New assessment tool developed and ready
EOSC-Nordic aims to publish local services in a pan-European EOSC portal. For this, it is important to assess candidate services and find out if they are ready for cross-border usage.
EOSC-Nordic work package 3 (WP3) has developed a maturity model assessment tool, which is intended to be a go-to tool for both EOSC-Nordic and service managers. The initial version of the maturity model was released in March and later updated according to the feedback from assessors and service providers. The current version takes input from the FITSM process for service management, EOSC Service Description Template, as well as experience of the EOSC-Nordic WP3 working group.
The maturity model assessment tool comes in the form of an online and offline spreadsheet, which allows you to get a quick evaluation with multiple-choice questions. For simplicity, questions are primarily expecting yes-no answers.
This tool is divided into five sections:
- Service management (17 questions)
- Data management and FAIR data requirements (2 questions) – section specific for data repositories;
- Accessibility and legal requirements (6 questions)
- Sustainability (1 question)
- EOSC architecture compatibility (6 questions)
Every section has three different levels: minimum, intermediate, and high. A minimum level requirements (e.g. website, support contacts, documentation, privacy and access policies, etc.) have to be achieved to publish that service in the EOSC portal. Intermediate and high are intended for going beyond the minimal level of service and provide actionable checks for the service managers.
The developed maturity model should help service providers to improve their offerings. Running the assessment regularly is intended to support excellent delivery of services in the European Open Science Cloud.
Check also real-life examples of applying the model to several Nordic and Baltic services:
FI: IDA (Service category: data storage)
DK: Abacus and Computerome (Service category: compute)
SE: SUNET SWAMID (Service category: security & identity)
IS: Garpur (Service category: compute)
EE: UT Rocket (Service category: compute)
LV: RTU HPC (Service category: compute)
LT: ITAOC (Service category: compute)
NO: TSD (Service category: data)