UCLA Research Data Infrastructure: an evidence base for One IT

This spring I represented the Library and the Data Science Center on UCLA’s One IT Research Working Group, a 12-week group charged by the EVCP and CIO with assessing campus research technology infrastructure. The group submitted its final report in May.

UCLA had already done much of this homework. The Research Data Working Group spent 2021-2024 building a roadmap, gathering campus feedback, and benchmarking peers. I pulled that evidence together into a public site and mapped it to the new group’s charge, so it didn’t have to be rediscovered.

The site makes the case for four priorities: a research data coordination office, a Bruin Research Data Hub for storage, expanded research data services, and expanded research infrastructure, including HPC, a P3/P4 compliant enclave, and cloud for research. Underneath all four is one argument. Research IT is not generic IT, and a layered model, with central infrastructure raising the floor and domain expertise kept close to researchers, works better than consolidation.

The slides, one-pager, gaps analysis, and bibliography are here: UCLA Research Data Infrastructure.