EarthCube Governance Roadmap and Workshops

Earthcube: how do we organize, manager, and govern?

• Discuss Chorette, next step due Aug 15
  • Meeting last Tuesday
  • Present governance model from Tuesday
  • Want discussion on framework/directions
• What is earthcube
  • 6 blind monks – describe elephant differently
  • One of the challenges is to accommodate the different vision, requirements, and needs for the community
• NSF – geosciences community
• There are a number of concept teams, special interest groups
  • Came together at Charrette in June
  • Hope for concept groups come out of this and redefine and combine session
  • Original organization may more based on individual road maps
• Since Nov 2011 – 2 charrette
  • There will be concept prototyping and working groups reports that will go through iterative cycle to build the earthcube concept
  • Move forward over the last 5 years
• One of the parts that came out of the last few months – earthcube brings together system of systems
  • They function and operate – how do we integrate/leverage resources
  • Also has enterprise support – mainly have cyberinfrastruture
  • There are also a series of communities & long tail sciences
  • Across academia, gov, industry, NGOs
  • But Earthcube is a defined cluster – need to leverage and collaborate outside of this community
  • Who makes decision, sets standards, allocates resources
  • Coordinated, meet needs, strategic and tactical oversight
• Commodity governance group – align practices and procedure with goals, purposes and values – opposed to management activities
• Define governance – processes, structure, and organization elements that determine…
• Look at what has been done at other infrastructure – out of social science and business communities
  • Infrastructure development around world
    • A lot of diff buildings
    • Not the same end as though
    • Modular, incremental
    • Developed locally
    • Grows as community expands
  • Need to have flexible governance to allow for growth
• Technology adoption relative to population – develop slowly at first then increased rapidly – around 70-90% then there is a long tail of adopters over a long period
  • Governance needs evolve as it is adopted
  • Internet – started with DARPA… then NSF… and other… then pulled back and governance is very different
  • There is not governing entities for the electric grids – regulated separately –no overall
  • No infrastructure on a national or global scale have a governing body
  • Need governing body to get it launch – then it should take off on its own – need to facilitate parts functional on its own
• Concept architecture
  • Need work with the governance structure of each group
• Looked at role of IT governance
  • There are 7 different types of governance structure for different aspects of IT in corporate world and NGOs
  • From benevolent dictatorship to earthcube monarchy to federal to anarchy (user-driven)
  • Variation across organization as to how they make decision
  • There is not a sign over-arching governing models
    • Multiple processes and a single organization will use different process for what they want to accomplish
  • There is a sense in scientific world – we will come to a consensus and we will have agreement – not always the best method
• Different version of governance framework than this morning (similar)
  • Geosciences interoperability institute
  • Has an executive committee – with structure, bylaws… effective tool for making decision
  • Other groups in earthcube are still addressing this issue – pros & cons… have done research
• NSF funds individual project – individual work group with earthcube
  • Each goes to NSF to carry out function inside cyberinfastrcture
  • Need to be Earthcube office – get NSF money and dictate how and who get its
    • That would only work for NSF money – what about the rest
    • This is one model – not likely
    • May challenge NSF want/ability to hand off money
• Decentralized government
  • Funding source into different parts
  • Same model as the internet
  • Internet has no central government for policy or technology
  • Each organization has own standards… do not report to each other
  • Light touch vs. heavy hand
    • An earthcube community can develop via consensus and these will be adopted by earthcube community
    • Ex. When want NSF proposal say “I’m compliant with earthcube”
• Size of budget
  • Earthcube is a small part of NSF funding
  • NSF, NASA above, NIH above
  • CIF21 – cyberinfastructure in NSF
  • Part of Big data part of government
  • This only shows part of the government funding options
    • If doing job right – can help jumpstart CIF21 & influence cyberinfastructure in the government… global involvement
• June 2012 Charrette
  • Difference in what governance is between groups
  • Governance ask what each group need
  • Other groups expected them to give the governance model they needed to apply
    • That was a disconnect
  • Came out with a roadmap – clearlier understanding
    • Did not assume implement roadmap
  • Ad-hoc governance Steering committee will continue
  • Decide framework – will deliver to NSF by Aug 15 (steps 1 and 2 of road map)
    • Want community engagement process
  • Roadmaps of working groups – did not have governance issues
    • Want 1-on-1 working group concept team
    • Looking at how to implement governance
    • Do you have requirements/needs that will affect other groups – need integration
• Now – roadmap milestone
  • Determine responsibility and authorities
  • Identify interim governance committee
  • Determine the initial governance framework – will not be permanent – unknown use-life
  • Want it implement by Dec 31, 2012 (aggressive schedule)
• Next will work on charter to NSF
  • Talking about context solicitation
  • Want this out asap – framework could be turning into NSF
• Need to develop engagement plan – updated slides based from morning discussion
  • Use existing workshop to vet governance (this is first)
• Focus on 5-10 enterprise-level governance function
  • 99 functions came out of other meeting
  • What are the processes to carry out functions
  • Compare these processes to different governance models
• Green are domain services – you do it yourself
  • Blue – common
  • Red – touch points – develop on own – but have to be compatible with other  groups
• Governance functions
  • Strategy
  • Administration
  • Facilitating data, services, infrastructure and software capabilities
  • Engagement with science domains
  • Interaction with stakeholders/community
    • Try to put other 99 into the 5
• Started to set up framework with 5 functions across and then 3 process (decision, alignment, communication) – then want governance archetype defined by someone (or never decides)
• Under data, services, infrastructure, software
  • System engineering, development and integration of architecture
    • Decision – ID and adopt Earthcube gridlines  - how compliant
    • Alignment – incentives to participate in and use Earthcube
    • Communication – facilitate discussion, seek needs, priorities, gaps, promote funders
  • Architecture maintenance and system support
  • Identify and mange the touch points
• Guiding principles
  • Science-driven
  • Open and transparent
  • Globally driven …. (all exactly from slides)
• Framework recommendations
  • Initial umbrella or coordinating body to get this up and running
  • Specific approach – do not define organization structure – need to fit goals and community
• Idea is that bidders would propose organization model to carry out functions, achieve goals of Earthcube and NSF
• Want governing body in place by early 2013
• What are the other functions
• What do you thing of the process, framework, recommendations
• How should we be interacting with ESIP community

Questions

• Bob (Columbia) – of 99 function – plan select 5 or 10
  • Made super functions – expect all cluster under these 5
  • (bob) – common touch point or community
    • Not sure described that way
    • Functions look at how interact
    • Want to identify functions are blue, green or red
• In terms of classification (siri – national science data center) – don’t’ look at access as enterprise level function… computer and visualizing are specific
  • May have different registry that are connected – each domain will have different data model – if visualizing a 2 or 3D –
  • What is an enterprise level function – needs to be agreed upon
    • Will be put out for feedback… this is a quick map
  • Those that are in domain boxes – similar across different domain are candidate for touch point
  • Some functions will exist at different levels
  • There will be infrastructure for community – ex. environments
• Dave (USGS) – like concept of expecting evolution of governance & being able to let that happen
  • Also – problem – putting boxes around things that may not need boxes
  • Need to balance document with boxes and innovation
  • Touch points was not meant as an organization diagram – functions not organizations – problem is there are so many preconceptions as to what is coming forward – functional description
  • (dave) this will be hard – governance to morph with changing system – why hard to define
• Metadata (Kelly)
  • NSF has a wide variety of community – so use community level standards – need some for interoperability
  • Need basis for interoperability
  • Not impose a profile for community – just what is the minimum or optimum amount
  • Have recommendations – but expect at least a minimum amount
• Sarah – first time presenting here – what is feedback from other communities
  • Largely within earthcube community – 150 at charrett
  • Some webinars – but limited
  • Just responding from the last charrett
  • Working to design this framework
  • Had webinars for funding agencies and international community (recorded and on ning site) – had good representatives but not good representation
• Anne – see governance framework slide
  • Agreed on process on Tuesday
  • Big projects from NSF do not have an assigned governance…
  • Have requirements – community engagement, interact with science and technology… but not how to carry out function…. Proposer puts that together
  • Put a panel together to review the proposed function
  • List of 99 functions – from roadmaps – from webinar – from PI meeting from last week… still not a complete list yet – it will be iterative
  • Did not show all 99 functions