The Business of RDA - July 2019
There is often a distinction between the Work and the Business of RDA. The “Work” is the heart and soul of the organisation, driven by the community for the community. The “Business” is fundamental to support the Work and ensure coordination, vision and strategy for RDA.
In a new monthly update, the community is offered this overview of “Business” updates. This first overview is a little more comprehensive and extensive to briefly cover the various roles and responsibilities of each of the bodies. Future updates will focus primarily on the latest activities within each group.
The governance bodies of RDA, namely Council, Technical Advisory Board and Organisational Advisory Board, all supported by the RDA Secretariat, dedicate immense efforts to support and facilitate both the community and the organisation.
To contact RDA governance bodies, please send an email to enquiries[at]rda-foundation.org
Council
The Council is responsible for overall oversight, success, strategy, and sustainability of the RDA. The Council is a nine-member board, with two co-chairs and 5 additional consensus-forming but non-voting members. Every year, three new council members are elected and three step down. Jill Benn, Bob Hanisch and Mark Leggott began their first three-year terms in April 2019. For information on all Council members and terms, see the dedicated page.
Council meets by conference calls every 2 months, in person at the two Plenaries, and once in between. This year’s second face to face meeting took place on 6-7 June in Den Haag, NL, hosted by Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS).
As the body responsible for the vision and strategy of the organisation, Council now has set-up several task forces, actively working on different areas:
Membership Task Force
Primarily examines the forms of RDA membership, looking at the appropriate means of providing organisational membership and how individual, regional and international membership can be most effectively aligned.
Financial Sub Committee Task Force
Recommends to Council and monitors policies and rules for sound financial practice of the RDA Foundation.
Regional Engagement Task Force
Examines and outlines the complementary and mutually-beneficial relationship between RDA and its Regions, recognising that each Region is unique with different values, goals, governance, funding sources, etc. As a result of the task force’s work in 2019, a revised version of the RDA Regional engagement framework document has been published on the RDA Regions web group - that includes the governance aspects.
For further details on the above Task Forces, see the dedicated page.
Technical Advisory Board (TAB)
The Technical Advisory Board provides technical expertise and advice to the Council, and assists in the development, review and promotion of RDA Working and Interest Groups. One of TAB’s primary tasks is to evaluate Case Statements and Charters which can be regarded as proposal reviews. The Board works as a team to accomplish technical, strategic and operational aims within its scope.
For further details on the roles and responsibilities of TAB please see the document "What we do and how we do it".
Call for nominations for the 2019 Technical Advisory Board
There are currently 14 TAB members, and 4 are stepping down in this cycle. As a result of a decision made at the Council meeting in July 2017, the 2019 election to TAB will again elect 5 members to replace the 4 who are rotating off after their 3-year terms are complete. The total number of TAB members will, therefore, increase to 15 after this year’s TAB Election.
► Visit the call for nominations page
Monthly TAB Updates
Every month, TAB produce a summary of their activity for the community, available here.
Organisational Assembly & Organisational Advisory Board
Organisational Members and Affiliates provide an organisational perspective of RDA, influence its direction, and assist in the implementation and adoption of RDA’s Recommendations. For many global organisations RDA is a vehicle to help incorporate data sharing technologies.
All organisations that become RDA Organisational Members join the Organisational Assembly (OA). The Organisational Advisory Board (OAB) is a sub-committee of the whole OA, acting as an executive committee representing the interests of the Organisational Members.
Recent OA(B) activities:
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Drafting the Value of RDA to Infrastructure Providers document.
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Working with TAB on the “Plenary Pathways” (for each RDA plenary), a grouping of topics of RDA plenary sessions to make it easier for RDA members to find their way around the plenaries.
► Recent one from Philadelphia -
Working on categorization/clustering of RDA Organisational Members. The scope of this exercise is on one hand to give more visibility to OA members (also via the RDA in a nutshell presentation), on the other hand to promote the types of organisations that become OA members and encourage others in the same category to join the Organisational Assembly, but also to be able to use the outputs and value statements for a specific category.
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Providing comments to both new groups and RDA outputs with focus on adoptability/ease of use
RDA OAB co-chairs participate in RDA Council as ex-officio members and bring the OA perspective into the Council decisions. RDA OAB is also represented in the RDA Council sub-committees and task forces, such as the ones on RDA Finances and reviewing RDA Memberships.
The RDA Secretariat OA liaison also prepares an internal newsletter to Organisational Members with news about groups, outputs, adoption and other RDA general news.
Funders Forum
The RDA Funders Forum, initiated around the launch of RDA in 2013, is a group of funding organisations / representatives with an interest in research data and related data policies. The Funders Forum typically meet the day before the start of RDA Plenary meetings, taking place in different regions around the world. The Funders Forum currently has two co-chairs, Matthew Lucas (SSHRC) and Josh Greenberg (Sloan Foundation) who take responsibility for the organisation of the meetings, defining the agenda, structure and topics for discussion.
Participation in the Funders Forum is not limited to current funders of RDA, but is open to all funding agencies and organisations with an interest in attending. The next meeting of the Funders Forum is scheduled to take place on 22 Oct 2019 in Helsinki, in conjunction with the 14th Plenary Meeting. If you represent a funding body and would like to be added to the Funders mailing list, please contact RDA Foundation Executive Assistant, Bridget Walker, by email at bridget.walker[at]rda-foundation.org.
Secretariat
The Secretariat is responsible for the administration and daily operations of RDA. The secretariat staff are made available through in-kind support from funders for an equivalent of 2,5 full-time employees in addition to the Secretary General, Hilary Hanahoe and Executive Assistant, Bridget Walker.
For the first time since the launch of RDA, the Secretariat organised a “retreat” at the beginning of July. Members gathered in Pisa, Italy with the aim of dedicating two days to discussing operational plans for the next 10 months. Plans cover the 5 main pillars of the secretariat activities:
- Communications
- RDA Web Platform
- Plenary Meetings
- Group Processes and Procedures
- Adoption and Outputs
It was an extremely beneficial meeting for all concerned. To get a real feel of the event and further insight, please visit the Secretariat blog for comments and feedback from the participants.
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