Agricultural Research Federation Data Stewardship Framework Enactment

The Agricultural Research Federation (AgReFed) aims to improve the availability and interoperability of agricultural data.

AgReFed was born out of the ARDC-supported Agriculture Research Data Cloud project; during which the Guidelines for the development of a Data Stewardship and Governance Framework for the Agricultural Research Federation were developed.

The Framework proposes a socio-technical system that, once enacted, will bring independent organisations together to make strategic and technical decisions about data sharing within the AgReFed. This project will enact the Framework and initiate the AgReFed community, to create a sustained community of practice with the shared goal of making agricultural data collections more FAIR.

Start date 3 June 2019

Expected completion date 21 October 2019

Investment by ARDC $49,999

Co-investment partners

CeRDI

CSIRO

The University of Adelaide

University of Western Australia

Western Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

University of New England

Lead node

1 White Paper

A White Paper outlining the Vision, Mission, and Policy Principles for AgReFed.

2 Terms of Reference

Terms of Reference (ToR) for the Federation Council and Federation Technical Committee.

3 Framework Policies developed

An initial set of policies for AgReFed including: establishment and membership policies, funding and financial policies and the strategic policies (to be administered by the Federation Council)

4 Data Stewardship role descriptions

A set of role descriptions for proposed AgReFed roles including Federation Data Steward and Federation Standards and Vocabularies Steward.

5 Inaugural meeting of the Federation Council

To formally establish the Council, and the Technical Committee, approving the ToR and nominee for representation of both bodies. At the inaugural meeting the Council would review, sign-off on or request amendments to the initial AgReFed policies and AgReFed roles tabled.

Core features

Federated community for Agricultural data sharing

Provides the socio-technical infrastructure for independent organisations to come together and make their Agricultural data FAIR.

Reusable governance framework

An innovative, reusable networked governance model that enables a federated community of distributed data providers to work together for sustained provision of FAIR research data.

Who is this project for?

Research organisations
Government (state and commonwealth)
Research and Development Corporations
Farming groups

What does this project enable?

The Agricultural Research Federation (AgReFed) aims to share research, industry, and government data to enhance decision making and to generate new insights into the productivity, profitability and resilience of Australia’s agricultural industries. It provides the socio-technical infrastructure for independent organisations to come together and make their data FAIR.