Finding the thin ice before you fall through: identifying the critical software you rely on

Do you know what software you use? Do you know what software you rely on? Do you know what you would do if you couldn’t use it any more?

Research Software Engineers and digital Research Technical Professionals rely on software everyday. That software relies on other software, creating complicated layers of dependencies. But what software is truly critical to your work, either because it can’t be replaced or because the cost of failure is too great? The Institute for Research Software (previously the Software Sustainability Institute) has been developing resources and recommendations to help identify the risks to critical software underpinning UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure, along with recommendations for how to reduce and mitigate the risks to research operations.

In this workshop, participants will be provided with materials and guidance to help them identify the software they depend on, how they fit together, and understand how to assess the different risks to their use. They will hear examples of critical software in different fields and the way that risks have been mitigated, before sharing their own examples. They will brainstorm and agree on the risks they find hardest to communicate, and discuss ways of sharing them through different mechanisms.

Participants will leave with both a better individual understanding of the software they rely on, as well as collective strategies to help mitigate risks to its availability.

Also included with this presentation are two files relating to the critical software assessment exercise:

• Pilot Risk Assessment Guidance.pdf - these are the instructions for how to undertake an assessment
• Pilot Rise Assessment Spreadsheet.xlsx - this is the assessment worksheet used to record the results of the assessment