UK TRE Community meeting - December 2023#

Date:

Tuesday 5th December 2023 13:30-17:00

Slides:

https://zenodo.org/records/10370931

Recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbxLZudqjOA

Background#

​The UK TRE Community is a community of over 200 people that has grown organically over the last year for anyone interested in TREs, including researchers, operators, information governors, managers and more, from all sectors and disciplines.

​The core aims of fostering collaboration and sharing of innovative ideas to support the delivery of groundbreaking research with sensitive data have resonated across the UK and beyond.

​The community has a website, an active mailing list and Slack channel, and runs quarterly events like this for the community to come together, discuss ideas and problems within the TRE space and work collaboratively together on possible solutions and ways forward!

Agenda#

Time

Agenda Item

13:30 - 13:45

Welcome and intro

13:45 - 14:30

Keynote + discussion

14:30 - 14:45

Community updates

14:45 - 14:55

Break

14:55 - 15:00

Intro to breakout session 1

15:00 - 15:45

Breakout session 1 (see below)

15:45 - 15:55

Break

15:55 - 16:00

Intro to breakout session 2

16:00 - 16:45

Breakout session 2 (see below)

16:45 - 17:00

Wrap up

Keynote#

A talk by the Community Management Working Group on the latest developments, funding and plans for the community.

Summary#

The talk discussed why the UK TRE Community exists, and the plans for the community for the next 4 months.

The community considers itself to be a connecting force in the already very active and energetic UK TRE space, helping projects and teams in bringing their work to the wider community, achieving consensus and moving towards a shared approach to TRE provision across the UK’s 4 nations.

The community shared an initial vision and mission for the community:

Vision

To have a four nations, coordinated, collaborative approach to research infrastructure for working with sensitive data

Mission

To provide the space to signpost, share knowledge and facilitate conversations across the UK TRE landscape

The talk then went into detail on the proposed work for the next 4 months. This was based on the proposal submitted for the DARE UK Community groups funding. More detail can be found in the full proposal

Community updates#

A chance for anyone in the community to share quick updates with everyone on the call.

SDEs, TREs etc - terminology and definitions working group introduction#

Pete Barnsley & Madalyn Hardaker

Contact: Madalyn Hardaker

Pete advertised a new working group to be formed called SDEs, TREs etc - terminology and definitions: A clear lexicon for the community's architecture.

There will two open sessions in January:

  • Tuesday 9th January 2pm-3pm

  • Wednesday 17th January 3pm-4pm

To cover topics like:

  • Expectations

  • Ideas and scope

  • Plan for completing output

  • Liasing with other related working groups

Plan is to present at the March meeting, and have a first outcome by Spring.

The citizen and their increased / retained agency working group introduction#

Pete Barnsley

Pete advertised a new working group to be formed called The citizen and their increased / retained agency.

There will two open sessions in January:

  • Tuesday 9th January 11am-12pm

  • Wednesday 17th January 10am-11am

To cover topics like:

  • Expectations

  • Ideas and scope

  • Plan for completing output

  • Liasing with other related working groups

Plan is to present at the March meeting, and have a first outcome of a whitepaper.

An architecture for extending the domain of control - custody of data working group introduction#

Pete Barnsley

Pete advertised a new working group to be formed called An architecture for extending the domain of control - custody of data.

There will two open sessions in January:

  • Wednesday 10th January 10am-11am

  • Tuesday 16th January 2pm-3pm

To cover topics like:

  • Expectations

  • Ideas and scope

  • Plan for completing output

  • Liasing with other related working groups

Plan is to present at the March meeting, and have a first outcome of a whitepaper.

Researcher passports#

Emily Jefferson

Contact: Loki Sinclair and Fergus McDonald

There may be funding from UKRI for researcher passports.

The team would like to work with teams to see what would be helpful in this area.

AWS Research Engineering Studio#

Simon Li

Contact: Simon Li

AWS are revamping their TRE offerings. They have a new open-source product “Research Engineering Studio” which replaces awslabs/service-workbench-on-aws

More info can be found here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/res/latest/ug/overview.html and here: aws/res

HIC are test-driving it, and are keen to share notes and ideas with anyone else looking or planning to try it.

Get in touch with Simon if you are interested and he’ll set up a meeting for January!

Community of Interest on semi-automated evaluation#

Jim Smith

Jim advertised the breakout session happening on the DARE UK Community of Interest on semi-automated evaluation.

Breakout sessions#

Breakout rooms were a mixture of workshops (more structured sessions designed around a particular problem area, focused on moving towards an output) and discussions (less structured sessions to explore general areas of interest within the UK TRE space), as well as open rooms to have general discussions.

There were two sessions on the day of 45 minutes each.

Summaries and notes are available on the links below.

Session 1#

Session 2#