Background:
The Integrated Canine Data Commons (ICDC) will receive data from many projects and provide the community with relevant access to that data. Not all requests to have ICDC receive data can be accommodated due to the ICDC’s focus and the effort and costs associated with bringing the data into the ICDC. Therefore, the ICDC must develop, document and adhere to a Data Governance Process.
Summary:
The ICDC will create a Data Governance Process to manage data requests. As part of the process the ICDC will develop a mechanism by which the community can request their project be added to the ICDC. Requests will be tracked, reviewed, status assigned by an ICDC Data Governance Board and decisions communicated to all relevant stakeholders in a timely manner.
Process Details:
Request Initiation.
The ICDC will instantiate a system for researchers to submit requests for project data to be included in the ICDC. The submission system will provide guidance to requesters regarding the key evaluation criteria that will be used for evaluation. All requests will be captured and tracked in a system that will provide visibility to the request details and allow review of the requests progression through the ICDC Governance Process. The first step of the process is initiation where an ICDC team member will review requests for completeness. Complete requests will progress to an evaluation stage while incomplete requests will stay at the initiation stage with the requester contacted and asked to provide the relevant additional detail. Evaluation criteria will include, but may not be limited to, scientific impact to ICDC mission as well as more logistical areas such as type of data, size of data, access control, is there a shelf-life, and are other CRDC nodes involved.
Evaluation.
All completed reviews will be sent for evaluation and adjudication by the ICDC Data Governance Board (DGB). The composition of the DGB is listed below in the Roles and Responsibilities section. The Board will review all completed requests and evaluate them based on the published evaluation criteria. The DGB will decide if a request is to be accepted into ICDC or not. If a request is not accepted, the DGB will provide feedback to the requester documenting the rationale for the decision. Requesters may, if they have addressed the DGB comments, resubmit requests that were not initially approved. The Board will also be responsible for establishing the Evaluation criteria. The FNL staff will provide logistical support to the DGB and will also provide summary reports on the number of requests and their disposition. The FNL staff will ensure that evaluation criteria are completed for each request before consideration by the DGB. The DGB and FNL staff will create and maintain the Evaluation criteria used by the DGB for evaluation. The DGB and FNL staff may also work together to develop any needed data policies, for example, data life cycle policy (will all data stay forever, or will data become less available over time).
Communication.
The FNL staff will communicate with all relevant stakeholders. In addition to ensuring the request system is working the FNL staff will ensure any questions by requesters are answered, requests are reviewed and all decisions from the DGB are communicated appropriately and in a timely fashion.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Data Governance Board.
Composed of 3 NCI staff (one from CBIIT and two from DCTD), 2 external members (from ICDC Steering Committee) and supported by FNL staff. The DGB will be chaired by an NCI member. The DGB will meet at least quarterly to review and adjudicate on all open and complete requests. They will use documented evaluation criteria to determine if a request is approved or declined. The DGB will also determine the evaluation criteria and may adjust those criteria. The DGB is also responsible for developing and maintaining any data life cycle considerations. The DGB Chair will be responsible for ensuring each meeting has an agenda, defining if a quorum is present, confirming evaluation criteria are current, and ensuring discussions are unbiased. The DGB Chair will also report to the ICDC Steering Committee the summary status of all data requests. Since the ICDC is a node in the Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) data requests may involve considering other CRDC components (for example, the CRDC-H data model or the Cancer Data Aggregator). The CBIIT representative will be responsible for representing CRDC considerations in discussing requests and in development and maintenance of any relevant evaluation criteria. DGB meetings will not require in-person attendance.
FNL Staff.
FNL will manage the request process, ensure the evaluation criteria are made public and are current, ensure there is a tracking system, and monitor status for all requests. They will provide the DGB reports on complete and open requests on a quarterly basis. They will document the decisions made by the DGB and will communicate those decisions to the relevant stakeholders. They will also contribute to the generation of the evaluation criteria, contribute to development of data lifecycle policy, track any data lifecycle parameters assigned to a set of data, and provide summary data on requests and data life cycle status. The FNL staff will provide logisitics support for the DGB review sessions, including setting up meetings and ensuring all decisions are documented.
