Building Data Stewardship Capacity in the Netherlands - A community effort driven by Health-RI and DTL

This poster was presented at the Health-RI conference, March 4, 2021

Building Data Stewardship Capacity in the Netherlands
A community effort driven by Health-RI and DTL
 

Celia van Gelder and Mijke Jetten, DTL

Data stewardship and data management skills are essential in research. The lack of consensus on the responsibilities, knowledge, skills, and value of data stewards leads to confusion about the role and hampers building adequate data steward capacity. By bundling expertise and manpower of their partners, and with support of the research funders, Health-RI and DTL are making a significant step in tackling the FAIR data handling challenges the sector faces. These joint capacity building efforts will help build a skilled workforce that is ready for professional data handling. 

The various activities that are ongoing in the Dutch community are:
 

1. Establishing a data stewardship competency framework and corresponding job profiles This work has been undertaken in the ZonMw/ELIXIR project “Towards FAIR data steward as profession for the lifesciences”(2019), was  taken further in the NPOS project “Professionalising data stewardship in the Netherlands. Competences, training and education. Dutch roadmap towards national implementation of FAIR data stewardship” (2021) that delivered recommendations for the major stakeholders (funders, policy makers, research performing organisations (RPO) and higher education institutes (HEI))
    

2. Developing and delivering data stewardship training for various audiences
   DTL, Health-RI and their collaborators have been building up data stewardship related training, examples of which are Helis Academy courses, ZonMw webinars and workshops
    

3. Bringing together the data stewards community
   DTL, Health-RI and their collaborators have been facilitating various data communities, for example the DTL-DSIG and the Health-RI DSC. These communities exchange experiences and best practices, and jointly tackle various data challenges
    

4. Establishing strategic training collaborations with other national and international organisations and projects,a.o. NPOS, BioSB, LCRDM, ELIXIR, EOSC-Life, BBMRI, Helis Academy

We will present these activities and invite other organisations and projects to join us in these collaborative efforts.