CFP: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12557/nsf12557.htm
Deadline: July 26, 2012 (Conceptualization) or August 30, 2012 (Implementation/Interoperability)
Awards: 17-19 awards from $41.5M total funding
The specific goals of this program are to support the development or expansion of new types of digital data storage, preservation, and access that: (1) enable engagement at the frontiers of science and engineering research and education; (2) work cooperatively and in coordination to overcome conventional barriers due to data type and format, discipline or subject area, and time and place to facilitate sharing of data; (3) combine expertise in cyberinfrastructure; library and archival sciences; computer, computational, and information sciences; and various domain sciences; (4) lead to long-term governance models for economic and technological sustainability over multiple decades.
A DIBBs proposal must describe the vision and rationale for the data service and infrastructure, as building blocks must be service oriented, taking into account accessibility, usability and the value they provide to science and engineering researchers. The data service rationale must also demonstrate a strong and credible connection to the communities it serves and to other essential cyberinfrastructure capabilities required by that community. The proposal must make a compelling case for its likely impact on the target communities, with actual (or potential in the case of conceptualization awards) community support and usage, technology testing and adoption approaches specified.
DIBBs awards are subdivided into Conceptualization, Implementation and Interoperability awards, which are described below. PIs and co-PIs may only apply to one of the three tracks, although they may be senior personnel on more than one.
(a) Conceptualization Awards: DIBBs Conceptualization Awards are planning awards aimed at further defining disciplinary and interdisciplinary communities’ data storage and management requirements. Example activities may include focused workshops, special sessions at professional meetings, focus groups, etc., but any activities that promote the fundamental goal of specifying solutions to common problems and avoiding unnecessary and wasteful duplication of resources will be eligible for funding. Awards will be up to 1 year in duration. The output of a conceptualization award will be design specifications for creating a sustainable data infrastructure that will be discoverable, searchable, accessible, and usable to the entire research and education community. The resulting specifications, potentially implemented in an initial prototype, may serve as the conceptual design upon which a subsequent Implementation or Interoperability proposal could be based.
(b) Implementation Awards: Implementation awards will support development and implementation of technologies related to the data preservation and access lifecycle, including acquisition; documentation; security and integrity; storage; access, analysis and dissemination; migration; and deaccession. Implementation awards must also address how they will relate to and support other CIF21 components essential to the given community (see www.nsf.gov/cif21). These data preservation and access technologies will enable science and engineering research, such that the scientific and engineering problems serve as use cases for data technology development. Proposals should specify NSF funded research communities constrained by similar data problems. Their problems and related community requirements should be specified in documentation (e.g. a workshop report, initial prototype evaluation report), for example, as the outcomes of a DIBBs conceptualization award. Successful implementation of the data technology across multiple scientific communities will demonstrate scalability, while serving as a resource multiplier for science.
The composition of Implementation teams should appropriately reflect the need to implement, test and evaluate data technologies in multiple scientific domains. As appropriate to the scope, teams may also include national or international digital preservation/access organizations with the goal of developing seamless, single entry point discovery, access, and use of data from across the network. Teams may seek to develop and disseminate best practices, policies and principles.
Implementation projects are expected to be the logical extension of well-developed existing efforts in data storage, access and curation. These efforts must be able to successfully and convincingly address, through demonstrable deep and extensive experience, all of the elements required as the outcomes of the conceptualization type awards. The focus for the Implementation awards is on the full and complete implementation of carefully constructed project plans that are grounded in and responsive to the needs of communities of NSF researchers for discovering, searching, accessing and using high value datasets resulting from federally funded research programs.
(c) Interoperability Awards: Interoperability Awards support community efforts to provide broad interoperability of datasets, enhancing interaction and information sharing to benefit all areas of NSF-funded science, engineering and education. The program supports the formation of Data Interoperability Networks (hereafter, ‘Networks’) that enable communities to work together in the development of effective strategies and tools for data interoperability.
Each Network is responsible for: (1) enabling broad community engagement in the development of consensus and agreement on strategies, priorities, and best approaches for achieving broad interoperability; and (2) providing the technical expertise necessary to turn consensus and agreement into robust interoperability tools and resources for their broad use and implementation. Proposals for activities not based on significant community engagement and consensus-building activities will be deemed unresponsive to this solicitation and will be returned without review.
Networks shall consist of members from the science, engineering and education communities supported by NSF, with the goal of providing interoperability across a wide variety of disciplinary domains, topic areas, and/or data types and sources. Members may include individuals, professional societies and organizations, community database and information resource managers, etc. Network size should scale with the scope of the interoperability goals. While an initial core group of participants may be identified in the proposal, an immediate goal should be to expand participation in the Network and to become an organization that is fully embraced by the relevant communities. Credible mechanisms for achieving this goal, maintaining openness, ensuring access, and actively promoting broad participation should be explicitly described in the proposal.
A single organization must serve as the lead for each proposal, with support for all other organization members provided through subawards. The PI is the designated contact person for the Network and is expected to provide leadership in fully coordinating and integrating the activities of the group.
Common Elements
The DIBBs program recognizes that scientific communities differ in their stages of data infrastructure development, including the requisite community building and establishment of governance structures and mechanisms for financial and operational support, to effectively deploy and manage data cyberinfrastructure. At an early stage there will be a need for moving an established multi-disciplinary community to the next step, where common problems and common approaches to their solution are further refined (Conceptualization track). Proposals to the Implementation and Interoperability tracks should provide clear evidence of having already achieved the goals specified in the Conceptualization track.
DIBBs Implementation and Interoperability proposals should also include a clearly defined management plan. The plan should describe: (1) a clear and concise definition of the data service to be provided; (2) the specific roles and responsibilities of the PI and other members of the team/network; (3) mechanisms for orderly change and adaptation to accommodate changes in technologies and the changing needs of the relevant communities; (4) means for effective communication and engagement with the relevant communities and stakeholders; (5) specific milestones including an expected ‘go live’ date; (6) selection of an approved open source license (see www.opensource.org) for distributing any software; and (7) mechanisms for assessing overall progress in meeting the needs of the community, including metrics to rigorously assess the effectiveness of the team/network in achieving community engagement.
All DIBBS teams/networks are expected to include participation of underrepresented groups. The inclusion of new researchers, post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates in relevant activities is also encouraged.
International Participation: Networks should include international participants as a means of achieving global interoperability wherever that enhances the goals of the proposal. Activities of the international partners outside the U.S. must be supported by funds from their own sources and programs.
