CESSDA's successful launch we had to achieve full European coverage, and strength and sustainability for the widened network.
European coverage:
In each country the barriers to, and the potential value and benefits from, membership were examined, and existing relevant infrastructure mapped. Coordination, networking activities, and stakeholder forums designed to address the specific barriers, were delivered. In particular, relationships between national ministries, Research Councils, and the social science research community was built. This ensured the national and European economic and social benefits and the positive returns on investment that are achieved through membership of CESSDA ,were made apparent to the relevant national decision-makers.
Strength and sustainability:
The widened membership formed a strong and sustained network, where global best practice is built in to the infrastructure of European social science and research. Membership of CESSDA should mean membership of a world class support infrastructure. The visibility of this research infrastructure and its importance to excellent evidence in policy making is enhanced. Existing national infrastructures will be supported in their transition into a holistic service, capable of access services for all.
The principal objective of the project was to develop the maturity of every national data archive service in Europe in a coherent and deliberate way towards the vision of a comprehensive, distributed and integrated social science data research infrastructure, facilitating access to social science data resources for researchers regardless of the location of either researcher or data. The state of play in each of the non-Member countries was explored. In order to be effective in supporting countries with immature and fragile national infrastructures, the CESSDA members themselves strengthen through this project, and developed to an expert practitioner level. The data sciences are undergoing rapid change, due to new data sources, new technologies, new standards, and changes in user expectations. Solutions to the challenges arising from change were proposed, ad compared with practices in equivalent infrastructures in other parts of the world (ICPSR).
A developmental model to use as a heuristic device to better understand the current state of play in national social science data archive services was prepared; packages of development support (including cost/benefit analysis, methodological knowledge, knowledge transfer on technical issues, and practitioner training), were developed and optimised to further the development of national infrastructures; further strengthening of the CESSDA membership was done to ensure it is capable of providing support to others.
