Difference between revisions of "Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice: The iMarine Board"

Revision as of 23:24, 7 June 2012

Overview

“The primary goal of the iMarine Board is to define the data e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. governance model, with a sustainability focus, and to formulate a set of organizational and technological policy recommendations regulating the resources shared and services provided by the infrastructure.”

This goal will be achieved by the Board by providing assistance and recommendations to the iMarine e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. partners in orchestrating the activities to ensure an effective exploitation of the e-infrastructure. The Board has a primary role in outreach and marketing of the e-infrastructure, and its activities range from identifying opportunities for collaboration and sharing of resources, to organizing the collection of requirements, support to implementing solutions, and ensuring packaging of outcomes in manageable resources.

The Board holds its formal meeting sessions every 6 months

Formal aspects of the Board (mandate, membership, officers, decision making process, operational policies, ...) are defined in Board’s Rules and procedures.

The Board operates by defining among it’s members and the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. a range of objectives, and the work plan to achieve these. The objectives are verifiable outcomes that will be validated to measure project success.

Rules and Procedures

TO BE COMPLETED. A draft version (pending Board Approval), is available here

Criteria for prioritization

The Rules and Procedures refer to a set of criteria that govern the prioritization setting of initiatives in the Board's decision making process.

These criteria were agreed at the iMarine Board kick-off meeting, They are:

• Users now
• Co-funding
• Project structural allocation of resources
• Referred to in DoW
• How feed into CoPCommunity of Practice. business cases
• General statement Re How does the proposed action support sustainability aspects
• How consistent it is with EC regulations/strategies (eg INSPIRE, ... )
• Reusability – benefits – compatibility

Overall workplan

WP3 objectives and activities

Project activities involving the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. take place under WP3. These activities are organized according to the three main objectives:

1. Operations of the iMarine Board:

• Mobilization of/mediation with the wider EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. concerned by the three Business cases
• Meetings of the iMarine Board
• Meetings of the iMarine Advisory Council

2. Governance and Policy developments

• Development of the Sustainability plan
• Development of Governance model
• Development of Data Policies
• Development of Software Policies
• Development of guidelines and best practices

3. Harmonization of systems and schemas

Harmonization activities are organized by technical clusters and can be validated through the VREs set-up to serve the Business cases

• VREs planning
• Technical Clusters: Statistical; Biodiversity; Geospatial; Semantics

Status of Board's workplan after Board 1 meeting

At its first session, the iMarine Board has initiated the elaboration of an overall workplan which spans across the entire project duration. This workplan provides an overview of Board's activities and related timing expectations, and is used to identify possible conflicting use of project resources in order to decide on priorities.

• Workplan overview in Excel format

• The Ecosystem_Approach_Community_of_Practice_Overview:_Clusters#Cluster_Work_Plans_in_iMarine page describes the work plans scheduled by the technical clusters;

Implementation results

Mediation

The mediation efforts of the iMarine Board are primarily geared towards serving the three Business cases.

• the iMarine Business Cases page which combine technical requirements with organizational, political and managerial issues; they specify larger organizational concepts that may be supported by one or more VREVirtual Research Environment.'s. The page on business cases describes these from the technology perspective. Other information on organization and operation in support of the Business Cases can be found in the iMarine Board Channel.

The iMarine Board meetings constitute the primary mechanism for mediation among the EA Community of PracticeA term coined to capture an "activity system" that includes individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that "action" has for them and for the larger collective. The communities of practice are "virtual", ''i.e.'', they are not formal structures, such as departments or project teams. Instead, these communities exist in the minds of their members, are glued together by the connections they have with each other, as well as by their specific shared problems or areas of interest. The generation of knowledge in communities of practice occurs when people participate in problem solving and share the knowledge necessary to solve the problems. directly involved in the project. The meetings page documents the events organised to support the board activity including their reports, recommendations and conclusions;

• iMarine kick-off meeting
• First iMarine Board meeting - this meeting has elaborated the iMarine Board Rules and Procedures ; this page describes the regulations and principles supporting the operation of this board;
• First Advisory Countil meeting

Mediation includes liaison and outreach activities to the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice., identified by the iMarine Board:

• Presentation of iMarine to DG-MARE
• Attendance of the ICES Conference

Governance

The Governance discussed in this chapter relate to the activities of the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. where they interact with the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large.. It describes how Deliverable D3.2 (M10) and D3.3 (M29), that report on this governance, are achieved.

The Governance area contains:

• the Sustainable use of the data e-Infrastructure page;
• the Governing mechanism recommendations page;
• the iMarine Policies page;
  • the EA-CoP Data Access and Sharing Policies page;
• the iMarine Guidelines and Best Practices page;

Harmonization of systems

As mentioned in the Board's page, Board's objectives include organizing the collection of requirements, providing support to implementing solutions, and ensuring packaging of outcomes in manageable resources. This sub-set of objectives are articulated under the "Harmonization of systems"

The Requirements area contains:

• the VRE planning page which describes the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. desiderata in terms of a composition of services and resources, delivered as a packaged single unit to the CoPCommunity of Practice.. A VREVirtual Research Environment. provides a defined set of services for a specific group of users that collaborate on a specified task or workflow. An alternative approach to VREs are gCube apps. In the context of the CoPCommunity of Practice. desiderata, no difference is made.

• the Clusters page describes how the CoPCommunity of Practice. organizes the requirements collection and discussion on high-level topics in a set of organic, but also technological clusters; geospatial, biodiversity, statistics, and semantic technologies all are supported by technologies that overlap in functionality with other clusters, yet are still easily identifiable as falling within one of the clusters.

Validation

According to the Description of Work, the goal of this activity is (i) to document status and issues on harmonization approaches, and (ii) to validate implemented policies and business cases, their functionality and conformance to requirements.

The Validation area contains:

• ...

Meetings

iMarine Board Kick-off meeting

First meeting of the iMarine Board