The Australian eResearch Infrastructure Council

ANDS Implementation Workshop #1

As the first step in developing a community agreed implementation for ANDS, DEST hosted a meeting of relevant parties in Melbourne on the 29th of May.

• Agenda
• Discussion Paper

The meeting confirmed the functions and the benefits expected of ANDS and provided unaminous support for DEST to proceed with the implementation.

Actions arising from the meeting included that

• the briefing paper would be updated to reflect feedback from the meeting
• participants would provide a brief (one page) statement of capability and interest related to ANDS
• a further technical workshop would be held on implementation options
• expressions of interest in the ANDS operator would be invited
• in the event that consensus might not be reached that DEST should select the operator(s)

The capability statements that have been received can be downloaded as a single combined document (pdf 800Kb) or individually.

The following message taken from an email to the participants sets out the continuing steps.

"An updated version of the ANDS Discussion Paper based on feedback provided during the workshop will be distributed by the end of June.

DEST will convene a smaller technical working group, as foreshadowed at the workshop, to develop the next level of detail of the description of ANDS services. Given that there is general agreement as to the high level elements of ANDS, we want to get to the position where we could issue an Expression of Interest with measurable, objective criteria about what services we would expect to be delivered. Having said that, we are not necessarily committed to issuing an EOI. We are, ultimately, committed to writing a funding agreement.

The ‘smaller’ group will comprise the following people, in alphabetic order. It will meet in the week commencing 16 July, probably in Canberra. I have attempted to contact all the proposed participants but have not succeeded in all cases. If I have not spoken to you about this and your name is on the list below, please phone me.

• Markus Buchhorn (ANU)
• Adrian Burton (ANU/ APSR)
• Paul Coddington (SAPAC)
• James Dalziel (MELCOE)
• Craig Johnson (BlueNet/ IMOS/ UTas)
• Steve Matheson (ABS/ NDN) [now to be Wayne Richards]
• John Morrissey (CSIRO)
• Ray Norris (Astronomy)
• Judith Pearce (National Library)
• Nick Tate (UQ)
• Andrew Treloar (Monash/ DART/ ARCHER)
• Andrew Wilson (National Archives)

Plus Anne-Marie Lansdown, Peter Nicholson, Clare McLaughlin, Tony Rothnie and Rhys Francis.

Following that technical discussion, DEST will circulate a document setting out the more detailed requirements. We will most likely then convene a further discussion of ‘business owners’ from the relevant organisations to discuss who might provide ANDS services and how ANDS could be governed, which will draw on the contents of the capability statements."