Maturity Model for Assessing Data Infrastructures - CESSDA as Example.

CESSDA, the consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, aims to provide an infrastructure that enables the research community to conduct high-quality research within the social sciences. Developing such a infrastructure requires all service providers to participate to their ability: some partners have a long history and have set high ambitions and funding whereas other partners are in the process of setting up their archives, sometimes with limited funding. Rather than setting fixed requirements for each partner or services, CESSDA must define both the desired state AND provide effective guidance for partners how to improve their services gradually to the minimal/desired state. Within the SaW-project a maturity model will be developed which helps (aspiring) CESSDA members to assess their services and determine the gap(s) between the current and desired state for each individual partner. In this this presentation we will show the model and we will explain how it could be used for assessments.