ACCESS Executive Council (EC)

Owned by Ron Payne
Last updated: Oct 11, 2022
3 min read

The Executive Council (EC) is the primary management and governance body of the ACCESS program. It is facilitated by the OpenCI ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO) and is the formal mechanism by which Service Track awardees coordinate delivery of services and present a coherent CI ecosystem to the community. OpenCI ACO PI John Towns leads facilitation of the EC.

 

The OpenCI team uses the following guiding principles with respect to the EC: 

  • Balance formal and informal processes: While there are many formalities the EC might establish via its charter or other means, the OpenCI team recommends keeping processes and policy as lightweight as possible and only establishing formality/policy when necessary. This provides for flexibility and agility in governance and minimizes unnecessary bureaucracy.

  • Keep it simple: Policies and practices should be as basic and straightforward as possible. Some issues are complex and require commensurate complex policy but minimizing this will allow for easier understanding and more efficient execution. Further, a smaller EC will make discussions and reaching consensus easier.

  • Work by consensus: To the extent possible the EC will operate by working towards common goals and building consensus. Formal voting is an important tool but should only be used in cases in which it is warranted, e.g., project changes with impact on service stability or usability. This fosters shared understanding of both the issue and the solution, and enhances buy-in of all of the EC members.

  • Be visibly collaborative: The staff of the Service Track teams will look to their respective PI and co-PIs and follow their lead. By encouraging collaboration, the coordination of services across the Service Tracks will be enhanced.

  • Base decisions on timely and relevant information: The EC is a decision-making body. Providing the tools and information to support these processes is imperative. OpenCI provides tools and will encourages a data-driven approach to decision making.

  • Maintain focus on programmatic innovations: The EC frames each of its discussions and decisions in the context of one or more of the five programmatic outcomes defined by NSF (i.e., view CI holistically, improve usability, support translational research, couple discovery and CI innovation, and integrate those innovations through robust and secure means).

 

EC Charter

The EC operates under a charter approved by the EC. The current charter is available both as a downloadable PDF and on this wiki.

 

EC Members

Membership of the EC is indicated by the EC charter. Membership consists of the following:

  • ACCESS Service Track PIs and the ACO PI as the voting members of the EC,

    • each Service Track PI may, at their discretion, bring one additional team member as a non-voting participant in any EC meeting,

    • Service Track and ACO PIs are as follows:

      • Service Track 1: Allocation Services: Steven Deems (PSC)

      • Service Track 2: End User Support Services: Shelley Knuth (UC-Boulder)

      • Service Track 3: Operations and Integration: Tim Boerner (NCSA/Univ of Illinois)

      • Service Track 4: Monitoring & Measurement: Tom Furlani (Stonybrook)

      • ACCESS Coordination Office: John Towns (NCSA/Univ of Illinois)

  • ACCESS-ACO: the following additional ACO members will participate in EC meetings:

    • ACO PI as EC Facilitator

    • ACO Project Manager to capture decisions, actions, meeting summary (ex-offcio, non-voting member)

    • ACO External Advisory Board (EAB) Facilitator to be liaison between the EAB and EC  (ex-offcio, non-voting member)

    • ACO External Evaluator to support their role  (ex-offcio, non-voting member)

  • NSF ACCESS Cognizant Program Officer(s) as ex-officio, non-voting, observer(s).

 

EC Meetings

EC meeting agendas and notes can be found on the Executive Council Meetings wiki page.