NFDI-wide basic services can significantly improve efficiency and the seamless and smooth use of research data management services within and outside of NFDI. Base4NFDI is a joint initiative of all NFDI consortia. Institutions from all key areas of scientific infrastructure provision and from all major research organisations in Germany are actively involved. The target group of NFDI-wide basic services is the entire NFDI community. In its work, Base4NFDI builds on two pillars:
1) organisationally, on the participatory co-creation of basic services development by the communities within the NFDI Association;
2) technologically, on a common framework that creates quality-assured and coherent models for the continuous identification, support, development, operation and evaluation of NFDI-wide basic services.

TA1 Service Requirements, Design and Development

TA1 will support all activities in the NFDI sections and its working groups related to identifying potential basic services and preparing proposals for service initialization. TA1 helps to enter the initialization phase and will be backing a requirements analysis across consortia and prospective users, software evaluation and service design. All steps take place in close cooperation with the sections of the NFDI Association.

TA2 Service Integration and Ramping up for Operation

After a successful initialisation phase of a basic service candidate, Task Area 2 takes care of the following phases of integration and ramping-up. For service improvement, measures are taken to improve software quality and user acceptance.

TA3 Service Coherence Processes and Monitoring

The main goal of TA3 is to set up a coherent process, monitor the progress of individual services and the appropriateness of the selection process. It also dynamically adapts this process to the needs of providers and users. This framework specifically serves TA1 and TA2 in their tasks of gathering consortia requirements for potential basic services. TA3 ensures the seamless operation of the decision-making process, compiles all necessary information, pre-screens, prepares evaluation reports and ensures the quality assurance of the applications. TA3 thus supports the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) and the consortia assembly to carry out the required decisions.

TA4 Project Governance

TA4 acts as the coordination and management structure with the NFDI association bodies and has a particular focus on decision-making for service initialisation, integration and operationalisation of services identified. This includes assistance of the TEC. At the same time it is Base4NFDI’s conduit to national and international research and infrastructure communities beyond the NFDI. TA4’s tasks also encompass project management including risk-, financial- and contract-management, project monitoring as well as conducting an external evaluation of the project’s progress and impact on NFDI and the German science landscape, far-reaching outreach activities and drafting of policy briefings with respect to long-term operating models for basic services.