17. Modernizing Data-Delivery Technologies - Combining Data-User Feedback with User-Support Expertise for Successful Data Tools

Navigating the future of data ultimately relies on technology that assists would-be data users to discover, evaluate, and analyze data, and to do so quickly. ICPSR began sharing social sciences data electronically by FTP(!) in 1996 and via the Web in 1998; authentication technology that enabled members to download member-data directly via the web launched in 2001. In tech-time, this is ancient history!

Over the last two years, ICPSR has been modernizing its data ingest and data delivery platforms. It’s not done yet, but lessons have already been learned!

How does a 60+ year-old archive with a legacy of ingest, curation, dissemination, and specially-developed data technologies united together and interconnected in known and unknown ways reimagine and relaunch itself to meet research-data-sharing needs of today and of the future? The answer seems simple - talk to those “using” the data technologies. But then it gets complicated quickly. Who is a data user? Who else has key information that must be included? How does an organization combine user and user-support feedback, expert knowledge, and regulations to assist tech developers in navigating the future of research-data-sharing technology?

Don’t worry - this poster isn’t going to be tech-talk! Rather, it’s going to be data-user-talk including how to identify and talk with users of data delivery technologies and importantly, about the necessity of getting direction from those interacting with or assisting data users. There will be colorful process charts, a summary of lessons-learned, and some peeks at ICPSR’s recently-launched/about-to-launch data delivery technologies! The information will be of interest to those interested in (user-friendly) data service technologies and those who help data users navigate the processes to find or deposit scientific data.