2024-06-11 ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

1. Approval of summaries from prior EC meeting @John Towns (5 mins)

   1. 2024-05-28 ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

       

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

   1. (Comment from @Stephen Deems - can we discuss this one after we debrief the quarterly meeting, as we might be on the cusp of true program-wide milestones)

   2. Has been updated - looking good
      
      

3. Quarterly Meeting Debrief & Next Steps

   1. Overall comments seem to be happy with how it went

   2. Credit to Agenda Development Group

   3. Survey went out yesterday

   4. Stephen - historically we have protected our younger staff members from the meetings - but this time a younger team member presented and it went very well - we have other teams volunteering to have their staff present

   5. Stephen - will be having team member present to RP forum to get feedback from then

   6. Tom F - great for younger participants - great meeting

   7. Tom G - What about agenda building process - shall we keep doing it this way? It seemed to work but had to drum a lot to get input

      1. challenge - more content than we had time for

      2. Hoping to get more input from others next time

      3. Reviews cut in to people’s time who could not contribute

      4. Is better than the alternative of Lavanya having to fill in the agenda herself by reaching out to people many times

      5. Will probably keep this baseline format going forward

      6. Cindy made the Zoom Meeting pleasant

   8. There are some specific initiatives (and smaller to dos) that came out of the quarterly - will need to formalize the next steps to move them forward - we need to make sure they do not stall out

      1. Follow up from Eval SC re survey actions

      2. Stephen Deems volunteers to help synthesizing outcomes

   9. RP - interested in increasing the response to survey - perhaps directing the questions to specific people - include RP support arm - RP forum is interested in helping - will engage with eval team
      
      

4. Supplemental Funding Support for Quarterly Meetings @John Towns (10 mins)

   1. We were requested to build an assessment doc before requesting a supplement - (impact of virtual vs in person and is it worth it to have NSF spend the money for in person in addition to the virtuals)

      1. looking at the math for how long it takes to get proposals in and thru the NSF pipeline - closing out fiscal year as well

         1. need to request for September and March

      2. time is of the essence to get a request in

      3. just had a very successful virtual meeting - EC should create the assessment - what is plan going ahead

      4. potentially the teams are in difference funding situations fiscally - do all teams need money?

      5. There is an in-person meeting scheduled for September - there is an implication that we might not have this depending on status of finances and state of supplemental funding

         1. we should scope where we are on planning for this

         2. there has been some interest voiced in being in person

            1. Tom F - since it has been announced - move forward with Pittsburgh - Stephen is already engaged in planning - build on momentum

            2. Tim B - we have started path for Pittsburgh in September - concerned if PSC have made commitments that they would have to eat if it was cancelled - having a successful virtual meeting does not distract from the value - Operations can swing September for the team - a spring in-person would need funding request

            3. Alana - agree - announced yesterday to team - they may have to look at budget

            4. Stephen - we did make strides toward program wide work - if we use the practices from this virtual meeting - there is promise to have a good meeting and dedicated time to work on things in person for the cross team activities (has not spent monies yet)

            5. John - in person has value for sidebar conversations - this helps build relationships - supporting of in-person meetings - need to make sure ROI is good - he feels it is - budget would be a stretch without the supplement for the ACO - we did not budget making reservations for meetings, catering, etc. and could be considered out of scope if we use existing funds - it was not part of our original proposal - ACO is an outlier

            6. Need may be ACO only at this time - if we can get it approved we might be able to spend and then be reimbursed - but would need approval from post-award

      6. Sharon did not think this impacted September - but it will because we only requested PY2 funds and September is in PY3

      7. The type of work for a virtual meeting is absorbed as part of standard work - in person ones have direct costs (travel, catering, food - but staff time is not part of the request)

         1. Tom thought staff time was part of the request - labor was involved in the monies distributed

         2. Leslie’s team requested travel only

5. ACO Annual Review Highlights @John Towns (10 mins)

   1. Timely return of Panel Report - thank you

   2. Overall positive review - good feedback

   3. Focused issues -

      1. DEI (both from ACO as well as program wide viewpoint) - one panel felt that DEI goals should be set by the EC and not a Working Group - disappointed we are not further along

      2. Happy with overall governance structure - they saw lack of clarity between what ACO responsibility is vs EC responsibility - they want ACO to take more ownership at the Program Level - this is something that will need to be addressed by the EC - there is not consistency across all service tracks as to what role of ACO is - we need clarity

      3. Beneficial to consider moving to a rotating leadership model for having an annual rotating chair for EC

         1. we should review EC documents since these were created 2 years ago - they need updated

         2. probably other docs as well

      4. More communication and cross awareness - between each of the awardees, EC, Standing Committees and Working Groups - to the point where they suggested that ACO invite leads from all WG and SC to speak at ACO meetings so ACO is more aware of what is going on - this felt like this should be the role of the EC

         1. this will become more important as we work on the web, resource recommenders, etc. - we will need more visibility into what is going on

      5. Flagged issue of response rates for surveys

      6. Reaffirming strengthening RP relationship

      7. They picked up on personas idea - likes persona based means of organizing web - instead of org by organization structure - we have started discussing this - they like us moving in that direction

      8. Tom G - would we want them (Tom and Sharon) to look across the review and see what is parallel across all groups - or would we like to do it

         1. Sharon - if we do it among ourselves - we know more of the context than they do

         2. While not all teams play same importance in addressing the suggestion - and we don’t want an item to overload a particular group - we need to handle program wide responsibilities without impacting load on a particular team

      9. team is leaning toward internal shared review for common themes
         
         

6. Approval of Infrastructure Portfolio Expansion Standing Committee Charter @Tim Boerner (5 mins)

   1. Stephen - yes

   2. Tim - yes

   3. Tom F - yes

   4. Alana - yes

   5. John - yes

7. Informational Items (10 mins)

   1. RP Forum @Jeremy Fischer

   2. Allocations Stephen Deems

      1. DevOps team working to make some improvements for RPs reviewing requests

         1. Canned reports will be populated in the XACCT tool

            1. e.g. # of SUs approved via exchanges in last week, month, etc.

         2. Exchange Calculator now available in XRAS-Review, where RPs review requests

      2. Response to PY2 panel feedback sent to NSF

      3. Need to reschedule our 1-on-1 EAB session

         1. Several critical team members have conflicts with our originally scheduled time.

   3. MATCH Shelley Knuth/Alana

      1. Second round of 1:1’s with the RPs kicking off next week

      2. Last chance for non-RPs to be part of the September 10/11 workshop in Boston. Email Alana if you plan to attend.

      3. Our Software Discovery System will go live later this week

      4. 8 major workshops accepted and funded the next 6 months through the CCEP

   4. CONECT Tim Boerner/Leslie

   5. MMS Tom Furlani

      1. Joe White attending the Research Computing at Smaller Institutions" (RCSI) this week and presenting on Metrics

      2. Aaron Weeden will attend Shelley’s RP workshop in Sept.

   6. OpenCI John Towns
      
      

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