PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The National Science Foundation’s ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support) program builds upon decades of investment in cyberinfrastructure and expands the ecosystem with capabilities for new modes of research while further democratizing participation. Five teams are currently funded, with one expected to be awarded in the first calendar quarter of 2024:

• Allocations – provides U.S.-based researchers and educators access to cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources made possible by NSF for a wide array of computational and data-intensive related work. Multiple points of entry allow novice researchers easy access to systems as well as provide an opportunity for more experienced investigators to request the amount of resources required for their research needs. 

• Support – provides a suite of self-service tools to serve an ever-increasing diverse research and education community to encourage broad participation. The team provides a tiered model for support to ease entry for researchers, leverage crowd-sources resources and training and provide rich networking opportunities through the CCEP and MatchPlus/Premier programs.  

• Operations – enables ACCESS resource providers (RPs), ACCESS projects and developers to seamlessly integrate and operate infrastructure into an expansive ecosystem. They provide cybersecurity, networking and data transfer capabilities, as well as operational support to the ACCESS project, RPs and community services. Student training and engagement programs provide an inclusive environment for undergraduates or early-career graduate students to explore careers in cyberinfrastructure. 

• Metrics – illuminates monitoring and measurement of the cyberinfrastructure resources available within the ecosystem. Their product, XDMoD, with its data analytics framework, makes these metrics readily available. Data such as allocations information, compute usage, and job efficiency analytics provide diverse stakeholders with insight at the national, campus, lab, classroom or individual application level. Most importantly, it provides researchers with the tools to maximize the utilization of their allocation to best enable their research. 

• ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO) – provides coordination, support services and staffing for top-level coordination and communications guidance and execution among the ACCESS awardees and the public. Inter-awardee governance, coordination of an external advisory board to the ACCESS awardees, maintenance of the top-level ACCESS website, and coordinated community-building activities are among the team’s top priorities.

• Cyberinfrastructure Technology Acceleration Pathway (service name tbd)  – CITAP (Award anticipated in 2024) is focused on the translation of innovative research CI software such as system software, libraries, application codes and software-enabling data services. 

ACCESS is an ecosystem that relies on contributions from a wide range of vital processes and components to serve diverse teams working on complex research and education challenges and to ultimately democratize access to CI resources, services and expertise. This ecosystem is ever-evolving and transforming with new initiatives and groups participating. 

CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

May 1, 2024 –  April 30, 2025

REVISION CADENCE

This plan is reviewed on a quarterly basis by the working group leads and with additional input from awardees, working groups and the ACCESS Executive Council (EC). 

ORGANIZATIONAL
GOALS & OBJECTIVES 

The ACCESS Program-wide Goals serve as guiding principles to the communications messaging:

• Drive innovation in ACCESS to enhance research productivity and to enable new areas and methods of research and education

  • Objective: identify and amplify efforts in novel research and education disciplines

• Facilitate the discovery, access and use of available CI resources and services

  • Objective: strategically disseminate availability of ACCESS to diverse communities and domains

• Provide excellent support

  • Objective: provide timely response to feedback provided by audiences and incorporate – as applicable – to ongoing communications efforts 

• Extend the use of resources and services available via ACCESS to underrepresented communities, under-resourced institutions and non-traditional domains

  • Objective: collaborate with WGs to determine needs and provide support including highlighting news of science by such groups enabled by ACCESS

• Improve and advance the ACCESS program

  • Objective: consistently listening to and engaging with stakeholders to consider needs in developing strategic communications

PROJECT / TEAM
GOALS & OBJECTIVES

The ACCESS Communications team is a collective representing all awardees; it is facilitated by a leader from the ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO) and supported by the program’s Executive Council. Our communications goal is to collectively seek opportunities to build bi-directional communications pathways with ACCESS teams, working groups, resource providers, related programs, and the broader research and educational community. The ACO has set and monitors specific metrics such as media hits to our website, social media impressions, etc. (see “Metrics” below) as part of its quarterly reporting to the NSF. We also utilize feedback from surveys to guide our endeavors. To be successful, it requires an engaged, proactive community of stakeholders.

COMMUNICATION
GOALS & OBJECTIVES 

Overall Objectives

• Be the primary interface to the broader community, providing a focal point for the flow of internal and public-facing information between ACCESS teams and the research and education community

• Project a coherent ecosystem of resources and services to the community aligned with the NSF Office of Advanced Computing’s programmatic missions.

• Facilitate the development (with direction from the EC) and production of annual community reports highlighting ACCESS-supported research activities, progress of the Service Teams over the preceding year, plans for the Service Teams going forward and other milestones 

PY3-Deliverables

• Segment PI video for short social media clips and work into our social media plan

• Review feedback on web presence from SGX3 study and strategize updates for Plan Year 3, PY4 and PY5

• Update Inside ACCESS and The ACCESS Advance newsletters to reflect survey feedback

• Produce and distribute communications satisfaction survey mid-year (October 2024)

• Define which campaign(s) should be developed for this year to specifically achieve program goals (e.g., targeting underserved groups or promoting greater use of XDMoD) based on feedback from Working Groups

• Mine our mailing lists for any data it can yield about our subscribers

• Develop new tagline and implement where appropriate

• Finalize update to ACCESS logos to incorporate NSF logo

• Produce two monthly newsletters – one for internal audiences and the other for external

• Produce a minimum of one story per week for the ACCESS website

• Develop and follow a social media plan for promoting ACCESS including a regular posting schedule 

• Oversee and provide support for PEARC, SC and other events staff may attend

KEY AUDIENCES

• ACCESS Staff

• Computational Researchers of all experience levels

• Class Instructors of all experience levels

• Graduate Students

• Resource Providers (RPs) and Potential RPs

• Community Programs and Organizations

• General Public

The above audiences follow the Personas defined by that Working Group. Key Messaging for the above audiences is described in a later section of this plan. 

METRICS

What does success look like?

In support of our program goals:

• Appropriate media hits on web stories (understanding some of our “stories” will simply be summaries pointing to a more full story on a partner website –  such as SDSC, PSC, etc.) We will develop these metrics over time

• Robust Social Media engagement 

  • Our base KPI is 10,000 engagements/month collectively among Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, with a target of 2% growth quarter over quarter 

• Average to above-average open rates and CTRs on emails and newsletters 

  • Industry average open rate = 35%

  • Industry average click-through-rate = 6%

• Positive feedback from a survey of internal and external newsletter audiences showing they are finding the content we publish engaging. The annual community survey, with its questions regarding end-user knowledge of ACCESS resources and services,  will also provide an indirect indication of the effectiveness of the communication plan.

Quarterly metrics can be accessed by contacting dinameek@illinois.edu. 

COMMUNICATIONS TEAM CONTACTS

Dina Meek, dinameek@illinois.edu
Kim Mann Bruch, (kbruch@sdsc.edu)

Andrew Helregel, ahelreg2@uillinois.edu

Megan Janeski, mjaneski@illinois.edu

Cindy Wong, cwong@sdsc.edu

Megan Johnson, mmjohns2@illinois.edu

Shira Feldman, shiraf@ucar.edu

Karen Green, karengreen929@gmail.com (Newsletter Editor)

ACCESS COMMS PARTNERS 

(include campus partners and industry partners)

Allocations –  Stephen Deems (http://allocations.access-ci.org )

Support –  Alana Romanella (http://support.access-ci.org )

Operations- Leslie Froeschl (http://operations.access-ci.org )

Metrics –  Tom Furlani  (http://metrics.access-ci.org )

NSF –  sgeva@nsf.gov, Fernanda Pemberton (Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Comms)

Comms leads from Resource Providers (TBD)

ACCESS WORKING GROUP CONTACTS

Working Group representatives interface with the Communications team to provide updates on current initiatives, messaging and priorities to amplify through various communications channels. Each lead is provided with the communications tools and mechanisms available to amplify group efforts and increase bi-directional engagement with the Communications team. Input from these groups is critical to keep up with the evolving ecosystem to which ACCESS serves and will be sought on a regular basis.

• Cybersecurity Governance Council – Derek Simmel (dsimmel@psc.edu) 

• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Agbeli Ameko (agbeli@ucar.edu)

• External Advisory Board (EAB) – Eva Siegmann (eva.siegmann@stonybrook.edu)

• Evaluation – Shawn Strande (sstrande@sdsc.edu)

• OnDemand – Alan Chalker (alanc@osc.edu)

• Researcher Advisory Committee (RAC) – Laura Herriott (herrio@illinois.edu)

• Infrastructure Integration Standing Committee – JP Navarro (navarro@mcs.anl.gov)

• RP Forum – Tom Maiden (maiden@psc.edu)

• Ticketing – Dinuka De Silva (dinsdesi@iu.edu)

• Web & Branding – Dina Meek (dinameek@illinois.edu)

Audience

Key messages

ACCESS Working Groups

& ACCESS Staff

• Various mechanisms for internal and external communication are available for working groups to leverage.

• The communications team values and relies on the input of various working groups and staff members to better refine messaging for respective audiences.

• The communications team is here to support you in your endeavors and can provide tools to help with your specific communications.

• There are other programs or initiatives that could be helpful to your work.

• ACCESS is working hard to coordinate among the various service teams and working groups, and relies on all staff to achieve the success we strive for.

Desired Actions: Provide regular updates to communications teams on messaging and campaigns; link the communications team with other related programs; provide feedback on how to better our overall communications strategy; use our materials request form to help you represent the program at events.

Collaboration & Content Considerations: Each ACCESS staff member and Standing Committee/Working Group is encouraged to provide suggestions for how this communication plan and corresponding tools might better suit their unique needs. 

Computational Researchers

(all experience levels)

• ACCESS serves all research and educational domains at U.S.-based institutions and is free of cost. 

  • It’s a place for researchers and educators at all levels of experience. 

• Graduate students can lead allocation requests for dissertation-related work.

• Getting started is easy.

• ACCESS has a rich fabric of collaborators to amplify initiatives and messages from related programming. 

• Support tools (Affinity Groups, Knowledge Base, Events, News) are great ways to engage with the community and share information.

• Computational Science Support Network Community Engagement Program (CCEP) travel awards are available in exchange for community contributions. 

• Open XDMoD allows academic and industrial data centers to monitor usage and performance of their local infrastructure, and provides campus leaders and research facilitators with insights regarding ACCESS resource users on their campus(es). ACCESS XDMoD can be used by computational scientists to help other researchers improve their overall job throughput on ACCESS resources as well as for improving their own use of ACCESS resources.

• ACCESS Operations is investing to grow the community of cyberinfrastructure professionals through its Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP).

• Researchers can use our ticketing system to communicate their needs to help ACCESS continually improve.

• It’s free because it’s paid for by NSF.

Desired Actions: Request an allocation; join an Affinity Group; join the Computational Scientist Support Network (CSSN); subscribe to the newsletter; submit a CCEP request; request MATCHPlus/Premier; share and apply to the STEP program; share your news and events with us; provide us with your feedback. 

Collaboration & Content Considerations: Several ACCESS plans (Democratization and Evaluation), as well as groups (EAB, Personas, RAC, RP Forum, Web & Branding), will help to better refine and rescope communication efforts to these audiences. Feedback from these stakeholders can help drive changes in the allocations policies, the support resources offered, and the data availability through XDMoD, as well as highlights for the Communications team. 

Resource Providers (RPs) & Potential RPs

• RPs are at the heart of the ACCESS program.

• ACCESS can assist in amplifying initiatives and training opportunities at RP sites. 

• ACCESS can help you get more involved with the program and the larger ecosystem.

• ACCESS provides different features to RPs at various integration levels and strives to make integration as simple as possible through our integration roadmaps process.

• RPs can leverage Affinity Groups to host a gathering place for their user communities.

• XDMoD provides insights into the performance, with utilization and quality of service of their infrastructure.

• ACCESS is an inclusive community that strives to connect with traditional HPC and other new/novel kinds of resources into the nationwide ecosystem.

• ACCESS ensures RPs are well-supported for security incident response and metrics reporting designed to allow them to better operate their resource, and tune system and application performance for the benefit of their end-users.

Desired Actions: Promote your News & Events through ACCESS; further foster your communities through Affinity Groups; explore XDMoD; share a growing set of infrastructure information; provide coordinated resource access services that enable researchers; subscribe and provide content to community and staff newsletters; share specific needs/problems of your resource/program that integrating with ACCESS could help address; participate in the ACCESS Incident Response Trust Group; share your science highlights with ACCESS; reach out to us to learn how to get started with integrating your resource. 

Collaboration & Content Considerations: To better refine messaging regarding the value of integrating a resource within ACCESS, this plan will rely on input from the RP Forum, Operations and Allocations teams, as well as related programs.   

NSF & Related Programs/Groups

• ACCESS is an important part of the NSF ecosystem.

• NSF-related programs can collaborate with ACCESS. 

• By engaging directly with other programs and groups, ACCESS is evolving the ecosystem and extending the boundaries of CI.

  • Programs: PATh, AI Institutes, CC*, MS-CC, MRI, Trusted CI (NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence), NSF CyberTeam, CyberTraining, Engagement and Performance Operations Center (EPOC)

  • Groups: Campus Champions, CSSN Network, Internet2, CaRCC, RMACC, American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, FARR RCN, American Geophysical Union, United States Research Software Engineer Association

  • Governmental Agencies: Department of Education, Office of Indian Education, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, etc

• ACCESS is fulfilling the vision set out by the NSF to democratize access to CI for science, engineering and non-traditional domains of research. 

• ACCESS is enabling science from researchers all across the country and amplifying success stories through science highlights.

Desired Actions: Get in contact with ACCESS; share your program’s News & Events; provide feedback to ACCESS; amplify ACCESS initiatives within yourrespective programs. 

Collaboration & Content Considerations: To keep up with the complex, growing ecosystem, this plan will require input from the rich, diverse perspectives of all program staff and stakeholders. Building and augmenting a list of related programs and contacts will further amplify the bi-directional communications efforts of ACCESS and any program it interfaces with. 

Class Instructors
(All experience levels)

• ACCESS serves all research and education domains at U.S.-based institutions and is free of cost. 

  • It’s a place for researchers and educators of all levels of experience. 

• ACCESS Operations is investing to grow the community of cyberinfrastructure professionals through its Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP).

• ACCESS resources are a great central location for coursework activity.

• Instructors can get an allocation and add students to it.

• Graduate students can lead allocation requests for dissertation-related work.

• Getting started is easy.

• It’s free because it’s paid for by NSF.

• The resources include not only access to world-class hardware but also expert and technical support, also at no cost.

• Everyone will be using the same machine; no more trying to work across multiple machines and operating systems.

• Campus Champions can help with your allocation request and provide additional support.

Desired Actions: Make sure your college students are aware of the STEP program and encourage applications. Check out news on how students have used ACCESS in their coursework. Find out more about getting started. 

Collaboration & Content Considerations: Periodic checks of the Allocations database can shed light on the types of activities Class Instructors are pursuing with their allocations. With this information, more targeted news and campaigns can be disseminated. 

Branding

To build a strong, cohesive, and consistent brand presence, the ACO Comms team led the development of a visual identity system, approved by the EC and subsequently used throughout the ACCESS program content. The visual identity system:

• includes a defined and distinctive color palette, typography, photography, graphical elements and a logo or wordmark

• sets the guidelines that promote ACCESS's brand consistency using visual elements such as the logo/wordmark, colors, images, fonts and more from the design toolkit 

Currently, the Comms team is restyling the logos to remove the tagline (a new one will be considered) and add the NSF logo. 

Branded assets, including PowerPoints, logos, etc., are available on the Comms Team Wiki.

Additionally, the ACO Comms team has developed a style guide for written communications and is working on written conventions and a brand voice document.

The Branding and Web Presence Working Group has developed style guides and resources for designers and developers available on GitHub.

http://access-ci.org

The centerpiece of all ACCESS communications efforts is a web presence that provides access to newsletters, news and feature articles, information on the services provided by the Service Teams, and other user and public-facing communications. 

• Universal navigation replicated across ACO and Service Area sites for ease of movement for site visitors

• The ACO team will maintain the http://access-ci.org home site, with the Service Areas maintaining their subdomains

• Users may log in to the ACCESS portal(s) from the universal navigation 

Currently, the Web Presence Working Group is engaging with SGX3 on a usability study to determine how to improve the web presence.

Newsletters

The Comms team produces two digital newsletters:

• Inside ACCESS, the internal monthly newsletter, is targeted at ACCESS staff to allow the ACO and Service Areas to share achievements and upcoming plans and milestones for awareness and planning purposes.

  • Content is submitted via a form sent to PIs, and Communications Team and Working Group leads from our newsletter editor; Inside ACCESS is published on the last Thursday of each month.

• The ACCESS Advance, our external monthly newsletter, is targeted at a list of 50k+ members and allows ACCESS to share achievements and news important to a broad range of interests. 

  • Content is submitted via a form sent to PIs and Communications Team leads from our newsletter editor; The ACCESS Advance is published on the first Thursday of each month.

In PY3, the Communications team will refresh both newsletters based on feedback from annual surveys.

Additionally, the Support team sends out the biweekly ACCESS Support Digest, with news of events and training sent to 13k+ subscribers.

• See “Announcements” & “Events” below

Email Communications

While the website and newsletters will be the primary vehicles of communication, emails can be employed in the case of:

• Mission-critical information that cannot wait for newsletter publication and/or needs amplification of a website post

• Opportunities to reach audiences not subscribed to newsletters, such as PEARC or SC registrants

The ACO Comms team has developed templates with ACCESS branding and leverages the Constant Contact platform to distribute emails. Additionally, Service Areas have access to the email platform along with templates designed for their Service Areas in order to communicate as needed with audience lists they develop. 

Announcements & Events

The Support team provides Announcements and Events functionality that can be leveraged by anyone with an ACCESS ID. 

Outage News

The Operations team provides the ecosystem with Infrastructure News for publishing and discovering outages of various services and at Resource Provider sites. 

Integration News

The Operations team provides the ecosystem with Integration News that communicates changes to integration roadmaps, tools, and related services.

Events Supplies

The ACO Comms team provides:

• Booth graphics and oversight of booth production for large-scale events such as SC

• Branded tablecloths and pull-up banners for smaller events

• Materials including general informational brochures and swag (giveaways)

ACCESS staff can arrange to order and have shipped materials via the Comms Team wiki.

Social Media

The ACO Comms team maintains social media accounts including:

• X/formerly Twitter

• Facebook

• YouTube

• LinkedIn

A social media strategy includes amplification of:

• http://access-ci.org stories including scientific advances enabled by ACCESS

• Resource provider stories

• Important training opportunities and events 

• @mentions about ACCESS from other organizations

Instant Messaging

ACCESS also leverages Slack channels for both ACCESS-wide communication and engagement with communities such as Resource Providers, Campus Champions, and related programs. 

Media Relations

The team maintains a close relationship with HPCwire and additional news outlets to ensure applicable stories are shared with the overall U.S. community. The team also engages with media relations teams from the ACCESS users’ institutions to ensure that their regional media is aware of the broader impact of ACCESS efforts.

Government Relations

The team regularly updates the NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs (OLPA) so that they may re-purpose science/user stories as they see fit for their media outlets etc.

Program

Contact Name

Contact Email

PATh 

Mats Rynge

rynge@isi.edu 

AI Institutes (SAIL) 

Ginger Welsh

gwelsh@ucdavis.edu 

MS-CC