EarthCube - Results of Test Governance in Geoscience Cyberinfrastructure

In September 2016, the EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance Project completed its three-year long process to engage the community and test a demonstration governing organization with the goal of facilitating a community-led process on designing and developing a geoscience cyberinfrastructure to transform geoscience research. The EarthCube initiative is making an important transition from creating a coherent community towards adoption and implemention of technologies that can serve scientists working in and across many domains. The emerging concept of a "system of systems" approach to cyberinfrastructure architecture is a critical concept in the EarthCube program, but has not been fully defined. Recommendations from an NSF-appointed Advisory Committee include: a. developing a succinct definition of EarthCube; b. changing the community-elected governance approach towards structured rather than consensus-driven decision-making; c. restructuring the process to articulate program solicitations; and d. producing an effective implementation roadmap. These are seen as prerequisites to adoption of best practices, system concepts, and evolving to a production track. The EarthCube governing body is preparing responses to the Advisory Committee findings and recommendations with a target delivery date of late 2016 but broader involvement may be warranted. We conclude that there is ample justification to continue evolving to a governance framework that facilitates convergence on a system architecture that guides EarthCube activities and plays an influential role in making operational the EarthCube vision of cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences. There is widespread community expectation for support of a multiyear EarthCube governing effort to put into practice the science, technical, and organizational plans that are continuing to emerge. However, the active participants in EarthCube represent a small sub-set of the larger population of geoscientists.