XAB 2017 Oct Webinar

Welcome

• Suggestion to switch to Zoom rather than S4B
• Thank you for joining

Update from John

• Debrief of Cyberinfrastructure for NSF Large Facilities Workshop
  • CI Providers + Large Facilities
  • How to operationalize through leveraging gains
  • Ongoing discusion
  • Potential to improve ROI
  • XSEDE, Open Science Grid, regional service providers such as iRODS RENCI
  • For example, multiple solutions for SSO
  • Workforce development
• Preliminary discussion with IRIS (Univ. Mich.) on ROI and impact measures 
  • Collaboration among BTAA institutions to formulate measures on ROI
  • Focus on economic impact and other forms of impact
  • Applying their work to XSEDE so that we can articulate value
  • Will collect data but have data already on many XSEDE institutions
  • Incentive for institutions to become a member of IRIS to
  • Karin - getting internal perspectives from University of Michigan ACTION
• XSEDE is offering collaboration opportunities for solicitation: Towards a Leadership Class Computing Facility
  • Change in XSEDE to cooperate with LCCF activities; any work would be parallel/separate activities but allow investments that NSF has made
  • Working on competing proposals; NSF does not see COI and suggestion to talk to Sponsored Projects Office
  • Cliff - would it be appropriate to write a letter to the Program Officer outlining the pros and cons to make aware, from XAB
  • John - will talk with cognizant program officer and get back to XAB ACTION

Evaluation Updates

• Staff Climate Survey
  • Inward looking annual online survey of all staff and leadership that began in 2013, just completed 5th survey. Click title to view slides
  • XSEDE the first virtual institute to be studied
  • XSEDE finds the data valuable
  • Cliff - how the virtual organization stacks up against the traditional organization
    • Have standard set of questions asked of all institutes
    • Most employees are part-time, so XSEDE is only a part of what they do; getting people to think about XSEDE as an organization
    • Comprarable to the best and significantly higher than other virtual organizations. In particular: communications, leadership, and inclusion
    • The success of organzations when they are well-managed
    • John, the L2 Directors, and the L3 Managers do an incredible job of leading XSEDE
    • Detailed data is available to a level that protects anonimity
    • Focus groups look at the extreme responder
• User Survey
  • Outward looking at those who use XSEDE services began during TerraGrid, now administered by Evaluation team. Click title to view slides
  • Slide 17 important points. Cliff - NSF needs to be reminded that they wanted to bring order to a chaotic system and this slide shows XSEDE is doing that RECOMMENDATION
  • Emre - 32% have used XSEDE for less than 1 year; correlation to users over time. Graduate students + postdocs. Feedback from UAC in November–we could schedule a meeting or survey via mail list, work with Julie
    • Dave Hart - 30-39% awarded for new users at XRAC level
  • UAC should get representation from new users ACTION
• Metrics review
  • John - thank you for the team who has been working this as part of the Performance Management Plan. Will set us on a course for good use of our metrics going forward. This is critical for us to define these well and how we are using them for decisions and guiding project
  • Cliff - KPIs mapped to criteria on surveys. KPIs should be how happy it makes its users. KPIs are focusing on the internal management rather than the output RECOMMENDATION
    • Trying to do what you are suggesting
  • Cliff - metrics are about what you are trying to achieve
  • Karin - having the culture to do this and making this a value for XSEDE
  • Phil - could we imitate process? ACTION Ron send rubric
    • We will also write this in an article
  • Shaowen - impressed by assessment. Appreicate how hard it is to run a project of this scale and the users involved. Pleasantly surprised at the rigidness of assembling the dimensions. Congratulations. Positive outcome.

PY8 Planning: CEE

• Impact in CEE
• Publications initiative
• Scaling out such as campus Engagement
• Demostrate all points in the process
• Cliff - familiar SOARS program, you've described a portfolio of activities. Be careful to separate output to outcomes to organize how you present the multiple activities RECOMMENDATION
  • Define what the definitions are in the context of XSEDE RECOMMENDATION
• Reduce ESSGW
• Build support for Cloud-related technologies

PY8 Planning: ECSS

• Click on Title to see slides
• Cliff - transparency into issues to solve, to see if someone else has worked toward a solution already RECOMMENDATION
  • Nancy - what form does that take, etc?
  • Sergiu - PEARC or other meetings
• Cliff - optimizing technology beyond observations RECOMMENDATION
• Cliff - emphasize the point: looking over the horizon at major challenges in order to guide the community for emerging technologies that enable research RECOMMENDATION
• Cliff - reproducable research tools or tutorials RECOMMENDATION
• Karin - younger scientific research workforce preparing for this ahead of time RECOMMENDATION
• Karin - building champions community with pressure from NSF, are they not hearing you?

PY8 Planning: Ops

• Karin - timeline for Cloud services?
  • Jetstream; Comet and Bridges with virtualization and failover for years

PY8 Planning: RAS

• On track with long-term plan from proposal
  

PY8 Planning: PgO

• No guidance on transition plan: PY8 high-level; PY10 detailed
• Cliff - all presentations are positive, evaluation and metrics–we have achieved much well. Outline a plan how to transition each plan. Frame with positive achievements. A lot would have to be reproduced to keep the outcome the same. Community will want a seamless transition rather than starting from scratch. RECOMMENDATION
• Cliff - meeting or exceeding community's expectations. Shouldn't expect a radical change in services that we have improved over a decade. What the community expects and what XSEDE has provided RECOMMENDATION
  

Overall thoughts from XAB

• Phil - XSEDE user news email was confusing
  • John - 3rd item in John's update
• Karin - thank you everyone for your input and expertise