AASHTO RAC TKN Task Force

June 6, 2013

8:30 am to 10:00 am Pacific Time

Notes approved for posting

Agenda

  1. Roll call

Present: Leni Oman--Chair, Louise Rosenzweig, Renee McHenry, Sandy Brady, Daniel Yeh, Carol Paszamant, Laura Wilt, Mary Moulton, Lynn Matis, Karen Perrin, Kathy Szolomayer--notes

  1. Check in on May notes – no other changes made; notes approved.
    Agenda adjustments needed? – none suggested
  2. NTKN Coordinating Committee -A brief meeting was held last week but discussion was postponed as several were unable to attend. Update from those able to attend?
    Only Amanda, Carol and Karen were on the call. Informally, looked at NTKN website, and logos, which no one liked. Rather than postponing, will skip June meeting and get together next month as regularly scheduled.
  3. Discussion Topics:
  4. AASHTO/TRB/FHWA Peer Exchange: Strategies for Strengthening Data and Information Technology Support and Involvement in Performance-Based Planning (two attachments provided).Theme for TRB Joint Midyear Meeting is “Meeting State and MPO Information Needs in a Constrained Fiscal Environment”.
    From Leni -- I know this is last minute but would like to discuss points you think I need to make at the meeting next Monday.(See attached documents)

Leni asked for feedback based on the meeting outline. SCOP (Standing Committee on Planning) inspired this meeting.
Topics (see attached documents): Communication;Technical: Data (including unstructured), IT needs, role of standards; Organizational structures.
TxDOT just announced yesterday that they are outsourcing all of their IT staff (~300 folks), according to Louise. Karen commented that in IL, IT folks have focused more on the tools (the “how”), not on the information management/planning aspect. If that is outsourced, the institutional knowledge will be decreased even more. Daniel said “piecemealing” individual IT needs means no overall coordination develops that would support KM and global data organization. Leni commented that content management is a gaping hole, where attention is needed, at least at WSDOT, and it is not well understood. Carol said in NJ, budget (or lack of) drives a lot of decisions and cutbacks mean the remaining personnel are overwhelmed.
At WSDOT, new administration; waiting for things to settle out. KM issues are being discussed but no sense of where things will end up. Leni talked about a situation where one of WSDOT’s planners was trying to create a spreadsheet of all the transportation plans for the last several years, and how difficult it is to have enough columns to handle all the questions that may come up about the plans. Talking to librarians to develop a strategy to organize this information could help.
Standards: does your organization have standards for capturing information? Daniel: within the silos, yes; across the silos, no. Sometimes silos defined by federal reporting needs so they are focused on one need; ability to use info across silos for planning needs is not good, and opportunities are being missed. Laura said in recent years efforts have been made to reorganize in Oregon, but silos still exist. Leni asked what drives that? Time is a factor; folks focused on what they have to do, not what they could do (fewer people to do more work). Mary said this is nothing new; we all scramble to deliver the maximum effectiveness with the minimal effort due to myriad competing needs and limited resources to meet them. Also, continuity of personnel (or lack thereof) impacts these efforts over time. Organizations don’t seem to think they need access to information science or folks with that expertise to work on their data. Carol added that it’s not just the temporary staff in the ranks, but in upper management, that interrupt progress towards organizing/managing information and data. Structure of databases is not always conducive to ease of use.
WSDOT’s info management governance group members all have their own biases about what is needed, so it’s hard to see the “big picture”, according to Leni. Data management plans often leave out how to manage unstructured data, which continues to be problematic. Mary said a fundamental problem in project management of content is that change management does not continue after the systems are installed and content moved to the new platform. Things break down after implementation – no one is left to manage the change that enables new user behavior required to achieve success with the new system.
Organizational structures and defining roles: Long-term management is often not addressed, as focus is on data and performance reporting. Mary commented that “change management” sounds hokey, but major shifts require it, and it’s hard to make the case for it as opposed to projects where you can see the results.
Carol asked what states are participating in the peer exchange: WA, AK, MD, CO, CA, ID, VA, MN, PSRC (MPO in WA), AZ; also AASHTO, RITA.
The new USDOT CIO is interested in data and there may be an opportunity to get him interested in content management, too.
Leni reviewed some of the points they hope will be made at the peer exchange. John H. is interested and wants to further the cause.

b.SLA – any topics you want to discuss in prep?Laura commented that the TKN chairs are giving brief reports at GTRIC, and asked if there is something to report from this group? (Maybe get us on the agenda next year?) Leni will provide info to several members of this group who will be attending GTRIC (General Transportation Research and Information Committee). Leni said she’d like folks to talk about the efforts of this group regarding information management (framework document – is it resonating and what can we do to keep it a “living document”?) and to ask for topics to submit for next round of research needs statements. Mary will be giving a report at GTRIC (though she may not be on the agenda yet . . .), regarding open data initiative coming from the White House. One result of that initiative is that minimal requirements for agencies about open data and information could be set. USDOT has a mandate to preserve and make information available (it’s in MAP-21), so they are a bit different than other agencies. If an agency has at least $100 million in grants, they must comply with the OSTP memo. She reported they are also reviewing NTL’s database where reports are stored (processes, workflow, etc.). NTL is digitizing older FHWA reports right now. Carol asked what NTL thinks of the portal/clearinghouse being suggested (CHORUS model) that would implement a clearinghouse of federally funded research. American Association of Scholarly Publishers wants to control this. Right now there’s a 1 year embargo before research has to be made freely available and even with that, there are many barriers to that happening. Lots of transportation literature is grey literature and not well controlled, bibliographically speaking, so access to that is still lacking. Amanda posted info about this on TRANLIB this morning. Leni asked Mary to share that more widely. Here it is:

Dear Colleagues,

For those of you following the progress and activities surrounding the Feb 22 White House OSTP memo on increasing access to federally funding scientific research results (link below), a new product from publishers was introduced this week.

Some information and perspectives:

More than 50 journal publishers, including all of the major ones, have proposed a new model for federal agencies to comply with the OSTP open access directive released back in February. The model is called CHORUS: Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States. You can read more about it in:

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Scholarly Kitchen

ScienceInsider

White House memo

Best regards,

Amanda

  1. NRAC TKN Task Force Meeting – Topics that would benefit from discussion with a broader community of RAC members.
    National Research Advisory Committee (NRAC) meeting will be in Baton Rouge in July (14-18). There will be a conference call option. This year Leni plans to provide background about the TKN TF before the meeting so that the gathering can be more of a working meeting. What do we want folks to know about, to support knowledge networking? For example – any elements of report distribution to discuss (e.g., requirements for where to submit, process, etc.)? Karen said knowing how the research folks use the reports, where they look for information, and what their processes are, might inform how reports are distributed. Daniel commented that selling the benefits of NTL and TRID to researchers could help them understand that they could focus their efforts on a couple of resources instead of looking all over for information. Mary said having true open access would be an opportunity to federate searching among a variety of sources (NTL, TRID, Berkeley/ITS, NUTL, for example), which would both streamline and enrich the searching experience. Mary also commented that changing staff at the state DOTs makes it difficult to keep continuity with report submission.
    Input needed on the Technical Page? Karen said that would be helpful. Carol mentioned that in addition to keywords, perhaps mention the TRT, as well – or is it too soon for that?
    Daniel said it might be good to discuss whether hard copy copies are going away, and if so, how does that impact these issues? Laura commented that as of yesterday, Oregon decided to go to electronic distribution with “print on demand”, rather than hard copy distribution. Daniel added that there may be issues regarding versioning with electronic documents and that delivery of contractually required hard copies often holds up completion of research projects.
  1. Task Updates – anything on these that should be discussed at the RAC meeting?
  2. Calendar project – no progress to report; Laura will corral Kendra and Maggie at SLA.
  3. Communication plan–let them know what resources they can tap into (Ron’s brochure, video). Other things? Let Leni know.
  4. Report distribution and technical page – covered above.
  5. Data management – Mention that open data is swirling, “big data”, etc.
  6. Repository paper – no updates from Dale.

Sandy Tucker sent the following information about digital repositories that she came across in her research to support a university effortto develop a policy on stewardship of research data. Long-term preservation of digital information is, of course, a very big issue these days. The last I heard there are just three U.S. repositories that have received Trusted Repository Audit Checklist (TRAC) certification – HathiTrust, Portico, and Chronopolis at UCSD. The Center for Research Libraries has a page, Metrics for Repository Assessment that provides links to the pertinent documents.

Does this modify our recommendation about a repository?

  1. Emergent tasks – not sure of long term role:
  2. Assisting the RAC Admin Task Force with the SCOR/RAC Website – Mary Moulton agreed to provide some suggestions for content management and will participate in one or more conference calls. I sent Cynthia Gerst the Portal paper that was developed by AJ, Bob, and John. While that is about developing and supporting sustainable portals, I think some of the material is relevant to collaborative websites. I’ve attached some thoughts I also sent about governance and content.
  3. Review of AASHTO Standing Committee on Research Strategic Plan for fall/early winter meeting – will look at this after July . . .

Leni reminded us that problem statements panel members are being solicited, and to think about new problem statements for next cycle.

  1. News from our partner orgs (regional TKNs, LIST, SLA Transportation Division, Data Section committees . . .) – no time for this today.

July meeting would be on the 4th, so will need to reschedule. Looks like July 11th would work (the following Thursday). Leni will send out an updated meeting request.

Meeting adjourned at 10:00.