Introduction

The Description of Work anticipated the initiation of a series of Task Forces for the purposes of furthering the work of the technical Working Groups initiated by the EOSC Governance Board and Executive Board. 

The Working Groups are intended to focus on specific topics that are relevant for the EOSC Future Architecture and Interoperability Framework;  these groups are open to interested people that are active also in other EOSC projects.

Given that Task Forces are being created within the EOSC Association, it was decided to rename EOSC Future's into Working Groups. WP3 in consultation with the TCB has defined a methodology for creating and managing Working Groups. This process is described in the Working Groups Methodology.

A template to propose Working Groups is also provided. Once you have filled in the template please send that to licia.florio@geant.org.

FAQ EOSC Future WP3 Working Groups

What’s the difference between EOSC Future WP3 Working Groups and EOSC Association Task Forces?

The EOSC Association is creating five Advisory Groups (AGs) focusing on overarching themes that are important for the realisation of EOSC. The Advisory Groups  consist of Task Forces (TFs) working on specific topics related to the AGs. The results of the Task Forces are meant to define frameworks and recommendations to inform the strategies of any particular area. Participation to these Task Forces is in many cases restricted to a limited number of experts.

The Working Groups in EOSC Future will focus on collecting requirements and feedback on the technical architecture and interoperability framework defined that EOSC Future is expected to deliver within its lifetime. 

The EOSC Future WP3 Working Groups are intended to ensure that the functional requirements from cross-community use cases are both compatible and technically interoperable with the EOSC-Core. Outputs of the EOSC Future WP3 Working Groups will drive the EOSC implementation activities in the project. A dynamic set of Working Groups will be created, including existing and new topic areas as they emerge. In contrast to the EOSC Association TF membership, the EOSC Future WGs are not restricted in membership.

The EOSC Association AGs/TFs and EOSC Future WGs will be coordinated in close collaboration in order to avoid duplication of effort and contradictory results. 

But there are also Working Groups under the TCB - what is the difference?

The WGs under the TCB are meant to address specific cross work packages implementation aspects. WP3 does not have capacity to manage a large number of WGs hence those more focus on EOSC Future implementation aspects are managed directly via the TCB. Having both WP3 WGs and more specific cross WP WGs rooted under the TCB ensures that things are streamlined and prevents duplication.

Who can propose a Working Group in WP3? 

Anybody in the EOSC Future or outside the project can submit a request for a Working Group. For further information on the process please refer to the Working Groups methodology document. 

How do I submit a proposal for a WG?

Please refer to the documentation published Working Groups Methodology for instructions.

Who approves the Working Groups? 

The requests received will be assessed by the EOSC Future Technical Coordination Board. The existing Working Groups are revisited every 6 months; at that time based we will issue calls for new Working Groups, assuming that we have needs and capacity. 

Can Working Groups in WP3 cover any technical area? 

Working Groups are expected to demonstrate an impact on the work of WP3 and more in general of EOSC Future. Some areas of interest had been identified during the project proposal preparation. These include but are not limited to: 

• Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) 
• Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI)
• Science Use Cases (requirements for the EOSC Architecture gathered from the scientific communities)
• Composability (EOSC Execution Framework to facilitate cross-cluster resource composition)
• Metadata (common modeling of metadata schemas and crosswalks) 
• Compute-as-a-Service (standard interfaces to access EOSC Compute resources) 
• Container deployment (standard interfaces to deploy and manager container clusters in EOSC), Security, FAIR.

For more information on WP3 objectives please refer to the EOSC Future Wiki.

What happens if a Task Force in the EOSC Association on a specific topic already exists? 

EOSC Future and the EOSC Association work very closely and discussion is ongoing on how to avoid duplication of effort. Since many of the proposed topics listed above are already covered in EOSC Association Task Forces (namely PIDs, AAI and metadata / semantic interoperability) it is proposed to run EOSC Future requirements via the EOSC Association Task Forces instead of establishing parallel Working Groups which could lead to duplication or conflicting recommendations.