient and effective systems and practices for managing research
activity and outputs.
The blueprint sees research managers having the tools, technologies, skills and support to
guide, develop and exploit (inter)national and local ICT resources to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness with which research is managed. This is a hybrid infrastructure, since
research activities and outputs cross organisational boundaries. It will consist of some
shared services and much local, distributed practice and systems that will need to
interoperate effectively. Funders will maintain policies with respect to the research they
fund, and many will maintain systems holding information about that research. Similarly,
institutions will maintain policies and infrastructure related to the research they host.
Researchers will conduct research and disseminate outputs, exploiting funder, institutional,
publisher, personal and web infrastructure components. Research managers will have
systems that collate the information and traces from this hybrid infrastructure. JISC and
other service providers will maintain shared services that meet some of the requirements of
each of these stakeholders, with appropriate business models. The challenge for the
programme is to ensure that these components work together for the benefit of HE
2.2.1 Repositories
Considerable investment by HEIs, research funders and JISC has developed a substantial
UK repository infrastructure. While room remains for some targeted innovation and further
community support, the overwhelming requirement now is to rationalise the service
environment, to develop a coherent suite of services that are innovative, efficient and
effective in themselves and enable HEIs to be more so.
Activity
Repository shared services
(including curation)
Repository priority problem
spaces (“deposit”, guidance, etc)
Other activity underway – Ethos,
Repository Support Project,
Romeo
Total funding recommended
from AY 2011/12(rounded)
(core)
Timescale
May 2011 – March
2013
August 2011 – July
2012
August 2011 – July
2012
Costs
£452k (core)
£2m (capital)
2.2.2 Research Information Management
The focus of work in this area has been to establish a common approach to technical
interoperability, and to support an emerging community of practice focused on better
management of administrative data relating to research. With significant progress on this,
the aim of the programme now is to embed good practice more widely, and demonstrate the
benefits by exploiting opportunities that arise during the programme timescale, including
REF as a driver for many HEIs, HEFCE investment in the “Research Management and
Administration System” shared service, the Research Identifiers cross-sector “Task and
Finish” Group/ ORCID, and the US National Science Foundation / NIH “STAR Metrics”
programme and its take up internationally.
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The ultimate aim is to reduce the burden on individual researchers and free up more time for
them to concentrate on research. However, benefits will accrue on other levels: institutions
will make efficiency savings and gain better business intelligence for strategic planning etc.,
Research Councils could benefit from richer, faster reporting, HEFCE and HESA could see
their costs reduced by improved automation of their data gathering.
Activity
Spreading and embedding good
practice beyond the existing
community, including support for
REF and collaboration with RMAS
Timescale
August 2011 – July
2013
Implementing a UK approach to
“researcher identifiers”
August 2011 – July
2013
STAR-Metrics pilot
August 2011 – July
2013
Total funding recommended
from AY 2011/12 (core)
2.2.3
Costs
£1.1m
Research Data Management
Improved Research Data Management has been recognised as key to supporting research
which increasingly relies upon digital data assets and can be regarded as ‘data intensive’.
The case has been made in a series of reports, many commissioned by JISC; and is
reinforced by activities overseas, most notably in Australia, the US, Netherlands and
Germany. In line with this international trend, the recent ‘Riding the Wave’ report from the
European Commission presents a vision of collaborative data infrastructure and urges
further investment.
In the UK, inroads have been made, with investment from JISC, the Research Councils and
more recently via the HEFCE Universities Modernisation Fund investment. Data
infrastructure must be constructed at a number of levels in order to be flexible and
responsive to need. JISC has a key role, therefore, in building this infrastructure in
Universities. The support required for research data management needs to be considered
broadly, comprising planning tools, data management systems, data repositories,
infrastructure and standards for data publication and discovery. Human aspects cannot be
neglected: policies, skills and capacity need to be addressed; and, as with any change
programme, it is important to present evidence for the direction and focus of intervention.
Activity
Digital Curation Centre
Timescale
Autumn –
2011 –
Autumn 2012
Research Data Management Infrastructure
- Projects to pilot institutional data
management infrastructure.
Autumn –
Spring 2013
6
Costs
Activity
Research Data Management Planning and
Tools for Projects, Departments, Centres.
Timescale
Autumn 2011
– Spring 2012
Data Management Planning Tools
Autumn –
Spring 2013
Autumn 2011
– Autumn
2012
Data Publication Infrastructure: Romeo for
Data; DataCite guidance and good
practice; interoperability and data
publishing
Research data management tools to
support key points of the data management
lifecycle, addressing gaps identified by
currently completing projects.
Infrastructure for data discovery, crosssearch and analysis building upon the UMF
pilots
Costs
Autumn 2011
– Autumn
2012
Summer 2011
– Summer
2012
Summer
2012-Summer
2013
Research data management training
Autumn 2011
– Autumn
2012
Synthesis and Studies of the development,
implementation of sustainable RDM
strategy in research groups departments,
centres and institutions
Early 2012
Social infrastructure models
Late 20122013
Total
£3.8m Capital (over 2
years)
£1.8m Core
2.3 Research
Over the last twenty years, the power and capability of IT has increased exponentially
providing both new research processes and increasing researchers’ productivity and ability
to communicate their research within and without their communities. During this time,
various infrastructures for networking and communication; data transfer, storage, discovery
and retrieval; and computation and processing have emerged driven by initiatives such as
the e-science programme. However, whilst there are many researchers making effective use
of IT and infrastructure in their research, there are still researchers who are unaware of the
opportunities today’s technology can offer in their research, or who, whilst aware of the
opportunities, lack the capability, support and skills to realise these opportunities.
Meanwhile, the potential capability of IT and infrastructure is increasing at breakneck speeds
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whilst research institutes and HEIs have increasingly limited resources (staff, time, money,
energy, etc.) to take advantage of these opportunities.
2.3.1 Research Tools Programme
The rationale for this programme is to ensure the research community is fully informed of the
potential that IT and IT infrastructure can offer in the research process. The Tools and
Technologies strand focuses on exploiting technologies and infrastructure in the research
process and pushing the envelope to determine the future demands of research on
infrastructures. Researchers will benefit through access to compute facilities and tools for
(collaborative) research that facilitate collaboration and communication, improve research
processes and enable new research findings.
Activity
National Grid Service
Exploiting infrastructure for Research
(distributed compute, cloud, visualisation, data
mining, semantic services, linked data,
geospatial)
Virtual Laboratory of the Future
(hybrid environments/reality, mobile interfaces,
new interaction models
Research collaboration and communications
(bridging institutions, research groups, nations,
and citizen science, scholarly comms,
Disseminating research/research impact within
the research community/scholarly comms. Public
outreach)
Timescale
Autumn 2011 – Autumn
2012
Autumn 2011- Autumn
2012
Costs
Autumn 2011 – Autumn
2013
Autumn 2011 – Autumn
2012
Total funding recommended from AY 2011/12
(core)
£1.3m
2.3.2 Research Support Programme
By supporting researchers UK plc would benefit from more leading edge research and
greater research productivity. Universities would benefit from more productive research and
individual researchers’ reputations would be enhanced. Whilst there are many researchers
making effective use of IT and infrastructure in their research, there are still researchers who
are unaware of the opportunities today’s technology can offer in their research, or who,
whilst aware of the opportunities, lack the capability, support and skills to realise these
opportunities.
Activity
Researcher Training
Timescale
Autumn 2011- Autumn 2012
Institutional ICT Support for
Research – models and
guidance
Research and Developer
Triage
Autumn 2011- Autumn 2012
Autumn 2011- Autumn 2012
8
Costs
Activity
JISC Advance for Research
and VRE materials
Timescale
Autumn 2011- Autumn 2012
Total funding recommended
from AY 2011/12 (core)
Costs
£250K
2.4 Digital Infrastructure Directions
The scope of the digital infrastructure for education and research includes technical shared
services, technical standards, software tools, supporting policies, shared practice and
regulatory frameworks. It is concerned with the persistence of information, the extent to
which it can be understood, trusted and reused, and hence with the semantics, provenance
and rights associated with the information, and the policies, skills, organisational
arrangements and cultures of the people using it. These are common concerns across the
other three programme areas. Many of the outputs will be made available in a way that they
inform stakeholders clearly of the outputs and the relevance to them.
The aim of the activities under the “Digital Infrastructure Directions” blueprint is to provide
the strategy and cross cutting evidence base and community support to underpin the work in
the other programmes and to provide information for longer term planning. The work will
identify and develop common and/or shared approaches, and to ensure that benefits from
the programmes are widely spread. Many of these approaches are already established. By
managing them under a single umbrella, it is hoped that there will be further crossfertilisation between them, improving the quality and impact of the work done.
The activities under this blueprint vary in their design. They include programmes (such as
Access and Identity Management), key projects (such as support for the UK Developer
Community), and work under the auspices of the Innovation Support Centres and other
centres of expertise. It is important to note that some of these activities (such as the
Technical Observatory) are also relevant beyond the other three blueprints within the Digital
Infrastructure portfolio.
2.4.1 Strategic Directions
The strategy for innovation on the UKHE digital infrastructure is framed by dedicated work to
establish the case for investment, to collect, analyse and present evidence on the various
areas of work in scope in the three blueprint areas, and to project a way forward that both
addresses institutional immediate concerns and ensures that preparations are made to
exploit the longer term benefits of new technologies. Note that the “Technical Direction”
work is also relevant to this area.
Activity
Digital infrastructure roadmap
Cross-cutting synthesis /
policy-level reports
Cross-cutting technical
directions reports
Timescale
August 2011 – August
2013
August 2011 – July 2012
August 2011 – July 2012
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Costs
Activity
International partnership,
principally via the Knowledge
Exchange
Timescale
August 2011 – July 2012
Strategic work in support of
the JISC ‘Open’ agenda,
including the OA
Implementation Group
August 2011 – July 2012
Other OA work underwaycampus publishing, ALT
guidelines, benefits, open
study
Total funding
recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
August 2011– July2012
Costs
£750k
2.4.2 Technical Directions
The purpose of the Technical Directions activities, mainly led by the Innovation Support
Centres (principally UKOLN), is to gather evidence, document trends in the use of
technologies, synthesise this and present it appropriate to the JISC innovation community,
including the JISC Executive. These activities are supported by the existence of a vibrant
early adopter / developer community. The activities are becoming established at the
Innovation Support Centres, and are intended to be ongoing. They are largely resourced
through the ISC core funding, and constitute a central plank of their support for JISC
innovation.
Activity
JISC Observatory
UKOLN
Timescale
Ongoing
Ongoing
Costs
Innovation Support
Knowledge Base
Technical Foundations
website
Developer community
(DevCSI project)
Total funding
recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
From summer 2011
From summer 2011
August 2011 – July 2013
£850k p.a.
2.4.3 Legal Directions
The purpose of the Legal Foundations activities is to gather evidence on the relevance of
legal frameworks to the effective exploitation of digital technologies, document trends,
synthesise this and present it appropriate to the JISC innovation community, including the
JISC Executive.
Activity
Timescale
Costs
10
Activity
JISC IPR Consultant
Timescale
August 2011 – July 2012
Legal issues & solutions
August 2011- July 2012
Total funding
recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
Costs
£110K
2.4.4 Access and Identity Management
The purpose of the Access & Identity Management Programme is to build upon the Access
Management Federation and develop the technologies and strategies for future
developments particularly in the areas of identity management and user centric systems.
This will involve continuing the evolution of the UK HE Access and Identity Management
structures, which began with a centralised system with ATHENS, within an international
context; this will consist of embedding the current institution centric approaches whilst
investigating user centric approaches.
Activity
Timescale
Costs
Identity Management Toolkit and Autumn 2011- Autumn
Literacies
2012
AIM Embedding
Autumn 2011- Autumn
2012
AIM Future directions (cloud,
Autumn 2011- Autumn
persistence of identity, identity
2012
and identifiers, delegation, interfederations, user centricity)
SDSS at EDINA ( tbc)
August 2011-July 2012
Total funding recommended
from AY 2011/12 (core)
£700K
2.4.5 Identifiers
There is increasing recognition that core identifier sets constitute a key part of the digital
infrastructure. Identifiers for researchers, organisations, citations, annotations, course
material, geospatial coordinates in research, specialist research taxonomies and other such
scholarly identifier sets can act as the infrastructure supporting research practice, teaching
and learning tools, and management and administrative functions.
While approaches to some such identifier sets will be pursued under specific programmes
(see “Researcher Ids” under the Research Information Management programme), others are
best pursued as a cross-cutting activity. A coordinating activity should ensure that JISC’s
innovation work in these areas is joined-up and based on a coherent set of principles and
good practices. The use of identifiers in this way will enable HEIs to exploit the opportunities
identified by recent JISC and other investments in “linked data” technologies.
Activity
Identification and development of core, crosscutting identifier sets, and practices to ensure their
sustainability. Work in collaboration with
programmes across JISC Innovation
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Timescale
August 2011 – July
2012
Costs
Activity
Engagement with national and international
developments in this area to ensure coordination
and, where appropriate, a consistent approach
Support for linked data approaches, to be defined
Work underway – geo programmes
Timescale
August 2011 – July
2012
Costs
August 2011 – July
2012
August 2011November 2011
Total funding recommended from AY 2011/12
(core)
£649k
2.4.6 Curating institutional assets / institutions using open approaches
Institutions manage a range of content resources, through libraries and within VLEs. Some
are also making a range of assets openly available on the web, from open access research
papers to open educational resources to digitised special collections. This programme will
support institutions which are using a wide range of JISC and other resources (toolkits, good
practice guides, technologies, etc) to inform an institution-wide, strategic approach to
managing and exploiting their digital assets, especially where those assets are openly
available on the web. Curating assets strategically so they meet institutional agendas
effectively will be an area that is explored through this activity. For example, using research
outputs to support learning, or to promote the institutional profile, or supporting related
collaboration and innovation agendas. The lessons will be shared widely across the sector.
As referred to above there are ways that open content and resources can be managed to
support institutional agendas. However the use of open approaches is broader than this, and
whilst there are degrees of openness and it is not always appropriate there are examples
emerging whereby open is being used as a strategic tactic by organisations outside of the
university sector and by some universities. For example Staffordshire, Salford, Leeds
Metropolitan and Southampton universities have made management decisions to opt for
more open approaches to content, software and systems in order to promote institutional
agendas and drive partnership and innovation. Recent discussions have indicated that other
agencies may well be willing to partner in work that better exposed and explained open as a
tactic and help to share practice.
Activity
Curating institutional assets
programme
Open exemplars
Timescale
August 2011 – July 2013
Costs
August 2011 – July 2012
Total funding
recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
£300k
2.4.7 Programme management and embedding activities
A variety of supporting activities are required to ensure that programmes and other
interventions meet requirements and are disseminated effectively so that institutions can
benefit from good practice that is developed and identified.
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Activity
Evaluation
Programme management
Programme communications
Total funding
recommended from AY
2011/12 (core)
Timescale
August 2011 – July 2013
August 2011 – July 2013
August 2011 – July 2013
Costs
£450k
NOTE: ALL FUNDING FIGURES IN THIS WORK PLAN ARE DRAFT AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS
IMPLEMENTATION AND PLANS PROGRESS.
13