8 November 2023
NODC spoke at the first meeting of the Italian Data Steward Community, which took place in Rome on 7 November. The event was organised by the Competence Centre of the Italian Computing and Data Infrastructure (CC-ICDI) in collaboration with the EU project Skills4EOSC and GARR, the Italian national computing network for universities and research. The aim of the meeting was to promote the development of the skills of data stewards in Italy and to support their recognition.
Together with some of the most important Italian research institutes and digital infrastructures, the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS participates in the ICDI working group, whose aim is to optimise the implementation of the principles of open science in our country. Specifically, the role of the ICDI Competence Centre is to create a network of experts, initiatives and research infrastructures to support the national open science community and its participation in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
The meeting of the Italian Data Steward Community coincided with the meeting of the CC-ICDI, at which topics relevant to the data steward community were discussed. In the afternoon, the Italian Data Steward Community was officially launched, paving the way for new opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
“The National Oceanographic Data Centre at OGS manages the most extensive archive of marine data in Italy. The data, which is mainly collected by Italian institutions in the Mediterranean region, is aggregated, standardised, validated and securely stored.” Chiara Altobelli from NODC said, adding: “These data are then made freely available on our website through various data discovery and access services. The data can be used by individual researchers or fed into international data collection and processing infrastructures such as SeaDatanet and EMODnet or into various information and forecasting services offered by Copernicus. This information forms the basis for assessing the state of the sea and implementing measures to protect the environment.”
Altobelli described the various capabilities of NODC's data stewards, including information and communication technology skills as well as curating specific types of data, implementing data policies, developing data management plans, maintaining the network and securing financial, human and IT resources for the Centre. She informed that NODC has implemented a quality management system in accordance with ISO 9001:2015 requirements to ensure that the quality of data, products and services is documented, monitored and improved as needed and for the benefit of all data users.
