This blog was kindly authored for HEPI by Victoria Moody, Director of Higher Education and Research at Jisc.
Developing digital research infrastructure (DRI), the core technological aspects used in research production, with collaboration in mind can improve efficiency, reduce bureaucracy and improve outcomes.
The elements that make up the UK’s DRI include the high-performance computers used to process complex, large data; the large-scale data storage facilities which house this vital data; security management, software developed to undertake important computations; the digital network infrastructure connecting research institutions and their researchers; and the experts who use, maintain and improve these elements.
When these elements all work together seamlessly, the process of undertaking research becomes easier and quicker.
DRI has underpinned the UK’s significant and diverse research and innovation achievements for decades. But greater collaboration across the sector is needed to embrace new technologies as they evolve, encouraging the sharing of resources and limiting barriers to innovation.
Jisc is developing a strategic framework in partnership with stakeholders to support the UK research sector in building a world-leading collaborative infrastructure with innovation at its heart.
Building a federated future
Jisc runs the UK’s National Research and Education Network (NREN) and leads the development of sector-wide foundational digital infrastructure for research. We work with a wide range of partners to ensure the DRI is effective and remains so. This work supports new, shared approaches that improve the impact of research and innovation.
As the UK’s vital sector partner for digital and data across higher education and research, our belief is that the sector must approach digital research infrastructure collectively, making collaboration more streamlined and effective. This type of ‘federated’ system can help transform the UK research sector.
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) digital research infrastructure committee (DRIC) is evaluating the potential for a ‘federated’ approach to the UK’s DRI: what it might offer, what the scope and extent may be and how it might be defined and progressed to support the DRI’s continued efficiency, sustainability, and innovation.
Jisc, on behalf of DRIC, recently released a report exploring federated digital research infrastructure, focusing on the requirements for a fresh approach. The report discovered there was duplication of effort, especially in the development and maintenance of systems. It also showed that sustainable technology for research is not available widely enough, and the skills to run DRI effectively are scarcer.
The report concluded that UK research needs a coordinated approach, focused on effective collaboration and shared data and systems, ensuring the research sector delivers more efficiently and, also, increases its capacity for further collaboration and innovation.
This approach could help the sector benefit more widely from sustainability, skills sharing and collaborative expertise, influencing new disciplines and developing innovative ways of working. A federated approach also increases the potential to influence providers at scale across more areas of research to meet research use cases more effectively, preserving institutional autonomy to innovate but embedding digital transformation sector-wide.
The DRIC responded to the report and concluded that:
‘By leveraging [Jisc’s] recommendations… UKRI can shape future actions that foster collaboration, promote joint strategies, and ultimately empower researchers and innovators across the UK to achieve breakthrough discoveries.‘
Lower the burden to optimise the value chain
The UK Government’s response to the Independent Review of Reducing Research Bureaucracy highlighted the need to focus on the whole research and innovation ecosystem, as well as the specific management of systems, information and data.
This approach would aid efficiency and sustainability, reduce bureaucracy and boost innovation and impact. Jisc is leading the digital sub-group on behalf of DSIT, and we see lowering burdens for the DRI as critical. In its response to the independent review, the UK Government said:
There are opportunities to reduce the bureaucratic burden in the design and introduction of new digital programmes. Jisc plays an important role in the digital transformation as the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation.
We welcome UKRI’s focus on effective, collaborative and federated DRI through its Digital Research Infrastructure programme and its aim of supporting ‘a coherent state-of-the-art national digital research infrastructure that will seamlessly connect researchers, policymakers and innovators to the computers, data, tools, techniques and skills that underpin the most ambitious and creative research’.
Implementing research security systemically is unavoidable
As well as the power to improve efficiency and collaboration across research, a federated DRI approach can also improve the system’s security.
Jisc’s federated infrastructure report focuses on the need for ‘secure by design’ approaches to DRI. In a challenging economic and geopolitical landscape, it is imperative to focus on research security at the system level.
‘Jisc has a crucial role in supporting effective cyber security within and across universities and research establishments in the context of this agenda through awareness raising, effective governance, capacity and resilience building.‘
Department of Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) direction to Jisc’s funding body 2024
We are focusing on research security as a strategic imperative for the DRI. As new technologies, such as quantum computing develop, evolving the security landscape, it is vital that we as a sector respond, developing new research methods and technologies that are secure.
Conclusion
The opportunity to embed collaborative efficiencies to secure the sustainability and continued innovation potential of research at scale, is supported by sector stakeholders across the research landscape.
Read UKRI’s response to the Mapping federation journey report and the UK government’s response to the independent review of research bureaucracy.