National Service Provider for CESSDA: Establish, Expand, Equip
The project aiming at strengthening and expanding FSD is titled National Service Provider for CESSDA: Establish, Expand, Equip or, more succinctly, 3E. The project consists of six work packages:
- Strong and active role in the development of CESSDA
- Establishing FSD Services to health research and humanities
- Development of FSD data management services
- Launching FSD Comparative Data Service
- Technical services
- Promotion.
The project is funded by the FIRI 2014 call of the Academy of Finland. The funding period is from 1 February 2015 to 31 December 2017.
Strong and active role in the development of CESSDA
The goal is to consolidate our strong and active role in CESSDA's activities. During 2016-2017 we will continue to cooperate with other CESSDA service providers, for instance, in the following: trust work and certification, multi-lingual thesaurus, development of the DDI documentation standard, cross-national question bank, single sign-on user authentication, and mentor support for new archives.
Establishing FSD Services to health research and humanities
The FIRI 2013 funding enabled the planning of the service expansion into health research and humanities. The 3E project will allow us to move towards the establishment phase, where we create and consolidate services targeted at these fields. Another important aim is to investigate ethical and legal challenges that may affect the archiving and reuse of data in health research and humanities.
FSD has hired two research specialists to prepare the expansion into the new disciplines. They will chart the practices, attitudes, benefits and barriers to data sharing among researchers by conducting a survey. Their other tasks include marketing FSD services and familiarising themselves with the practices of data archives in other countries regarding health and humanities data.
Development of FSD data management services
The expansion into new fields also requires amending our information material on data management. We will update our Research Data Management web resource, create new content, and publish the Research Data Management resource in a traditional book format. An additional goal is to chart how researchers are implementing their data management plans.
We will market training provided by FSD and create new training material. The contents of training sessions will be tailored to the needs of the participants.
Launching FSD Comparative Data Service
Comparative data service (CDS), which is to be launched in 2017, aims to strengthen FSD services and competence related to large national and international survey series, data harmonisation, and access to and use of all types of survey data. Additionally, FSD will support Finland's participation in international comparative survey research programmes (International Social Survey Programme, European Values Study, and Luxembourg Income Study).
Technical services
The main tasks of the Technical Services work package are to enable the new services, build new tools and to develop an advanced operations management platform. FSD's internal database will be replaced with a new, up-to-date database.
Promotion
Expansion into new fields and the launch of the Comparative Data Service requires promotion, communication, and consultation. We will participate in conferences and seminars in Finland and abroad, and organise seminars of our own. Results and achievements will be actively communicated to stakeholders, partners, and the scientific community throughout the project. Communication channels used include, among others, FSD website, email list, Tietoarkisto magazine (and its online counterpart in English, FSD Bulletin), and social media.