20230424 Scientific Board Meeting Minutes

Attendees:

Darren, Flavio, Hilde, Ingo, Jared, Wendy, Wolfgang

Apologies:

Simon

1. Admin

a) EB/SB chairs meeting

The planned meeting between the Excecutive Board and the Scientific Board chairs and the Excecutive Diretor, scheduled to April 17th 2023, turned into a meeting between Jared and the SB chairs, as Bill was not available due to illness.

At the meeting the agenda for the Annual Meeting was discussed. Jared proposed this year to organize the Annual Meeting of Members and the Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community as one meeting. A draft agenda for discussion at the SB meeting was developed by Jared in advance, with input from Darren and Hilde.

2. Annual Meeting preparations

a) Discussion and voting on agenda

The draft agenda as of the meeting between Jared and the SB chairs was discussed and agreed from the side of the Scientific Board.

b) Distribution of work related to the Annual Meeting

Input from the Working Groups regarding achievements since the January reporting, as well as future plans, is needed for the Annual meeting reporting. The Scientific Board WG contacts will contact their respective groups regarding the reporting, and will also ask the WG chairs if they would be interested to present some highlights from their work at the Annual meeting, also with focus on recruitment. At the meeting Ingo already agreed to present on behalf of the newly formed Developers group. 

Darren will compile a written report for the Annual meeting based on the input from the Working Groups.

Hilde will update the summary of ideas from the SB meeting in Chur meeting regarding future directions for the scientific and technical work of the DDI Alliance, and send this to the Excecutive Board in advance of the Annual meeting. The proposal will also include  ideas received from the audience at the virtual Scientific Community meeting of March 28th.

How to best achieve comments from the Scientific Community and Member organisations was also discussed. While some feedback can be achieved in connection with the Annual meetings and virtual Scientific Community meetings, Flavio proposed to set up some communication channel other than the DDI users email list where people can add ideas and comments. Possibilities for this would need further exploration.

2. FY24 budget request evaluation by the Scientific Board

In advance of the SB meeting the Scientific Board had received a spreadsheet from Jared with DDI Alliance FY24 funding requests for scientific and technical work, for evaluation by the board. Based on this Hilde and Darren had prepared some recommendations regarding priorities in advance.  Each proposal was discussed, and their priority for funding was voted on by the Scientific Board.

The FY24 budget request evaluation of the Scientific Board is based on three levels:

• Priority 1 - Strong recommendation that the funding request is prioritized for approval by the EB for the FY

• Priority 2- Recommendation that the funding request is prioritized for funding by the EB for the FY

• Priority 3 - Recommendation that the funding request is not prioritized for funding by the EB for the FY

Partial funding was suggested for some activities.

The Scientific Board’s budget request recommendations for the FY24 has been sent to Jared to be forwarded to the Executive Board.

3. UNECE contact 

The Scientific Board would like to strengthen the relationship with the UNECE and to appoint a contact person from the DDI Alliance that can engage with the activities of the organisation. Flavio was assigned the task to explore possibilities further, and will discuss options for relevant tasks for the contact person (technical hands on level, political high level, or both?) and possible candidates for the role with Arofan and Simon. 

4. Scientific Work Plan 2024 – 2026

It was agreed to postpone the finalisation of the 2024-2026 work plan till Autumn 2023, as time is short till the Annual meeting, and the Scientific Board has not yet received any feedback from the EB regarding the content of the 2024-2026 Strategic Plan. A physical Scientific Board physical, planned to take place in Bergen 9 - 10 October 2023, was agreed as the venue for finalising the 2024-26 Scientific Work Plan.