1. Biomedical Informatics Research Network BIRN as a Shared Infrastructure: An Overview of Policies & Procedures Mark James, Phil Papadopoulos October 9, 2002 2 nd Annual All Hands Meeting

2. Process for Creating Databases and Schemas  Collaborative effort among BIRN science teams and BIRN CC data experts  Starts with what type of science questions want to be asked  Need Bio experts/Data experts to work closely together to define and build a workable data model Need mapping of natural language to tables For Morph BIRN, process has been slow because of the complexities of the data (e.g. does a clinical score of X and test Alpha mean the same thing at all sites).  How do we facilitate the process learned in Mouse to Morphometric and Functional BIRNs?

3. Hardware  Ordering, Delivery, etc. responsibility of site.  BIRN CC loads OS, apps, NAS, configures networks, etc.  Admin comes to San Diego for overview/training on Rack. Site admin becomes CC interface to the infrastructure.  Equipment is delivered to BIRN site.  Maint of equipment is responsibility of site. CC disseminating solutions to known common-mode problems.  Site is responsible for backup of local data.

4. Passwords  BIRN CC currently needs root password to rack systems and rack switch.  Difficulty in getting SRB user names and accounts established Is there a way to allow distributed account creation BIRN-CC Needs to be more reactive to this! (want 1-2 business day turnaround on requests) What about giving portal/SRB accounts to non-BIRN folks  Remedy ticket systems. On website under “help” to submit.  What kinds of FAQs do sites need? Security Others

5. Public/Private data access  Current default – only owner of data has access to it (data that has been put into SRB) Must actively add authorization to users/groups Should this default policy be changed? Should defaults be settable on per-project basis? (similar to unix umask) Group needs to work harder to have a more collaborative default policy to enable sharing (at the beginning) (Bruce Rosen). Discussion needs to happen here. Or problem only gets worse.  Time limited default policy? After X months data is made “public”  Missing opportunity if we don’t do this now.  Public Anybody with a BIRN portal ID has access

6. Sharing Policy group  How? Who? When? Who is charged to make a proposal  Alternatives 12 months after deposition into database Upon publication of site-specific data  How can you get automated conversion of permissions?  Marron Comments – a sharing protocol would be a unique contribution of BIRN. Policy board needs to be expanded from default 4 PIs.

7. Software  Proposed Licensing policy is most likely problematic  Configuration management – Using CVS for version control  Copyright ownership needs some clarification BIRN OR UCSD OR Site Default to UC needs to be discussed. What is the NIH policy on copyrights?

8. Agenda  What’s Covered  Update Process  Concerns  Plan

9. What’s Covered 1.Management 2.Hardware 3.Data Usage 4.User Guidelines 5.Software 6.Support 7.Communications 8.Glossary 9.Definitions 10.Appendix

10. Update Process  Document sent out for review and comments  Feedback sent to Project Manager, BIRN-CC  Compilation of all requested changes  Changes submitted to Policy Board  Decisions made as to which changes are to be implemented  Updated manual produced  Notification to BIRN users of the changes  Publish on the web

11. Concerns

12. Plan