WP1 - Management and sustainability
WP1 implements the project’s governance and management structure, undertaking overall project administration to ensure successful achievement of the project’s objectives. It also addresses the general technical architecture and the sustainability of the provided services for EOSC.
Lead partner: DESY
Budgeted participation per partner:
| DESY | PSI | EGI | 45 PMs | 18 PMs | 12 PMs |
|---|
Tasks
Progress in each of the work package's tasks are reported in this section, with regular updates, indicated by the dates. To view the original description of work of each task, as it is written in the project's description of work, you can click on the table header cells. Only the last update of the next steps is displayed.
| T1.1 | Consortium coordination and project administration (DESY) |
|---|---|
| Task: | The aim of this task is to coordinate the project team and administer the project in such a way as to ensure that the results are delivered with high quality within the time and budget constraints. • Ensure establishing project structures and mechanisms at the project partners; • Ensure efficient communication between project partners (see task 1.4); • Conflict resolution; • Preparing the periodic activity reports requested by the EC; • Supporting the preparation of the EC reviews; • Meeting support and follow-up (e.g. recorder of minutes); • Guidance concerning IPR issues (Intellectual Property Right Management). |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: The Project Executive Board (PEB) gathering all WP leaders, technical and project coordinators is the main management structure of the project. Meetings take place every second Tuesdays since Nov ‘19. WP1 organises the agenda and records the minutes. To keep track of the WPs’ progress and alignment to their goals, progress reports are now regularly issued. The first progress reports came out in April ‘20. 04 Feb 2021: To monitor technical progress and expenses for the first 9 months of the project, an interim report was conducted in June ‘20. The significant impact of COVID-19 on ExPaNDS resources workload prompted the Consortium to request a 6-month extension of the project from the European Commission. WP1 took care of the rescheduling of the project and of the amendment process itself. The extension and updated timeline of milestones and deliverables was approved by the EC in Nov. ‘20. 21 Feb 2022: With the end of the first reporting period in February 2021, WP1 wrote the technical part of the periodic report for the Commission, with contributions from all WPs. A public version was also published as a deliverable. Following the project’s mid-term review which happened in June 2021, several recommendations were issued and followed-up by WP1. After the review, a second amendment of the grant was prepared along with WP6 to rewrite the user engagement strategy, in line with the ‘new paradigm’ brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new strategy and associated amendment were approved by the EC in October 2021. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: In March 22, the second interim report covering the period M18-M30 of the project will be carried out by WP1. The progress reports issued for each WP will be used to check the consistency with the resources spent for each WP. |
| T1.2 | Financial management (DESY) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task monitors resources and financial expenditure, including external financial transactions (e.g. buying-in 3rd party services or invoicing services delivered to 3rd party). It prepares the periodic financial reports to be delivered to the EC. They will include: • Individual financial statements for each beneficiary and for the reporting period concerned; • Explanatory information on the use of project resources; • Periodic summary financial statement consolidating the claimed Community contribution of all the beneficiaries. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: For now WP1 only monitored qualitative indicators like recruitment status. 04 Feb 2021: The first consolidated financial report was presented to the collaboration board in July ‘20 and participated in the decision to request the extension. WP1 is regularly monitoring recruitment updates from the partners since. The first report on cumulative expenditure incurred by the partners was delivered in Dec. ‘20. 21 Feb 2022: During the review process after M18, the financial part of the first periodic report was consolidated by WP1 to assess the ability of the Consortium to allocate the needed resources in time. A resources allocation monitoring plan was put in place as an addition to the existing mechanisms. The second report on cumulative expenditure incurred by the partners was delivered in December 2021, showing a good progress in the spending rates of most partners. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: The upcoming interim report will enable WP1 to check whether the resources allocation of each partner went according to plan. In case issues are still identified, as mentioned in the first periodic report to the EC, an additional interim report will be planned at M36 to make sure final corrective actions are effective. |
| T1.3 | Project Quality Assurance (PSI) |
|---|---|
| Task: | The objective of this task is to establish and enforce effective management and quality procedures that will result in high quality project deliverables. The main activities are: • Definition of a Quality Plan (tools, metrics), including specific measures to follow up the fulfilment of KPIs; • Encouraging and verifying that standards, procedures and metrics are defined, applied and evaluated; • Defining rules for professional software development applied by the work packages; • Definition of the process and procedures to: o Assess the work and achievements of the different WPs, o Review deliverables and reports, o Verify fulfilment of milestones, o Monitoring the risk and develop contingency plans, o Monitoring ethics and gender equality. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: Since the proposal, the project’s KPIs were refined by WP1 and when possible, matched to PaNOSC’s. They are currently being reviewed by the WP leaders. A first risk analysis was carried out in Dec’ 19 and an update is currently in progress to closely monitor the consequences of Brexit and COVID-19. As requested by the EU, gender balance is monitored in ExPaNDS’ who’s who file. 04 Feb 2021: An update of the risk analysis was carried out in Nov. ‘20 by WP1 with PaNOSC’s project manager. All risks and actions were reviewed and compared, triggering updates on both sides. The quality assurance defined at the beginning of the project carries on being applied with the internal review process of all deliverables orchestrated by WP1. The KPIs were also refined with the WP leaders in June ‘20 and in Nov. ‘20. Most of them will however become more relevant in the second part of the project. 21 Feb 2022: The testing and validation framework written in the frame of WP4 is applying EOSC Synergy’s software quality rules. The project’s KPIs were updated at mid-term and refined. They are now settled and monitored in Sharepoint. In addition, the project’s objectives were refined to include target values that are since then followed up in a public dashboard. Following a recommendation from mid-term review, the risk analysis was updated in January 2022, along with PaNOSC’s project manager. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: Opportunities to collaborate with the IDEA initiative within LEAPS will be explored in the last year of the project. Several ways to better disseminate women in science were also discussed with WP6, e.g. the upcoming webinar showcasing careers in data science will be including female role models. |
| T1.4 | Internal communication (DESY) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task aims at ensuring and monitoring the communication between the WP and the project partners in order to achieve the project objectives on time and within the budget constraints. • Setting up project boards and other project management elements and defining communication channels between those structures; • Providing and enforcing seamless communication between work packages; • Ensuring that there is clear and effective communication between partners; to detect management and technical issuesas early as possible and bring them to resolution; • Providing the necessary communication tools for reporting, sharing of documentation, software and tools; • Providing the necessary (video, audio) conference tools; • Monitoring ongoing communication (e.g. meeting schedules, minutes) and performing corrective actions if necessary. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: The following tools for internal communication were set up by WP1: - mailing lists for each appropriate group - conference room at meet.desy.de - shared calendar for all ExPaNDS-related meetings and events (incl. PaNOSC) - a who’s who file with contributors roles and contact details WP1 is also organising with WP6 and PaNOSC a joint all-hands annual meeting of both projects to be held in Nov ‘20. 04 Feb 2021: An important milestone for internal communication was the annual ExPaNDS/PaNOSC all-hands meeting from the 9th to the 11th of Nov. ‘20. WP1 was part of the organisational committee along with WP6 and ELI (link to minutes). To facilitate internal communication, WP1, with the help of the technical coordinator, investigated chat facilities for the project. ExPaNDS joined PaNOSC’s Slack instance in Nov. ‘21. 21 Feb 2022: The second PaN EOSC symposium was co-organised by WP6, WP1 and PaNOSC in October 2021. Recordings and reports are available in expands.eu. The ExPaNDS GitHub was extended with several new wiki pages and the issues are now monitored there, after a progressive shift from SharePoint’s issue tracker which was not used enough. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: WP1 will continue maintaining the developed communication tools to make information as easy to share and find as possible, adding for example a catalogue of ExPaNDS presentations (see issue #40). |
| T1.5 | Coordination with PaNOSC and EOSC (EGI) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task synchronizes activities of ExPaNDS with EOSC structures in general and PaNOSC in particular. Activities include, but are not limited to: • participating in the EOSC Stakeholder Forum; • working with EOSC technical working groups in the areas of the ExPaNDS work packages; • working with the EOSC Executive Board to provide EOSC Compliant services; • liaising with other successful projects in INFRAEOSC-05b to coordinate their work in developing the EOSC; • Alignment of the general architecture of the ExPaNDS services with the EOSC architecture including EOSC portals, EOSC Marketplace etc. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: Since the signature of the Collaboration Agreement with the other 5b projects in Dec. ‘19, WP1 set up the involvement of ExPaNDS in the associated ‘task forces’ (TFs). It is also directly involved in the Sustainability Working Group of the EOSC Executive Board and in the ‘policies’ and ‘onboarding’ TFs. In addition, WP1 participates in the EOSC liaison platform and organises ExPaNDS feedback to relevant EOSC-related documents, like for example the EOSC assessment survey from the European Commission or the EOSC-hub core services specifications. WP1 wrote with the other 5b projects the position paper on EOSC for ExPaNDS, building on the paper published by PaNOSC in Dec. ‘19. To make sure technical common work between ExPaNDS and PaNOSC is satisfactory and that communication is seamless, WP1 participates biweekly in PaNOSC’s PMC (which is the equivalent of ExPaNDS PEB) and has monthly meeting with its project manager. Finally, the alignment of ExPaNDS’ services with EOSC was at the centre of the technical architecture elaborated by WP1 with WP3 and WP4. 04 Feb 2021: WP1 delivered a presentation on the EOSC onboarding procedure to ExPaNDS technical WPs in July ‘20. To align future services, WP1 also made sure the EOSC interoperability framework was taken into account in the WP3 roadmap to federated data catalogues. In August ‘20, WP1 organised the project’s answer to the SRIA consultation. To make our contribution more sustainable, we then published a subsequent paper with PaNOSC. WP1 also responded to the EOSC KPIs consultation from the Landscape TF. WP1 participated in several EOSC-related events, including the ESFRI-EOSC meeting in Oct. ‘20 (acting as rapporteur), the EOSC governance symposium and organised a PaN session at the EGI conference 2020. 21 Feb 2022: In April 2021, WP1 organised a training workshop on EOSC, including presentations from B2FIND, OpenAIRE, the EOSC Synergy project as well as PaNOSC. WP1 participated in the Copenhagen workshop organised by PaNOSC in November 2021 to plan the last year of PaNOSC. The wiki page mapping activities between the two projects was updated. Since December 2021, WP1 is updating the technical architecture of the project in relation with PaNOSC and EOSC, with contributions from the technical coordinator, WP3 and WP4. WP1 set up a working group to support partners in their onboarding procedure with EOSC. The first meeting was held in February 2022 and a mailing list was set up for this group: eosc-onboarding@expands.eu. Two services from PSI were recently onboarded: - a public data repository - a NoMachine Remote Desktop service |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: WP1 will finalise the update of the architecture in spring 2022 and keep assisting partners to onboard their ExPaNDS-related services to EOSC. The status of each facility will continue being monitored in the objectives dashboard. |
| T1.6 | Sustainability plans (PSI) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task will provide general best practice recommendations to enable the project’s work packages to make their work sustainable beyond the end of the lifetime of the project. Furthermore, the task is monitoring sustainability activities of the different work packages and provides advices in cases needed. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: WP1 issued recommendations to each WP in the sustainability policy report to make their achievements persist after the end of the project. 04 Feb 2021: The FAIR lady report issued by the EOSC Working Group on Sustainability was examined together with PaNOSC and discussed during the annual meeting. A common approach for the sustainability of technical WP outputs was also decided. 21 Feb 2022: Following the presentation of ExPaNDS and PaNOSC’s outcomes to the LEAPS plenary in October 2022, LEAPS and LENS chairs were invited to the 2nd PaN EOSC symposium to respond and present the position of each of their members towards our project’s results. The survey they conducted showed a very good uptake rate of the results by almost all partners, especially on the LEAPS side. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: The main focus of WP1 for the last year will be to build on LEAPS and LENS readiness to adopt our services by providing them with a synthetic one-page document for each one, explaining its detailed sustainability plan. This will be developed in collaboration with PaNOSC’s work package on sustainability. |
| T1.7 | Coordination of boards (DESY) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task will coordinate boards, like the Collaboration Board, the Technical Advisory Board and the EOSC Liaison Group. In particular it will oversee the selection of board members in accordance with the Grant Agreement and the Collaboration Agreement. The task will organise board meetings, it will provide input for board members from within the project and in return it will communicate board suggestions to the project members and it will follow up on the implementation of those suggestions. |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: WP1 organised so far 2 Collaboration Board meetings and follows up on the decisions taken. The members of the Technical Coordination Board were nominated and endorsed by the CB, including a PaNOSC technical representative, all of which WP1 facilitated. The ‘EOSC liaison group’ didn’t meet so far. Its objectives are for now leveraged by ExPaNDS participation in the existing EOSC WGs and interest groups where LEAPS, GEANT and OpenAire are also involved. Our partner EGI is also a direct actor in EOSC-hub, EOSC-Enhance and the future INFRAEOSC-03 and 07 calls projects. 04 Feb 2021: Since the last report, two Collaboration Board meetings were organised, mostly around the amendment process. WP1 also helped the technical coordinator organise a workshop with the technical coordination board (TCB) on the portal deployment at our facilities in Oct. ‘20. The event gathered almost all technical contributors to ExPaNDS, PaNOSC and Calipsoplus. It enabled an important sharing of knowledge and progress of our different facilities, including live demos of the deployed portal. WP1 also contributed to the associated survey on infrastructure status and “cloud-readiness”. Following the risk analysis update, WP1 suggested occasionally extending the traditional PEB to all our partners. A first extended-PEB will take place in early Feb. ‘21. The bi-weekly PEB meetings remain the heart of the project’s daily management. 21 Feb 2022: After the first extended PEB organised in February 2021, a second extended PEB took place in January 2022 to prepare for the last year of the project’s execution with all partners. 2 additional collaboration board meetings were organised in 2021, notably around the project’s mid-term review and second amendment. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: The opportunity to use the technical coordination board for the implementation phase of the project will be discussed with the technical coordinator. |
| T1.8 | DMPs for the project and ethics of handling data (DESY) |
|---|---|
| Task: | This task will develop a Data Management Plan for the project, including treatment after the end of the project’s lifetime. It comprises ORD pilot-related topics like description of data that will be collected, processed and/or generated, methodology and standards that will be applied, whether data will be shared/made open access and how data will be curated and preserved. The task also addresses: • Security and authorised access; • Monitoring the treatment of any personal data; • Acknowledging provenance (when necessary); • Anonymising scientific data (related to humans). |
| Progress: |
24 Jun 2020: An ExPaNDS community was set up in Zenodo in Jan. ‘20 and is used to make our public deliverables findable and accessible. The use of CC licences for ExPaNDS outputs is encouraged whenever possible. Partner are well aware of the precautions when handling personal data in surveys or registration forms. The handling of personal data for project management purposes is explained to each ExPaNDS contributor in the welcome message to all@expands.eu which was checked with DESY’s Data Protection Officer. A mailing list was set up (popd@expands.eu) to record consent from project participants to appear in photos on social media. 04 Feb 2021: In Jan. ‘21, WP1 reviewed the project DMP with PaNOSC’s project manager. The PEB confirmed it was still up-to-date and WP1 will carry on applying it. |
| Next steps: |
21 Feb 2022: The project’s DMP will be updated to represent the final status of ExPaNDS “data” at the end of the project. Following one of our mid-term recommendations, possible IPR issues in the project will be identified and discussed. |
Deliverables
"Accepted" deliverables are the ones approved by the European Commission and thus published in CORDIS with other EU projects results.
"Delivered" deliverables are the ones we submitted to the European Commission but are not yet approved. They can only be found in our Zenodo community for now.
"Pending" deliverables are still in progress and were not yet submitted by the project to the European Commission.
| Accepted deliverables | Partner | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.01 | Human resources allocation | DESY | 29 Nov 2019 |
| 1.02 | Project Quality Assurance and Progress Monitoring Plan  |
PSI | 05 Feb 2020 |
| 1.03 | Risk analysis and contingency plan  |
PSI | 17 Dec 2019 |
| 1.04 | Risk analysis and contingency plan report  |
PSI | 27 Nov 2020 |
| 1.05 | Communication Plan (internal + EC)  |
DESY | 23 Dec 2019 |
| 1.06 | General Architecture in relation to the EOSC services  |
EGI | 05 Mar 2020 |
| 1.07 | Sustainability policy report  |
PSI | 18 Mar 2020 |
| 1.08 | Periodic progress report  |
DESY | 23 Jul 2021 |
| 1.1 | Data Management Plan  |
DESY | 14 Feb 2020 |
| 1.11 | Collaboration agreement(s) | DESY | 20 Dec 2019 |
| 1.12 | Financial report 1 | DESY | 29 Dec 2020 |
| 1.71 | POPD - Requirement No. 1 | DESY | 29 Feb 2020 |
| Delivered deliverables | Partner | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.09 | Periodic progress report  |
DESY | 03 May 2023 |
| 1.13 | Financial report 2 | DESY | 29 Dec 2021 |
| 1.14 | Financial report 3 | DESY | 30 Dec 2022 |
| Pending deliverables | Partner | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No pending deliverables at the moment | |||
Milestones
| Achieved milestones | Partner | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kick-off meeting | DESY | 11 Sep 2019 |
| 2 | Management structure implemented | DESY | 31 Oct 2019 |
| 3 | Report on quality assurance, risks and contingency plan | DESY | 05 Feb 2020 |
| 4 | General architecture ready | DESY | 05 Mar 2020 |
| 5 | First all-hands meeting organised | DESY | 11 Nov 2020 |
| 6 | Successful completion of mid-term | DESY | 29 Jul 2021 |
| 7 | Second all-hands meeting organised | DESY | 26 Oct 2021 |
| 8 | Third all-hands meeting organised | DESY | 24 Jan 2023 |
| Pending milestones | Partner | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Successful completion of final review | DESY | 28 Feb 2023 |