NFDI as a Learning System. Results and Lessons Learned from the Evaluation of Base4NFDI

Base4NFDI is a joint initiative of all consortia of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) to develop basic services that are potentially relevant to all consortia as well as the wider scientific community. Base4NFDI was launched in 2023 and is currently being funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for five years until 2028. Base4NFDI aims to provide a transparent and inclusive framework for proposing, developing, and implementing interoperable basic services that support a federated NFDI data infrastructure. The initiative emphasises community-driven co-design, ensuring broad, interdisciplinary participation across all NFDI consortia as well as long-term integration within both the NFDI and international initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Given the complexity of the project, but also the novelty of the framework, Base4NFDI has committed in its project proposal to an external evaluation of its decision-making and working processes after two years. The evaluation aimed to assess the progress and outcomes of the initiative to date, identify areas for improvement and ensure that the infrastructure continues to support the research community effectively. Three aspects were explored: the efficiency of the project structure and internal organisation; the relevance and coherence of the process for developing a Basic Service; and the relevance of the project for the community.
After a public tender procedure, the Technopolis Group has been commissioned to carry out the evaluation of Base4NFDI in the period from December 2024 to August 2025. 

This presentation was held at the 2nd Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) in Aachen by Jan Biela, Dminik Obeth and Franziska Fritzsche.