From the Director – Donald Hobern
Donald Hobern
In our last newsletter for the year, I would like to take the opportunity to update you on our progress so far.
The ALA team is continuing to refine its activity plan to June 2012. To that end, we are heavily engaged in stakeholder meetings and detailed planning workshops. It is exciting that most of our key staff positions have now been filled.
Because the development and finalisation of approval for the ALA Super Science Funding Agreement and ALA Super Science Project Plan took longer than we expected, there have been some delays in achieving our milestones. However this is more than compensated for by the approval, in November, for Super Science expenditure to be spread over another 12 months i.e. until June 2012. The ALA Super Science Funding Agreement (amended to accommodate the extended funding period) was signed on 3 December 2009 and we now have a financial administrator to oversee the budget and produce quarterly financial reports.
We will now focus on rapid initiation of those activities which either have significant impact on other project components or are expected to require most of the available time to be completed. Other activities will now begin in early 2010.
In October, we held the first meeting of the new ALA Project Steering Committee in Canberra and its role relative to the ALA Management Committee was agreed on. We also held an ALA “all-hands” workshop in Canberra in November where we completed an ambitious agenda. Every major activity of the updated ALA business plan was covered. Our group photo from the workshop will let you meet the team and you can see how we are organised here.
A release schedule is under development for regular coordinated quarterly release of ALA components. The earliest of these releases will be internal, to be followed by releases intended primarily for exposure within the ALA community. A release for wider availability is planned for later in 2010.
Component Projects
Australian National Species Lists
Although contracts have been prepared with the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) and with the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) to complete the Australian national species lists, signing of these and start of work was deferred until the funding agreement was in place. Analysis and development of the implementation plan for associated software is well under way and expected to be completed by the end of 2009.
Collection Data Management
In consultation with the councils of collections, we have identified priority areas for investment to support natural history collections. Two workshops have helped develop strategies for 1) supporting collections using Biolink software and 2) for future use of ALA tools to provide the functions of Australia’s Virtual Herbarium (AVH) and the Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums (OZCAM).
Geospatial Data Management
We have employed a GIS Manager and started work on a portal based on the software developed by the NCRIS Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and held a workshop to identify critical needs and priority use cases for geospatial analysis and modelling.
Rich Data Stores
Ely Wallis (Museum Victoria) has been appointed project lead for the ALA mirror of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the project plan is almost complete. Gerry Cassis (University of NSW) has been appointed project lead for the ALA species interactions component and a project plan is being developed. Kevin Thiele (WA DEC) has been appointed project lead for the ALA descriptive data component, and is expected to start work early in 2010. The IdentifyLife project has developed the storage engine which the ALA will use for descriptive data.
We are also having discussions with the Barcode of Life Database and MorphBank on projects to deploy mirrors in Australia.
Data Integration
There has been progress on several fronts. The ALA has engaged a business analyst to develop data use agreements and to liaise with data providers. Discussions are under way with the ERIN team from DEWHA over the future use of ALA services within the department. Wrappers have been written in readiness to bring a wide range of exemplar data sets into the ALA Metadata Repository
Data Dissemination
We are preparing a report on the requirements and opportunities for collaboration around citizen science activities. A basic user interface has been developed for the ALA Biodiversity Information Explorer component. The ALA has engaged a usability expert to review user requirements in greater detail and to provide recommendations on user interface design.
All in all it has been a productive and busy year. The team we have built is developing into an efficient and collaborative group. It only remains for me to wish you a Merry Christmas and a relaxing break. I am looking forward to working with all of the team in what promises to be an exciting New Year.
