RCD-Nexus Capabilities Model FAQ

What is the Capabilities Model and why should I use it?

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).

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What are common uses for 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.

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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.

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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 to do a relatively quick pass through the RCD Capabilities Model, and just ask a few questions of others (or just use estimates/educated guesses) for specific questions.
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

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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.

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Which institutions are already using the Capabilities Model?

Over 200 different institutions have created a 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 are 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.

As of early 2024, a total of 60 institutions have completed 87 assessments (many have repeated their assessment in successive years). You can see the list of contributors on the CaRCC Working Group page.

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

Many institutions find the model a helpful introduction to the range of capabilities they may want to consider as they plan for and build out their program.

Some institutions choose to do a simpler 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 complete and accurate in every detail, but this can be a quick way to learn about the RCD Capabilities Model and explore how the resulting data, benchmarking reports, etc. can inform strategic planning, etc. at your institution.

We’re also planning a feature in which you can choose a smaller set of topics from the model, and focus on those. We’ll announce more about this in the coming months.

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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.

The development of these tools has been supported in part by an RCN grant from the National Science Foundation (OAC-1620695, PI: Alex Feltus, “RCN: Advancing Research and Education through a national network of campus research computing infrastructures – The CaRC Consortium”), and by an NSF Cyberinfrastructure Centers of Excellence (CI CoE) pilot award (OAC-2100003, PI Dana Brunson, “Advancing Research Computing and Data: Strategic Tools, Practices, and Professional Development”).

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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.

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