INGA: Yeah. Okay. And have you started to collect data or generate data? Yeah. So what 
kind of data are you collecting? 

HÅKON: I'm doing interviews and observations. So I am now in [country]. I've been for more 
than a month. And I email people and try to have answers. I go to events and try to talk to 
people. So it's kind of a long and boring process. It's not very rewarding. I talk to people that 
I know, people that I meet. I sneak into conferences. I go to cultural events and the like. 

INGA: And are you... you're not done collecting data? Are you collecting more or? 

HÅKON: I mean, it's just a month. So yeah.  

INGA: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. So what comes to mind to you when you hear the term data 
management plan or DMP? 

HÅKON: Boring. That's what gets to my mind. I don't know, it's not… I don't feel like when I 
studied, when I was an actual student, it was so important. It was more about like ethics 
and like protecting your sources and stuff like that. And when I started working with a 
[consultant] before, we had a lot of training about like data protection and stuff like that. So 
I don't know if there's a difference. 

There's probably a difference between the before and after GDPR because I remember that 
when I was a civil servant, we had to change the way we were handling personal data. And 
we had more stricter procedures and everything. But I don't know. Nobody asked me to fill 
a data management plan when I was a master's student 10 years ago.  

INGA: If you were to define a data management plan, what do you think it means? Like how 
would you define it to someone else? 

HÅKON: Well, I only know the ones I've been working with, which is like it's a plan where 
you explain how you're going to store data, how you're going to collect the data, and what 
kind of protection and security you're supposed to adhere by. I know that, because I'm 
working both within a larger project that has a lot of different researchers, and my own 
research project is a PhD, and I know that none of them have read the data management 
plan, which is... which is like a decent data management plan for the largest project. I 
mean, I only did mine on the SIKT website. I mean, yeah, it's boring to fill in, but it's like one 
day of thinking about it and then you kind of file it in. It kind of... I don't know. I have mixed 
feelings about the data management plan that we are forced to, like submit to Sikt. One is 
that, as always in Norway, it feels like if you don't ask any question, it's less trouble than if 
you actually want to do things by the book. Because when you follow all of the rules, it's 
very annoying and you only lose time. But I find that the interface is not too burdensome to 
fill out. My thing is that it's not super clear. And what ended up happening in my case is that 
I had days of back and forth with a counselor who basically just like rewrote like a quarter of 
the data management plan for me. Asking questions like, oh, you put in the data 
management plan that you want to store your data at Sikt when it's done. And I was like, 
yeah, I read that on your website. I said, ah, we don't do that anymore, which is another 
great Norwegian thing, which is like the English-speaking websites that will not update the 
time management plan. It wasn't possible anymore. So when people ask you about that, 
you're just like, I don't know, what do you want me to write? And then they basically choose 
for you what you're supposed to put in the data management plan. It feels more like a 
hindrance than anything else. It kind of makes you think about some dimensions of security 
that you might have forgotten about, but that's about it. So yeah, the good thing is all of the 
bureaucratic things don't really seem engaging or interesting, and I know a lot of 
researchers will do it just to get rid of it. But on the other side of the coin is that it kind of 
forces you to ask questions about what you're going to do with the data you're collecting 
and how you're going to handle it. 

INGA: Yeah. So what do you know about any requirements that you have to write a data 
management plan? 

HÅKON: I just followed the form personally. I know there's like other ways of doing it, but 
giving you a form, so I just followed the form. 

 

INGA: Do you remember who told you about data management plans? Was it a supervisor 
or someone at Sikt?  

HÅKON: I don't know. It feels like something most big research projects have. So, I mean, it 
was part of the... There was a concept that we had, like, there's a thing that we called the 
data management plan. It was mostly like a concept, a proof of concept. Anything else? It 
didn't have like actual very defined procedures with like little... Anyway, what we did with 
the concepts when we turned it into like a big document about how we were supposed to 
like proceed with all the data we collected. To me, that looked more like a data 
management plan. So I feel like in my case, personally, there's a confusion as to which one 
is supposed to be a data management plan and which one is supposed not to be. Because 
there's the thing in theory that you do, and then there's a series of procedures that you give 
to your researchers. I don't know which one is supposed to be the data management plan. 
There's a bit of confusion. Yeah. 

INGA: Yeah, so I understand that. So before we carry on, I'd describe how NTNU defines it. 
And basically, so we know that we're talking about the same thing. So a DMP is a document 
that describes how data in a research project should be handled from start to finish and 
then throughout the entire process. and after the end of the project. So how you'll archive 
data, for example. And then a DMP describes what data is collected or generated, deals 
with how the data will be stored, described with metadata, analyzed, and possibly shared. 
And then it's not the same thing as the notification form that you send to SIKT, but it's its 
own document that you can update and change if you need to. So that sounds... 

HÅKON: That's another question. I'm talking about the fact that in my project, we had a 
data management plan, something that was called a data management plan. 

INGA: Yeah. 

HÅKON: And it was extremely vague. And I was like, oh, we could use this software or 
maybe this software. And it wasn't clear what people had to do. And the more practical 
version that we did with the data management data was one of the different projects we 
had to create like a more streamlined, and clear version of what you're supposed to do with 
the data. To me, that looked more like a data management like the concept. And I mean, 
you should put them together. In general, this is how we think it's going to be theoretically, 
and practically, this is how you're going to do it. The data management plan, the notification 
form, that's another question. I did both through SIKT. But yeah, I'm going to be honest with 
you, I barely remember what I did in the notification form. Because I did it earlier than the 
data management plan that I did before going into feedback. 

INGA: So you found it sort of like a, I don't… I guess, irritating exercise because you didn't 
really understand the... I don't know. It sounds like it was some amount of confusion in... 
what the point was and how 

HÅKON: exactly but also it's a form so you just click yeah put a thing and write little 
sentences and you're done with it and then you have to maybe like answer a few emails so 
it's annoying but you do it and then you forget about it yeah which is also kind of bad 
because I mean I don’t want to forget about a kind of procedure I should be going through 
uh which is you know systematically encrypting information, that kind of stuff, which to me 
is more practical and more useful to my kind of work.  

INGA: Yeah, so you haven't gone back and looked at what you wrote in the DMP and then 
thought, oh, I should update this? 

HÅKON: Before today, no. 

INGA: No. Okay. 

HÅKON: Really, it's a thing that you do, you type in what you have to type in uh and you go 
on with your day yeah don't try to lie or anything but now again it feels like if you are too 
thorough they're just going to ask you more questions and be annoyed about it. If you try to 
be a good citizen, say everything, and then try to be hyper-constructive and everything, it 
feels like, again, if you're doing an effort, you reward it with more burdensomeness. So you 
put as little information as possible, you take what you have to take, you choose the easiest 
answers you can choose, and that's it.  

INGA: Okay. 

HÅKON: especially if you're doing something that's a very qualitative kind of fieldwork. How 
can you think about what kind of license or anything you're using? You've never thought 
about that. My data is me scribbling in a notepad and having a few recordings on a recorder. 
then I'm going to raise to protect the identity of the people I've recorded. Yeah, don't think 
about all of these dimensions when I kind of think of the best way to do my field work. 

INGA: I understand. Yeah, so did you have people in the project with you that already knew 
how to write a data management plan or that already knew that was something that you 
should or had to do? 

HÅKON: Not really, no. We had someone who was like an ethics advisor, but she doesn't 
really know how you're supposed to write the data management plan for the Norwegian 
states. She's someone who's used to working within European projects. So, yeah, she 
could advise us on which is considered GDPR compliance. But I think it's not a data 
management plan for the Norwegian state. No, never done that kind of stuff. 

INGA: No. So, have you... Do you know anything about the resources that NTNU might have 
to help you with data management and writing in DMP? 

HÅKON: About the writing? No, not really. I know about the resources they have for data 
management, but not with the writing. I think they have a few advisors that you can email 
and... It's a big institution, so you don't know where they are. Again, you can't just go into 
someone's office and ask them a question. You have to go through an email, then you have 
to wait for them to, if they kind of desire, they answer. And my impression is that they were 
not that well prepared to... to answer our questions. They kind of had to learn a bit and 
update what they knew. And it's not like we sent them questions, then we had all of the 
answers back. It's more like we notified them and then we did some back and forth and 
then they kind of understood the thing with us and like clarified some stuff for us. Yeah. 

INGA: Do you remember?  

HÅKON: But it wasn't like, I'm sure they know because it was when the supervisor was 
more in touch with them. 

INGA: Yeah. Sorry. So it does feel like a lot of the PhDs don't really know about the 
resources. Do you have any thoughts on how, because the university library does have 
resources on how to help with data management and DMPs. Do you have any ideas on how 
the library could reach the PhDs more effectively with information like that? 

HÅKON: Talk to them. But like physically talk to them if I'm at work and then I receive like an 
email entirely Norwegian half of the time I'm just not going to read it personally because if 
people want to read to me they know they should not write to me in Norwegian they should 
like use another language or anything and because a lot of what's written in Norwegian is 
like management stuff or like I don't know unions you know not really seeing either I care 
about or I could have like a small impact, I’m abroad a lot of the time. So it's not like I 
engage with management in the department, you know?  

INGA: No. Do you think that you would, if you were to write a new data management plan at 
some point, would like to attend a course on how to write one to get sort of like an 
introduction to how to write a data management plan? 

HÅKON: Not really, because again, the Sikt form is extremely easy to go through. It's very 
clear, except for a few things that don't always make sense for people who are not privy to 
how data and stuff works. I mean, if you don't have to do health research and medical 
research, it's kind of not that difficult to do the data management plan through the SIKT 
website. If I had to do it without it, I think I would still take a look at the SIKT website to be 
sure that I have everything I need on my document. 

INGA: Yeah, okay. Do you think that there's any way that a data management plan or writing 
one could be a good useful exercise for you? 

 

HÅKON: not more than what I talked about, but the fact that it kind of forces you to think 
about a few details you may not have thought about. My problem is that, like, you do it 
before you go into field work, so... A lot of the times, you don't know anything about what 
you're going to do in field work, you know? You kind of... They ask you about the questions 
that you're going to ask people. I don't know what kind of question I'm going to ask people. 
I'm sitting with a lot of people and I'm asking them what they do in life and then trying to 
take the conversation where it's going. I don't have a list of questions I'm going to ask 
people. It's like the kind of methodology I'm using; it's an expert interview, so it's not like 
you sit with a bunch of random people and then ask them what they think about, I don't 
know, this thing, this thing, this thing. Talking to people like [specific groups of people]. And 
they talk and ask them questions and write down what interesting thoughts they have. So 
yeah, for example, they want you to send an interview stuff. So you just make a fake one 
and send it. Like some of the stuff that you may be asking, but… never used it, like I've 
never used any of this question on this form because it's kind of absurd. But yeah, the 
advisors, yeah, asked me questions about that fake interview form that I sent. It seems like 
you're going to ask [sensitive] questions that they say. And I mean, I'm doing a PhD in 
[about sensitive subject], so yeah.  

INGA: Yeah. Do you think that there's any way of making the DMP more sort of useful as an 
exercise? Do you like, you could change it somehow or change the process somehow? 

HÅKON: Honestly, I don't know, because again, I'm more interested in process. It's like the 
process of data management itself rather than thinking about archiving and the kind of 
license the data is under. So how do you collect the data? How do you encrypt it? How do 
you cross international borders with it? How do you store it without it being accessible by 
anyone? You know, bread and butter stuff. Within a project, it Again, we're in the middle of it 
and some colleagues have asked how they were supposed to treat interview data there, 
record it. They never read the data management plan that's online for everyone to access in 
the Teams that we use for the project. And some of these people could have their 
computers being accessed by the government because we're working with people from 
different countries, including somewhere that's a bit of repression towards the kind of 
people we're working with. So I don't know. Some of the questions kind of feel like it's led to 
my particular situation. I mean, it's a form that's supposed to be for everyone. So a lot of 
things about, again, medical data that I'm not supposed to look into.  

INGA: Yeah. Is there anything about the data management process that you find more 
valuable or interesting to think about?  

HÅKON: Yeah. The thing is, I don't feel like the data management or... data management 
plan or the different resources I've found on the university website and on the state website 
about the best way to secure data and everything. I still have a lot of questions that are not 
answered because it's not super clear. A lot of the time it's not super clear and you have 
information that's online that can be contradictory. So what you do is that you default to, 
okay, let's have the baseline higher level we can have for everything. And not go into the 
difference between personal data and sensitive data, for example. So I put all of my project 
on level three and I encrypt everything regardless of what's inside. Regardless of the 
consent of the people and telling them it's going to be anonymized so I don't have to think 
about it because it's... Like, not clear. But yeah, every data I get is anonymized, 
untraceable, and everything is encrypted and then will be deleted. So I don't have to think 
about, like, the different little nuances that you had. You're supposed to, like, understand 
between, like, the four levels of sensitivity and stuff like that. Sensitivity. 

INGA: Yeah. Yes. think that's we're nearing the end um are there any sorry restart site is 
there anything else about uh data management plans that I haven't asked you about that 
you have any thoughts about and would like to say anything about not really uh again I 
haven't thought  

HÅKON: about the data management plan and I'm checking when I filled it in uh I think in 
April yeah I haven't thought about it since yeah 

INGA: Do you think there's anything that would make rating a DMP server more relevant to 
you or attractive? Interesting? 

HÅKON: I don't know. I don't think it's supposed to be attractive or interesting. 

INGA: No. Okay. That's fair enough. Yeah. I'm going to stop the recording.