EARTHCUBE – MOVING TO AN ENTERPRISE GOVERNANCE FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION FOR GEOSCIENCE CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

The EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance Project completed its three-year long process in September 2016 to engage the community and test a demonstration governing organization with the goal of facilitating a community-led process on designing and developing a geoscience cyberinfrastructure to transform the conduct of geoscience research. The EarthCube initiative is making an important transition from creating a coherent community to the goal of implementing technologies that can serve scientists working in many domains and across domains.

However, the active participants in EarthCube still represent a very small sub-set of the larger population of geoscientists. Findings from an NSF-appointed Advisory Committee are that the definition of EarthCube remains unclear to the geoscience community, the program lacks a concrete 5-year implementation plan and that the test federated self-selective governance model is unlikely to be able to achieve consensus or be sufficiently representative to propel the program forward. The emerging concept of a “system of systems” approach is a critical concept in the EarthCube program, but it is not clearly defined.

The Advisory Committee recommendations include a. the need for succinct definition of EarthCube; b. changes in the community-elected Leadership Council’s governance approach to structured rather than consensus-driven decision making; c. restructuring the process for more better articulation of program solicitations;, and d. producing an effective implementation roadmap. These are seen as prerequisites to adopt best practices, communicate standards, and evolve to a production track.

There is ample justification to continue evolving to a governance framework that facilitates agreement on a system architecture, guides EarthCube activities, and plays an increasing role in making operational the EarthCube vision of cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences. There is widespread community expectation for support of a multiyear EarthCube governing effort to put into practice the science, technical, and organizational plans that are continuing to emerge.

The community-led EarthCube governing body is working on responses to the Advisory Committee findings and recommendations with a target delivery date of late 2016.