Future investment in Science

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It seems strange to be thinking about how to justify investment in ARCHER3 and beyond, with ARCHER2 not fully in service yet, but it is never too early to start planning this. ARCHER generated a significant amount of world-leading science and we fully anticipate ARCHER2 will as well. It is important to capture this to justify investment in future national services. We did this for ARCHER and produced data twice a year primarily from SAFE, but also involving machine statistics and information about services provided such as training and eCSE. This wasn’t something that the user community would have necessarily been aware of, but was covered in the data and privacy policies for ARCHER. Data provided was never individual but cumulative across the service.

For ARCHER2 we are spending considerable time planning with UKRI to ensure that the data we collect is optimal. It is much easier to get this right at the start of service rather than try and change course half way through. You, the user community, are much more likely to notice that we are collecting data this time as you will be asked some different questions in SAFE. We hope that you will support this, as the continuing provision of services such as ARCHER2 enable your scientific discoveries and support your careers. We are not providing identifiable data to UKRI but cumulative statistics helping to demonstrate the positive impact of the service and privacy policies will be updated with any changes made. On a project level, changes are being made to SAFE to ask the PI or their project managers to provide data on science areas and more data on collaborators such as any industrial collaboration and on publications. On an individual level UKRI want to ensure that the services provided are as accessible as possible to the whole community, and thus we are discussing the best way of collecting related data whilst respecting GDPR requirements. We expect to publish a series of scientific case studies, people profiles and blogs throughout the lifetime of the service, showcasing the achievements of the ARCHER2 community.