2023-07-18 ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

Owned by Lavanya Podila
Last updated: Jul 19, 2023
5 min read

Attendees:

  • RAMPS: Stephen Deems (v), Dave Hart

  • MATCH: Shelley Knuth (v), Alana Romanella

  • CONECT: Tim Boerner (v), Leslie Froeschl

  • MMS: Tom Furlani (v), Joe White

  • OpenCI: John Towns (v), Shawn Strande, Lavanya Podila, Lisa Kaczmarczyk

  • NSF: Tom Gulbransen, Sharon Geva

  • Guest Speaker: Lee Liming, Laura Herriott

(v) indicates a voting member

Agenda/Notes

  1. Storage Futures Working Group Updates @Ronald Lee Liming (15 mins)

    1. WG shared drive, WG meeting notes, WG charter

    2. WG decided no additional storage-related integration roadmaps are needed at this time. The current roadmap is fine (with a few tweaks) for all currently anticipated storage resources.

    3. OSN worked with Allocations to fix its units, which were different from other storage resources.

    4. Currently working on some updates/tweaks to the existing storage resource integration roadmap to give more explicit guidance, improve communication about important resource features.

      1. Important things to include in storage resource descriptions: intended uses, backup policies, additional allocation requirements (if any).

      2. Guidance regarding allocation units (informing about current norms)

      3. Change Globus endpoint from required to optional

    5. WG should be finished by mid-August, though wouldn’t be surprising if PEARC slows us down.

    6. Q: Given the information above, does an update to the Researcher Advisory Committee seem called for?

  2. Present, receive feedback, and seek approval @Laura Herriott (10 mins)

    1. Researcher Advisory Committee Charter

    2. In June of last year, Julie Ma, Tom Furlani, and Laura Herriot worked with Emre Brookes, Chair of the XSEDE User Advisory Committee to begin early stages of establishing a similar ACCESS group. 

    3. Emre sent an email on behalf of ACCESS to invite participation

    4. While we waited for the establishment of the ACCESS External Advisory Board charter and membership, Emre and Laura drafted a charter

    5. The initial invitees included researchers from the External Advisory Board (EAB) nominees who were not selected, the previous XSEDE UAC members, and two researcher volunteers who self-identified 

    6. The first ACCESS Researcher Advisory Committee meeting was held as an “administrative meeting” in February 2023

    7. 15 out of 58 researchers who were invited gathered to consider the draft charter and share feedback about the ACCESS program to date

    8. During the meeting, two members volunteered to alternate as a representative of the Researcher Advisory Committee at the EAB

    9. After the meeting, Emre, myself, and other ACCESS representatives followed up via email with the initial invite list to seek confirmation of participation

    10. Through that process, we ended up with a committee that was 95% male, 80% R1, 100% white or Asian

    11. In hopes of creating a committee that is more representative of the researcher demographics who use ACCESS resources, I worked with the Allocations DEI facilitator to inclusively and fairly invite researchers who self-reported demographic data within their ACCESS profile to enrich the composition of the committee

    12. We added additional volunteers and gained representation from female or non-binary, non-R1, and more racially diverse researchers (the committee is now 89% male, 77% R1, 74% white or Asian)

    13. We now have a final roster and final charter with feedback addressed from the community

    14. Special thanks to the ACO who has offered to create an email distribution list and schedule the next meeting in the Fall and subsequent meetings each semester

    Next steps:

    1. ACCESS wiki page: ACCESS Researcher Advisory Committee

    2. Once the committee is formally charged, and the next meeting is schedule, we would invite agenda topics from the EAB, EC, and the Researcher Advisory Committee

    3. We would like to recommend that a champion or representative to present and take feedback or recommendations back for consideration

    4. After each meeting, we will add Researcher Advisory Committee feedback to the EAB spreadsheet for tracking

    Today, I am seeking final approval of the roster and charter, so that we could formally charge the committee and begin preparations for the Fall meeting. Any objections or feedback?

    Decisions - Charter and roster approved; Shawn Strande to work with Laura for next steps such as to charge the committee, create email distribution list, and initiate planning of Fall 2023 meeting

     

  3. Revised Working Group and Standing Committee document @Shawn Strande (5 mins)

    1. ACCESS Working Groups.docx

  4. Approval of summaries from prior EC meetings @John Towns (5 mins)

    1. 11 July 2023 EC Summary (approved)

  5. Program Milestone Check @John Towns (10 mins)

    1. Action item for the awardees to update their program milestones

    2. Reminder:Do not edit "Dashboard" tab, please edit "ACCESS program milestones" tab as needed

  6. ACCESS Colocated Event at PEARC (10 mins)

    1. 2023-07-27 ACCESS Colocated Event @PEARC 23

    2. Agenda Finalized and sent to all attendees

 

  1. A Tale of Two Documents @John Towns (5 mins)

    1. Program Wide Goals Development

    2. ACCESS Program Wide Responses to CPOs Observations

  2. XSEDE/ACCESS Oversubscription Data

    1. Spreadsheet

      1. While Delta started accepting requests for allocations in March 2021, they then started to pull back in June and August due to hardware delays. Anvil also came online during this time and was requested at a low amount.

      2. Stampede2 accounted for a big dip in availability in Q4 2022. They recently started re-allocating the machine but at half the capacity.

      3. COVID is still causing a lot of delays and corresponding extension requests.

        1. Maximize ACCESS Extension Requests

          1. Q4 2022: 111

          2. Q1 2023: 105

      4. Things to explore:

        1. New resources coming online have a "marketing" problem in the sense that the community needs to know more about them, and that they have a LOT of capacity to initially fill.

          1. How can ACCESS + RPs help here?

        2. The review panel is continually hidden from the true amount of supply available, but over time they've been biased in the sense they know the resources are precious and finite. On top of that, they may be stuck in the XSEDE pattern of "if there's no scaling data provided on the resources being requested then it's subject for rejection/decline".

          1. When reality is that a new resource entered the ecosystem that many investigators wouldn't have had a chance to utilize, let alone test their codes on yet.

          2. Allocations just finished a new reviewer guide that will hopefully start a migration in this line of thinking.

        3. Currently, the allocation policies don't have explicit accommodations for "what do we do when there's a lot of resources left on the table?" and it's something we'll have to start exploring given the trends of the data

          1. How can ACCESS + RPs + Advisory Bodies help here?

  3. Informational Items (10 mins)

    1. RAMPS @Stephen Deems

    2. MATCH @Shelley Knuth

      1. We would like to get an up to date list of the software that each of the RPs are running. Can Operations assist with getting this list? Otherwise we would need to do a workaround.

        1. Operations has provided response to this and will continue to engage with Support as this solution evolves: Operations just released to RPs the ACCESS version of a tool they can use to publish software module information to the ACCESS Operations Information Sharing Platform. Over the next few weeks Operations will introduce an API making the software information available to ACCESS projects and developers. Soon after that we will introduce an interface similar to https://software.xsede.org/ for discovering available software.

    3. CONECT @Tim Boerner

      1.  

    4. MMS @Tom Furlani

      1.  

    5. OpenCI @John Towns

      1. As noted in email earlier today, Lizanne DeStfano will be stepping down from her role in the ACO effective August 1

      2. As noted in email eralier today, Shannon Bradley will be filling Ron’s former role on an interim basis.

Misc Topics

Reference: EC Backlog & Action Items

Risk Register: https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/RR/board

Project Change Request: https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/PCR/board

Next EC Meeting: 1st August 2023