FDO-TSIG I (Closed)

Technical Specification & Implementation Group

The role of the TSIG in the FAIR Digital Object Forum is to refine down into implementable specifics the broad conceptual goals that result from combining the data management principles of the FAIR Guidelines[1] with the architectural principles of the Digital Object Architecture[2]. Both emphasize machine actionability and data interoperability, but neither of them, appropriately, define implementation specifics or strategies. The TSIG will define the minimum level of agreement required among data publishers, tool developers, and e-infrastructure providers to achieve the machine friendly, accessible, and interoperable data plane that both science and commerce require to capture the potential benefits inherent in the vast amounts of data, computing power, and network capacity now available to us.

The work will build on the FAIR Digital Object Framework (FDOF) agreement that came out of the 2019 Paris meeting[3]. This agreement states a number of generic guidelines focused on trustworthiness, FAIR-ness, machine actionability, abstraction, encapsulation, independence from specific implementations, and agreement on standards. It then states a set of high-level technical requirements for instantiating a FAIR Digital Object Framework, focusing on PIDs, a protocol for interacting with digital objects, connections between digital object types and operations, and semantic assertions on the objects, their attributes, and their connections.

Topics to be addressed in extending this agreement into an operational framework include:

• Definition of the key functions for which the components of the framework are responsible. Key among these are identifier resolution, protocol interaction with digital objects, object typing, and machine actionable semantic descriptions and annotations.
• Definition of the minimal set of components required for participation in the FAIR Digital Object environment and identification of reference implementations of those components.
• Definition of FDO compliance. This could include both technical aspects, e.g., protocol compliance and use of qualified references, as well as social aspects, e.g., persistence guarantees.
• Validation methods, automated when possible, to establish such compliance.
• Reverse proxies and other middleware and mapping technologies to connect existing infrastructures and lower the barriers to participation in an FDO environment.
• Encouraging and helping to guide the infrastructure services that will be needed to support FDO applications.

FDO-TSIG will work closely with related groups within the FDO Forum addressing existing e-infrastructures, semantic technologies, and governance and will also work with the Research Data Alliance Data Fabric Interest Group (RDA DFIG) to publicise FDO-TSIG efforts and to collect feedback.

The current co-chairs of FDO-TSIG are Larry Lannom, Claus Weiland, Peter Wittenburg and Ivonne Anders. For requests/comments send an email to llannom@cnri.reston.va.us

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618

[2] https://www.dona.net/digitalobjectarchitecture

[3] https://github.com/GEDE-RDA-Europe/GEDE/tree/master/FAIR%20Digital%20Objects