Championing Data Through Inclusive, National Dri: The Canadian Research Data Platform

Increasingly, researchers, data scientists, and information specialists in the social sciences rely on digital research infrastructure to manage, publish, share, analyze, and repurpose research data. However, the needs of social sciences professionals are not always reflected in the design and functionality of this infrastructure, which tends to be driven by other data-intensive disciplines and engrained funding structures. How, then, can we collectively champion data and data needs, reimagining platforms and tools to better serving and representing this community? In this presentation, we will share how the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance), a national organization with the mandate to coordinate and fund data infrastructures, is working to address these challenges by translating stakeholders’ needs into the design and delivery of the Canadian Research Data Platform (CRDP): a "system of systems” that will bring together different services and infrastructure into a cohesive, interoperable, sovereign data environment.

When complete, the CRDP (alliancecan.ca/en/initiatives/canadian-research-data-platform) will connect national data services to facilitate research data management, discovery, access, curation, and preservation; a distributed storage and compute grid to deliver reliable, scalable and secure data storage and AI compute resources; domain-specific data spaces to create trusted, community-led digital ecosystems; and a national Research Activity iD registration agency to link people, projects, outputs, and datasets for specific research projects. Through our engagement efforts to enact, collect, and implement feedback on each of these elements of the CRDP (e.g., through focus groups, working groups, town halls, and a Data Summit), we are working to build a truly national platform that connects with local institutions and services, championing inclusive and equitable data access and use—not only across research disciplines, but also across institutions and stakeholder groups.