IT Recharge Projects - 2010 Q1

The steering committee selected seven projects for attention in Q1 of 2010. Here's the list with a brief description of each one.

One, Restricted Use Contracting System. This is an on-going project to build a suite of tools to support the contracting process for access to restricted-use research data. There's a portal where researchers complete tasks such as uploading documents (research plan, IRB approval, CVs, etc), submitting security plans to protect the data, and enumerating who will have access to the data. There's also an internal administrative tool for managing contracts, and an automated workflow system that generates alerts and reminders.

Two, Turnover Notification to Depositors. This is a small project that closes the loop with a depositor when his/her data results in the release of an ICPSR study.

Three, Citation Data Feed. This is another small project that will feed our bibliography to partner organizations via an automated system.

Four, Expose Deposited Files via Deposit Viewer. This is a slightly larger project which updates our internal Deposit Viewer/Manager tool so that one may use it to access the payload of a deposit. Currently staff must use a separate mechanism to accomplish this.

Five, SAMHDA Site Redesign. Another medium-size project to retool the SAMHDA site to our new technology platform.

Six, Variable Metadata Management System Design. A preliminary project to scope how we might design and build a variable-level metadata management system to complement our study-level metadata management system.

Seven, Invoice Management. Our parent organization, the Institute for Social Research, is our de facto accounts receivable office, and this is a project to analyze the process by which information flows between Organization Representatives, ICPSR, and ISR.