2012 EarthCube Governance Roadmap Documentation, Research, and Recommendations Version 2.0 August 2012 EarthCube Governance Working Group presented to the National Science Foundation 8/15/2012 EARTHCUBE GOVERNANCE ROADMAP STEERING COMMITTEE M. Lee Allison, Chair, Arizona Geological Survey Tim Ahern, IRIS Data Management David Arctur, University of Texas at Austin Jim Bowring, College of Charleston Gary Crane, Southeastern Universities Research Association Cecelia DeLuca, NESII/CIRES/NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University Carroll Hood, Raytheon Hannes Leetaru, Illinois Geological Survey Kerstin Lehnert, Columbia University Chris MacDermaid, Colorado State University/CIRA Mohan Ramamurthy, Unidata Erin Robinson, Federation of Earth Science Information Partners Ilya Zaslavsky, San Diego SuperComputer Center Arizona Geological Survey Staff Genevieve Pearthree Kim Patten Debra Winstead In addition, there were countless members of the EarthCube Governance Forum, EarthCube community, and other interested partners that contributed to this report. 1 PREFACE EarthCube is a process established to transform the conduct of research through the development of community-guided cyberinfrastructure. Specifically, EarthCube is attempting to integrate data and information knowledge management across the Geosciences; providing capabilities that permit scientists to conduct research in a more productive way, integrating their work with data from other agencies as well as international partners. Thus, EarthCube aims to create a knowledge management system and infrastructure that integrates all Earth system and human dimensions data in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. EarthCube requires broad community participation in concept, framework, and implementation, and must not be hindered by rigid preconceptions. We were tasked with creating a roadmap for the future governance of EarthCube. This paper provides three complete units for accomplishing this. Part 1 – the Roadmap – provides action items and a timeline for developing and implementing a governance framework. Part 2 – the Roadmap Documentation – provides insight into the ten guidance points presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF) at the onset of this project. Part 3 – provides a complete summary of the research and community outreach conducted to produce parts 1 and 2. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Under Grant No. 1238951 and 0753154. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS EarthCube Governance Roadmap Steering Committee ........................................................................................... 1 Roadmap ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Milestones and Tasks ...................................................................................................................................................... 12 Roadmap Documentation .................................................................................................................................................. 16 1.0 Purpose .......................................................................................................................................................................... 16 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 16 1.2 Background and History .................................................................................................................................... 18 1.3 What Is Meant by “Governance” and Why Do We Need It? ................................................................. 18 1.4 Communities to Be Served ................................................................................................................................ 20 1.5 Improved Capabilities due to Governance Outcomes ........................................................................... 20 2.0 Communication .......................................................................................................................................................... 22 2.1 Communication To-Date .................................................................................................................................... 22 2.2 End-User Resource Recommendations ....................................................................................................... 22 2.3 Community Driven Issues and Opportunities .......................................................................................... 24 2.4 Future Communications .................................................................................................................................... 31 3.0 Challenges..................................................................................................................................................................... 33 3.1 General Earthcube Challenges ........................................................................................................................ 33 3.2 Conceptual and Procedural Challenges ....................................................................................................... 35 3.3 Social and Cultural Challenges ........................................................................................................................ 37 3.4 Technical Challenges ........................................................................................................................................... 38 3.5 Trends and Drivers .............................................................................................................................................. 40 4.0 Requirements .............................................................................................................................................................. 43 4.1 Community Engagement Process .................................................................................................................. 43 4.2 Current EarthCube Governance Requirements ....................................................................................... 44 5.0 Status .............................................................................................................................................................................. 48 5.1 Governance Definitions ...................................................................................................................................... 48 5.2 IT Governance ........................................................................................................................................................ 48 5.3 Not-For-Profit Governance ............................................................................................................................... 53 5.4 Open Source Software Governance ............................................................................................................... 54 5.5 Governance Mechanisms ................................................................................................................................... 55 5.6 Characteristics of Top Governance Performers ....................................................................................... 55 5.7 Potential Barriers to Adopting a Governance Model ............................................................................. 57 5.8 How to Create an open source software Governance charter ........................................................... 57 5.9 Pertinent Issues to Governance ...................................................................................................................... 58 5.10 Case Studies from Governance Research Review ................................................................................. 61 5.11 Governance Recommendations from EarthCube White Papers..................................................... 72 6.0 Solutions ....................................................................................................................................................................... 79 3 6.1 Important Governance Issues ......................................................................................................................... 79 6.2 IT Governance Theory Applied to Earthcube ........................................................................................... 79 6.2 EarthCube Governance as a System or System of Systems ................................................................. 84 6.3 The Internet as an EarthCube analog ........................................................................................................... 84 7.0 Process ........................................................................................................................................................................... 87 7.1 General Process ..................................................................................................................................................... 87 7.2 Community Engagement ................................................................................................................................... 87 7.3 Gap Analysis ............................................................................................................................................................ 89 7.4 Governance Functions ........................................................................................................................................ 89 7.5 Guiding Principles ................................................................................................................................................ 90 8.0 Timeline ........................................................................................................................................................................ 91 8.1 Timeline Recommendations ............................................................................................................................ 91 8.2 Milestones and Tasks .......................................................................................................................................... 91 9.0 Management ................................................................................................................................................................ 96 9.1 Management Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 96 9.2 Lessons Learned ................................................................................................................................................... 96 9.3 Roles and Responsibilities ................................................................................................................................ 98 9.4 Support ..................................................................................................................................................................... 99 9.5 Decision-Making Process ............................................................................................................................... 102 9.6 Contribution Process ....................................................................................................................................... 102 10.0 Risks .......................................................................................................................................................................... 105 10.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 105 10.2 Risks to the Roadmap Process ................................................................................................................... 105 10.3 Risks in Meeting EarthCube Goals ........................................................................................................... 106 10.4 Risks in Institutional Commitment and Support ............................................................................... 107 10.5 Risks in Community Commitment ........................................................................................................... 107 10.6 Risk Mitigation ................................................................................................................................................. 108 Appendices ............................................................................................................................................................................ 109 4 ROADMAP EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTRODUCTION In order to adequately absorb the concepts and drivers behind the motivations and suggestions in this roadmap and subsequent documentation, we first must define the concept of Governance. For our purposes, we the crafted following definition based on governance research and community input: Governance refers to the processes, structure and organizational elements that determine, within an organization or system of organizations, how power is exercised, how stakeholders have their say, how decisions are made, and how decision makers are held accountable. A key question the Governance Working Group struggled with is whether something as complex as EarthCube can be governed by one single model or by one encompassing entity. The unstated presumption entering the governance roadmap-writing process was that there would be a single governing entity for EarthCube and that such an approach is inherently necessary to proceed. There is long standing concern among some in the research community, however, whether something this important should be managed by a single entity. We have learned, from historical infrastructure case studies, background research on governance theory and models, and from community feedback during this roadmap process, that many large-scale, complex infrastructures, including the Internet, have no central control, administration, or management. No national infrastructure that we examined is governed by a single entity, let alone a single governance archetype. While this is precedence, we feel that through an aggressive community engagement process, EarthCube can do better, maximizing upon lessons learned. Six months of governance research and engagement of potential EarthCube stakeholders provided a venue to begin to tackle these challenging and complex questions. Although limited time and resources constrained the scale of our research review and community engagement, they did provide the foundation to forge a viable path forward in setting of a governance framework for EarthCube. Thus, this roadmap represents a compilation of the governance information we have gathered to-date, with governance recommendations based on what we’ve learned throughout the roadmap-writing process. As further research occurs, these recommendations may change. Recommendations We feel the roadmap process must accommodate an organic governance system or system of systems. EarthCube may begin with a single governing entity or structure, but likely will evolve into a collective of governing bodies as warranted, in order to be successful. Additionally, we believe EarthCube governance will need to be flexible to accommodate a range of governance models that meet the needs of each of the sub-discipline communities and achieve the goals of the National Science Foundation (NSF), have the ability to address foreseen and unforeseen challenges, and be able to adequately address requirements identified by the community constituents. Executive Summary 5 We recommend a successor governance body be established to evaluate the single entity vs. system of systems approaches as part of the implementation of the Governance Roadmap for EarthCube. These should be considered for both short-term (i.e., design and build) and long-term (i.e., adoption and operation) goals. We recommend a detailed timeline with action items and target dates, presented both in in the Milestones and Tasks section immediately following the Executive Summary: 1. August 31, 2012: Determine the Governance Framework to meet community needs and NSF goals for successful cyberinfrastructure. 2. August 31, 2012: Determine the stakeholder community and identify initial governance committee for engaging the community for input on the governance framework developed in Step 1. 3. Date TBD: Establish Terms of Reference for EarthCube Governance. 4. Date TBD: Implement the suggested EarthCube Governance Terms of Reference. It is the position of this Governance Working Group that the governance roadmap should be executed expeditiously and be completed in large part before the execution of other roadmaps. Thus, this roadmap should be completed as soon as feasible after the second NSF EarthCube Charrette in June, 2012, in order to provide groups and individuals focusing on more technical aspects of EarthCube with guidance to make informed decisions about the management environment in which they will operate. NSF GUIDANCE POINTS NSF provided each Working Group and Concept Team with 10 guidance points with the goal to expand and enhance each group’s ability to write an actionable roadmap to move EarthCube forward. These 10 guidance points are explored extensively in the Roadmap Documentation Section. A brief summary of each guidance point is provided here. 1.0 Purpose The overarching goals of EarthCube are to build a unified, adaptive, and scalable cyberinfrastructure framework for enabling transformative advances in geosciences research and education, thereby realizing the objectives articulated in the NSF Geo Vision report.1 In the process, EarthCube aims to create a knowledge management system and infrastructure that integrates all Earth system and human-dimensions data (data related to human uses of the Earth) in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. Developing a viable organizational and governance structure for any organization is a formidable challenge. Creating an effective structure for multi-disciplined, distributed, virtual collection of scientists, investigators, technologists, system operators, entrepreneurs, and administrators can be nearly impossible unless great care is taken to ensure that the proposed solution is flexible and responsive to meet participant’s needs and institutional goals. We believe that there is general agreement that “effective governance for EarthCube will: 1. Actively engage its diverse users 1National Science Foundation, Advisory Committee for Geosciences, “GEO Vision Report.” October 2009. Executive Summary 6 2. Provide leadership and oversight to forge close cooperation, coordination, and collaboration among distributed development activities and the principal EarthCube groups 3. Facilitate alignment of funding program plans and priorities with the needs of the community 4. Guide the successful execution of the EarthCube mission, meeting stakeholder obligations.”2 To be effective, the governance framework the community adopts is likely to be for a system of governance (a matrix of mechanisms for different elements and groups) that accommodates different practices and requirements among different elements of a large and diverse community. The governance roadmap also allows for a variety of mechanisms for how the governance mechanisms are chosen and implemented. 2.0 Communication Community input on issues to consider and materials to review guided the governance roadmap- writing process. Weekly Governance Steering Committee calls, plenary sessions, outreach webinars to industry, government agency, and international representatives, extensive use of the EarthCube Ning site, and official liaisons to each of the EarthCube Working Groups and Concept Teams formed the backbone of the communications to-date. The liaisons coordinated between the more technically focused groups and the Governance Working Group to help ensure unique governance issues and needs from each segment of EarthCube were identified and addressed. An additional Governance Forum, composed of individuals and organizations forming a larger, broader constituency that had demonstrated their interest and participation in governance issues, was formed. One of the goals of organizing the Forum was to ensure representation from each of the Geoscience and closely related domains (e.g. Earth, Atmospheres, Ocean, Environment and Ecology), IT sectors, academia, agencies, and industry, involved in determining agendas, setting goals, and having an active role in formulating the roadmap. Future community engagement and communication will build on processes developed during the writing of the EarthCube Governance Roadmap. A community engagement program to gather EarthCube governance requirements and vet initial governance framework recommendations may consist of: 1. Gathering requirements for the earthcube.org website 2. Engaging the geosciences, atmosphere, and ocean communities 3. Engaging the computer science, IT and software communities 4. Mapping the EarthCube stakeholder community 5. Developing materials to market EarthCube to potential new users 6. Holding webinars for target communities of practice 7. Engaging existing EarthCube Working Groups and Concept Teams 8. Publishing EarthCube articles in trade journals 2Mohan Ramamurthy, “Unidata Governance: A Quarter Century of Experience,” National Science Foundation EarthCube White Paper: Governance Category, 2011, 1. Executive Summary 7 9. Engaging domain and IT communities through a stakeholder survey 10. Engaging the community through social media 11. Attending conferences of opportunity, such as ESIP and AGU, to engage potential EarthCube stakeholders 12. Employing public listservs, wikis, and the EarthCube Ning site to communicate with EarthCube stakeholders and provide an additional forum for community input 3.0 Challenges The challenges we considered in writing this roadmap were not just to creating the governance roadmap per se, but also to the role and impacts of a governance process and system on the overall viability and success of EarthCube as a community system. Challenges to the roadmapping process are inherent given the limited time frame, including: 1. Comprehensive background research review of governance topics from the domain sciences, IT, and social sciences is not yet complete. 2. We identified many governance models, but have not been able to fully evaluate them. 3. Further work is needed to evaluate the pros and cons of different models and determine which may be suitable for EarthCube. 4. Our knowledge of the other EarthCube Working Group and Concept Team governance issues and needs is not yet complete. 5. We have yet to fully engage the broader Earth, information, and IT science communities. Thus our knowledge of their governance needs is limited. 6. There is limited information available about problems and failures of past projects that we can incorporate as things to avoid. Challenges to the viability of EarthCube were generated by community feedback and the governance research review. We divided them into: 1. Conceptual and procedural challenges:3 Time (short-term funding decisions versus the long-term time-scale needed for infrastructures to grow); Scale (choices between worldwide interoperability and local optimization); Agency (how to navigate planned versus emergent change), intellectual property rights, infrastructure winners and losers, agreement on data storage, preservation, curation policies and procedures, incentives to share data and data sharing policies, and trust between data generators and data users. 2. Social and cultural challenges: Motivations and incentives, self-selected or closely-held leadership, levels of participation, types of organizations, and collaboration among domain and IT specialists) 3. Technical challenges: From governance use cases. 4. Trends and drivers: Federal government initiatives, cloud computing. 4.0 Requirements To continue forward, we recommend building upon the process of community engagement and research review begun as a cornerstone of the Governance Roadmap process to identify and 3 Paul Edwards, Steven Jackson, Geoffrey Bowker, and Cory Knobel, “Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design - Report of a Workshop on “History & Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures,” 2007, 24-33. Executive Summary 8 characterize the governance components of cyberinfrastructure. Community engagement is expected to occur in four steps (for a full description and graphic showing the progression of engagement see Roadmap Documentation Section 4: Requirements): 1. Identify cyberinfrastructure components of EarthCube. 2. Identify the cyberinfrastructure components’ organizational paradigms and governance needs. 3. Identify the interaction among and between cyberinfrastructure components and systems within EarthCube. 4. Identify the interactions between cyberinfrastructure components within and outside of EarthCube, and the needs of EarthCube consumers (including those composing the “long tail” of science). The process of community engagement described above, in addition to extensive background governance research review (see Appendix 1), generated a list of initial requirements for EarthCube governance. EarthCube governance framework requirements identified thus far include: 1. Best practices and lessons learned 13. Governance as a system and multiple 2. Barriers to participation levels of governance 3. Collaboration 14. Integration and interoperability 4. Communication 15. Leadership 5. Community 16. Legal issues 6. Culture 17. Metrics 7. Decision-making 18. Reproducible science 8. Design 19. Risk Management 9. Education and outreach 20. Scale 10. Evaluation 21. Sustainability 11. Evolution 22. Temporal aspects 12. Goals and objectives 23. Trust 24. Vision These requirements will be expanded upon and categorized in the Governance Framework to be presented to NSF and the EarthCube community by the end of August 2012 (Step 1 of the Milestones and Tasks). 5.0 Status Drawing on the experience of IT governance, principally in the business environment but in other organizations, as many as seven different decision-making processes may be employed within an organization, ranging from monarchy to federal to anarchy (or crowdsourcing) and variations in between. Instead of a single monolithic model deployed across all elements, governance can be viewed as a system composed of many (potentially overlapping) models used as needed to generate information and make the types of decisions to ensure effective management and use of IT. It is necessary to resolve social, cultural, and organizational issues in tandem with IT services in order to create a strong and lasting infrastructure. Executive Summary 9