Capabilities Model Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Table of Contents: What is the Capabilities Model and who is it for? How are institutions using the Model? Who can use the Capabilities Model? How long does it take to complete the RCD Capabilities Model? What help is available? Which institutions are already using the Capabilities Model? Our research computing and data effort is still emerging. Is this assessment for us? We already completed the Model once. When (and why) should we do a follow-up assessment? Who developed the Capabilities Model? How can I explore the Community Dataset? Where can I read more about the model?

What is the Capabilities Model and who is it for?

Research Computing and Data (computing, data, and related infrastructure, services, and people) is changing at an accelerating rate, while the range of academic fields and disciplines depending on this infrastructure is expanding and becoming increasingly diverse. This Capabilities Model was developed to identify the breadth and variety of relevant approaches to, and the key factors for providing this support, with a focus on the front lines of Research Computing and Data infrastructure. The Model is designed for use as an input into strategic decision making and organizational planning, and is intended to be inclusive across types of institutions (large and small, public and private, etc.), as well as different organizational models (e.g., centralized or decentralized).

How are institutions using the Model?

Some common uses for the Model are:

To identify and understand areas of strength and weakness in an institution’s support, e.g., as when conducting strategic planning and prioritization exercises.
To benchmark your institution’s support against peers, e.g., when making an argument for increased funding to remain competitive on faculty recruitment and retention.
To compare local institutional approaches for supporting Research Computing and Data to a common community model (i.e., a shared vocabulary), to facilitate communications and collaboration.

Who can use the Capabilities Model?

This Model is designed to be useful to a diverse mix of stakeholders, including campus research computing and data practitioners, along with the principal investigators and research team members (faculty, staff) with whom they work, as well as key partners (e.g., central IT), and campus leadership.

The RCD Nexus Portal and associated tools are freely available to everyone, subject only to our Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license.

How long does it take to complete the RCD Capabilities Model?

A majority of institutions report that they invested between 5 and 25 labor-hours in completing the model, with many taking less than a few person-days, but some taking quite a bit more. The time it will take may vary with your organizational model:

If your institution has a fairly simple or centralized organizational model, you may be able to assemble a small team and answer the questions in short order.
If your institution has a distributed or federated model of service support, it may require a bit more discussion to pull together the appropriate groups, and develop a shared mental model of how those groups work together to support research.

A second factor is how you are using the Capabilities Model as part of your strategic planning:

If your goal is a simple information gathering exercise, it may be sufficient for an RCD team lead (or equivalent) to do a relatively quick pass through the RCD Capabilities Model, and reach out to partners at your institution (or even use estimates/educated guesses) for specific capabilities outside your service portfolio.
If you are using the tool as part of a broader RCD strategic planning process, you may draw together expertise from a range of groups (e.g., including HPC systems folks, Data Librarians, Information Security analysts, and others), and use the RCD Capabilities Model questions as a starting point for more in-depth discussions of service models and how teams collaborate to support research.

For a more complete discussion of this topic, see this blog post

What help is available?

You can email the RCD CM working group at capsmodel-help@carcc.org, or subscribe to the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org discussion list to hear how other institutions are completing their assessments, and using them as part of strategic planning.

If you have additional questions about how to use the assessment tool, how to understand specific questions, etc., please share your questions with the working group by emailing capsmodel-help@carcc.org. You are also welcome to join us for Office Hours; see the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model working group website for the schedule, or subscribe to the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org discussion list for announcements about this and more related activities.

Which institutions are already using the Capabilities Model?

To date 230 different institutions have created an assessment instance (or requested a copy in v1) of the Capabilities Model assessment tool. These institutions represent all 50 U.S. States, two U.S. territories plus the District of Columbia, several Canadian provinces and a few other countries. Roughly half of these institutions are classified as R1 (Very High Research Activity), and a wide range of institutions other than R1s are also using the model.

You can explore the demographics of the community of users (and contributors, i.e., those who have completed an assessment and contributed it to the Community Dataset) using the Community Demographics tools of our Data Viewer.

A total of 72 Contributor institutions have completed 104 assessments (many have repeated their assessment in successive years). See also the list of contributors.

There are 230 User institutions that have created an assessment instance (or requested a copy in v1) of the Capabilities Model assessment tool.

Our research computing and data effort is still emerging. Is this assessment for us?

Smaller and emerging RCD programs can choose to complete an Essentials assessment, which reduces the effort considerably and allows you to focus on the most important capabilities. There are also some optional components that can be skipped (e.g., Domain Coverage and prioritization) to minimize the effort involved.

Regardless of which type of assessment is chosen, some institutions choose to do a more streamlined assessment their first time, and just include a few key participants (e.g., an RCD support lead or equivalent plus someone from the library). The resulting assessment data may not be completely accurate and complete, but this can be a quick way to learn about the CaRCC RCD Capabilities Model and explore how the resulting data, benchmarking reports, etc. can inform strategic planning, etc. at your institution.

We already completed the Model once. When (and why) should we do a follow-up assessment?

Many institutions use the Model to inform their strategic planning process, and that in turn leads to initiatives to address gaps and areas for improvement. These often take a couple of years to complete and see adoption, and so it can make sense to do an assessment every two to three years to track the impact of work to improve your RCP support. You may choose to do a Chart Your Own Journey assessment for the follow-up, and concentrate on the areas that you think are likely to have changed, to streamline the effort needed to complete the assessment.

We also see some institutions complete an assessment once a year, allowing them to track any changes in their RCD program support in a more fine-grained manner.

Who developed the Capabilities Model?

The Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model was developed through a collaboration among Internet2, CaRCC, and EDUCAUSE, and drew upon the expertise of a range of institutions with various and distinct models of research computing and data support. In addition, individuals at a number of Universities have provided valuable feedback on earlier versions.

This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation via OAC-1620695 and OAC-2100003.

How can I explore the Community Dataset?

Click on Data Viewer in the main menu to explore the demographics of our users and contributors, as well as the community assessment data. Once you complete and submit an assessment, you can use the benchmarking support to explore how your capabilities coverage compares to other institutions.

We have also prepared several analyses of snapshots over time; these are available in the CaRCC Community publications on zenodo:

2020 RCD CM Community Data report. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4344057
2021 RCD CM Community Data report. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6502962

We are working to prepare a more recent analysis of the data up through the end of 2024.

Where can I read more about the model?

Our PEARC20 paper “A Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model for Strategic Decision-Making” provides an introduction to the model and concepts.

The PEARC21 paper “Assessing the Landscape of Research Computing and Data Support: The 2020 RCD Capabilities Model Community Dataset” presents initial conclusions from the first community dataset.