TAC Interoperability Task Force
- Kenton McHenry
- James Myers
Purpose:
To support the NDS Vision of a national capability for research data to be broadly accessible across disciplines and across repositories, services, and applications, and to help define an effective level of interoperability between data services participating in NDS Share, the NDS Technical Advisory Committee will launch a task force consisting of self-selecting TAC members and, if and where needed, invited external experts. The Task Force members will work to promote interoperability within NDS and will work to encourage interoperability as a goal within NDS pilot projects, to promote the development of pilot projects specifically focusing on interoperability, and to track and encourage coordination between pilot projects and NDS Share resource and service providers.
Activities:
The Task Force will primarily work electronically and will participate in the monthly TAC meeting by providing a monthly short update and requesting time for specific discussion items to be added to the TAC meeting agenda as useful.
The Task Force will track interoperability-related pilot projects by assigning a liaison to each pilot. It is anticipated that Task Force members will be participating in interoperability-related pilots relevant to their funded projects and other NDS-related activities and could naturally fill a liaison role. For projects that do not have a Task Force member who can act as a liaison, the Task Force will seek a volunteer from its membership to become a liaison. Liaisons will serve as a two-way communication mechanism between pilot projects and the Task Force.
Specific activities the Task Force is expected to engage in include:
- Developing an online list of interoperability-related pilot projects and references to their interoperability related resources and accomplishments
- Gathering information from NDS resource and service providers regarding their current mechanisms for import/export/exchange of data publications and their interest/involvement in interoperability pilot projects
- Tracking (in collaboration with pilots) relevant external interoperability efforts (e.g. the proposed RDA Interoperability WG)
- Reporting to the TAC and conveying TAC feedback to NDS Share providers, pilot projects, and the NDS Membership
- Reporting at NDS National Meetings and helping to organize cross-group interoperability sessions at such meetings
- Alerting the TAC when one or more options exist that could be recommended as baseline interoperability requirements for NDS Share resources
Activities at NDS 6:
Presentations on the Task Force and it's relationship to NDS Share, Labs, the TAC, and pilot projects were given at the NDS 6 tutorial day and in the main program.
Interoperability-related Pilot Projects:
The TAC ITF is currently tracking two pilot projects that are interoperability related. The ITF would like to help these and other pilot efforts to coordinating with each other and making the outcomes of their efforts that are relevant to NDS Share and the overall NDS vision more visible to the consortium. The ITF will specifically work with pilots to develop a recommendation to be delivered through the TAC regarding minimal requirements for participation in NDS SHare.
Project Proposal Form: http://goo.gl/forms/uObA1cDJIUE02gqz2
Existing Interoperability Related Pilot(s):
Presented at NDS 6: Bringing Visibility to Food Security Data Results: Harvests of PRAGMA and RDA , Quan (Gabriel) Zhou, Indiana U