Work Packages

The project consists of 12 interlinked yet individually focused work packages.

WP1 Management and Co-ordination

Team: UKDA, FSD, NSD, RODA, GESIS, CNRS-RQ

Objectives: To provide management, support and co-ordination necessary for the successful undertaking and completion of the project.

WP2 Dissemination Management

Team: UKDA, FSD, NSD

Objectives: To facilitate the production of high-quality outputs and to ensure that information about, and arising from, the PPP is disseminated as widely as possible. This work package has responsibility for the project website.

WP3 Defining the Strategic, Financial, Governance and Legal Framework

Team: UKDA, FSD, EKKE, NSD, GESIS, DDA

Objectives: To develop a framework capable of sustaining a Social Science and Humanities (SSH) research infrastructure of the highest quality. The team will identify and examine strategic, financial, governance and legal issues associated with the activities and functions of CESSDA and prepare proposals for the resolution of these in order to prepare for and accommodate a major upgrade of the RI. A further objective is to secure financial commitment from stakeholders for the sustained support and development of the CESSDA RI.

WP4 Controlled Vocabularies

Team: FSD, UKDA, ADPSS, EKKE, ARCES/CIS, SND

Objectives: To develop managerial and maintenance processes in order to sustain the long-term viability of the CESSDA RI multi-lingual thesaurus; to investigate the desirability and potential of extending the current thesaurus to other European languages; to determine the intellectual property rights for the thesaurus and prepare a strategy for the use of controlled vocabularies; to enhance the comparability of datasets by incorporating information on international standard classifications; to investigate the desirability of translating key DDI fields from CESSDA catalogue records into a common language; and to liaise with other ESFRI roadmap RIs and related projects. Read more...

WP5 Developing the CESSDA RI one-stop-shop Portal

Team: NSD, UKDA, FSD, GESIS

Objectives: To evaluate the metadata standard DDI 3.0 as the basis for a large-scale documentation and portal software upgrade and to plan the software implementation; to evaluate middleware for a common federated access, authentication and authorisation system; and to evaluate persistent common identification systems for data objects in order to maintain strict identification version control.

WP6 Strengthening the CESSDA RI

Team: RODA, TARKI, SDA, ADP, GESIS

Objectives: To support capacity-building through developing the skills, knowledge and abilities of less-developed and less-resourced CESSDA organisations, by means of staff training and exchange programmes; and to foster and develop emerging CESSDA organisations through the provision of a complete ‘tool kit’ of standards, operational tools and expertise.

WP7 Widening the CESSDA RI

Team: GESIS, TARKI, ADP, RODA, WISDOM

Objectives: To extend the existing CESSDA RI and to foster the development of national data archiving initiatives in those countries which are not currently part of the CESSDA network, thereby creating and maintaining a ‘complete’ pan-European RI, including representation from emerging and candidate countries; and to extend the network to agencies and organisations which remain outside of CESSDA yet continue to host important data collections. Read more...

WP8 Enhancement of data and metadata infrastructures for the CESSDA RI

Team: GESIS, UKDA, FSD, FORS, NSD, DDA

Objectives: To determine the metadata and data model requirements of the CESSDA Research Infrastructure (RI) for handling complex dataset types throughout the entire data life-cycle; to plan the strategic developments required for metadata, data models and software upgrades for data and metadata capture, management, processing, publishing and access within the CESSDA RI; to support more complex dataset types; and to recommend options for the organisation, sustainability and future funding of metadata, data model and software tool development. Read more...

WP9 Deepening the CESSDA RI by building an infrastructure for content harmonisation and conversion

Team: GESIS, EKKE, SDA, NSD, DANS, DDA, CNRS-RQ

Objectives: To strategically plan for meeting substantive harmonisation demands in the European SSH research community; to develop functional specifications for infrastructure elements; and to address issues of organisational and financial sustainability for the content harmonisation infrastructure. Read more...

Presentations from WP9 Expert Workshop on Harmonisation Issues in Comparative Social Surveys, Paris, April 2008

WP10 Data collection, dissemination and access issues

Team: CNRS-Q, UKDA, EKKE, NSD, DANS

Objectives: To position an upgraded RI to enable it to act as an effective and comprehensive conduit between researchers in the ERA and data producers and providers for the provision of available macro and micro research data; to provide practical researcher-friendly solutions to data accessibility problems posed by concerns over statistical disclosure; to account for data dissemination and preservation problems posed by multiple data formats and data types; and to provide a common CESSDA-wide data collection framework policy. Read more...

WP11 Investigating the potential of grid technologies

Team: UKDA, NSD, GESIS, DANS

Objectives: To investigate current developments and applications in grid technologies in order to propose a strategy for the implementation of a future CESSDA-based SSH cyberinfrastructure; and to explore funding models and sustainability issues for implementing grid-technologies.

WP12 Technical support for the preparatory phase

Team: NSD, UKDA, FSD, FORS, GESIS

Objectives: To provide prototype software or technical solutions so that bottlenecks in related WPs can be cleared and strategic and business plans and recommendations for the implementation phase can be advanced.