ELIXIR-CONVERGE D7.4 Report on operational processes across the federated EGA network and data transfer with the European COVID-19 platform

ELIXIR Converge WP7 was conceived as a mechanism to accelerate the creation of the Federated version of the European Genome-phenome Archive (FEGA) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this effort, a Node maturity model has been designed, deployed and tested across the Nodes of the federation. The Node maturity model aims to become a self-guided tool covering most of the relevant aspects to be taken into account when deploying and operating a federated EGA Node. As part of a concerted effort to manage and share COVID-19 host genomics data, this deliverable illustrates the connection of the development of the federated EGA and its alignment with the national and regional plans for data-sharing initiatives.

Since ELIXIR Converge WP7 started, the work of WP has been focused on understanding the needs for a structured model to facilitate the engagement of the new Nodes to the Federated EGA Network. For this reason, several resources have been created to help new Nodes to start the work.

The main activities described in this deliverable are related to the FEGA Maturity Model and operational documentation for FEGA Nodes, including the main resources that can be consulted to facilitate the operation of a FEGA Node. To centralise all these resources, the Federated EGA Knowledge Base was assembled following the Maturity Model structure with the information on how to join the Federated EGA Network based on the knowledge and experiences of current Nodes and their use cases. Indeed, the FEGA Maturity Model and FEGA Knowledge Base provide information across the relevant domains: Governance, Strategy & Sustainability, Legal, Data & Metadata management, Technical Infrastructure, Operations support and Communications, Community Building, and Engagement. Each of these domains emphasise important aspects to consider when establishing a FEGA Node.

The ultimate goal of this deliverable is to provide future and existing FEGA Nodes with resources on how to follow best practices when implementing the Node. In the same way, it intends to agree on some guidelines to standardise the processes among FEGA Nodes as much as possible and, thus, facilitate the transit among them as well as the transit between the central Node of EGA and the FEGA Nodes. Importantly, these outcomes are instrumental to the European Genomics Data Infrastructure (GDI) as FEGA Nodes are a core component of this project. Indeed, the Federated EGA Maturity Model and Knowledge Bare will serve as important elements for having 15+ operational national GDI nodes by 2026.