Social Data Services - Challenges Ahead: Working on Sustainability, Impact, Capacity Building and Compliance [CESSDA Widening Event 2019]

The consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, CESSDA ERIC, through funding a dedicated project on Widening and Strengthening of the consortium, organised a workshop on 5-6 November 2019 in Skopje, North Macedonia. This event is part of continuous efforts by CESSDA ERIC to strengthen and widen the social data research infrastructure community across Europe and beyond. It was organised within the CESSDA ERIC Work Plan Task on Widening Activities 2019. 

More information is available at the event website: https://www.cessda.eu/skopje2019/.

Event title: Social Data Services - Challenges Ahead: Working on Sustainability, Impact, Capacity Building and Compliance

Date: 5th - 6th November 2019

Place: Skopje, North Macedonia

Over the past four years, efforts have been made on widening: to expand the participation in CESSDA and to establish the conditions for a network of national social science data services in Europe.

The event in 2019 focused on challenges CESSDA faces to improve its research infrastructure:

1. Challenges connected to sustainability, impact and ongoing monitoring of Research Infrastructures in the European Union, and integration with the European Open Science Cloud.
2. Challenges connected to developments at national data services in terms of funding and building capacities internally and complying with CESSDA requirements externally.
3. Challenges connected to widening of CESSDA in terms of support and collaboration with partner countries and new member countries.  

There were 37 participants from 16 countries including 10 target non-member countries and 6 CESSDA member countries. Participants were representatives from ministries, research councils and service providers from recent and potential partner countries.
The event was hosted by The Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, and the following CESSDA Service Providers were organising the content and the meeting:

Tárki Data Archive (TÁRKI)
Czech Social Science Data Archive (CSDA)
Social Science Data Archives (ADP)
Swedish National Data Service (SND)
Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)

More information on the CESSDA Widening events can be found here: https://www.cessda.eu/Tools-Services/For-Members/Widening-workshops.