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Workshop Objective
CTO workshops are meant to guide "What NREN and GÉANT do together".
This is expressly not only for the GN5x project, but in general. First figure out:
- What are we doing right
- What are we doing wrong?
- What are our blind spots?
Presented topics are a direction that we might take but there are others.
Maximise discussion time and CTO participation and engagement, to receive guidance on:
"What are the right things to do together for above the net?".
Funding options can be figured out later.
Outcome of the workshop is a roadmap (update) outlining identified priorities for the coming multi-year community collaboration cycles.
Workshop Summary
Key points presented
Infrastructure-cloud. The current roadmap includes three key areas: service (OCRE FW), product (eduMEET), and a collective strategy. The collective strategy aims to explore areas beyond infrastructure cloud and consider joint technical platforms, personal data protection, and large-scale storage services in the EOSC context, emphasising the importance of long-term sustainability and financing. It underscores the importance of collective action, strategic alignment, and maximising impact, aligning with GN5-1, GN5-2, and research cloud initiatives. The presentation concluded with a call to dream bigger dreams and contribute to the new IaaS+ agreements in 2023 to ensure their relevance upon arrival in 2024.
Research Data Sharing. The presentation discussed the role of collective NREN actions in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the sharing of research data. EOSC aims to create a web of scientific insight by connecting various data sources and services based on the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. The presentation highlighted the status and future plans for EOSC, the role of NRENs, and potential areas for collective NREN actions within EOSC, such as sharing resources, procurement, and expanding services to support EOSC nodes.
Education. The presentation explored NRENs' role in educational services, focusing on requirements like identity management, new education-related needs, and the value of open-source solutions, demonstrated by eduMEET. NORDUnet highlighted the advantages of autonomy, community support, and cost-effectiveness in the development of robust, user-centric educational tools. It advocated for open-source solutions to enhance scalability and suggested an investigation into APIs for the integration of frequently used educational tools.
Artificial Intelligence. The presentation by GRNET explored the evolving landscape of AI and its implications for NRENs. It emphasised the need for NRENs to engage in discussions about the role of AI, particularly in the context of OpenAI's use of publicly available data (like training large language models). The presentation raised important questions about fairness, data attribution, the use of non-public data, and the substantial resources required for AI models. It also highlighted potential discussion points, including NRENs' role in curating datasets, promoting diversity of data, and investigating compensation models for data providers. The presentation underlined the increasing demand for AI-related resources from public cloud providers and the need for NRENs to facilitate discussions and collaborations in this evolving landscape.
Key discussion points
Infrastructure-cloud. The general discussion covered choices between community and commercial clouds, cloud procurement, data protection, NRENs' role in accessing commercial tools, collaboration challenges, and the importance of eduMEET. The need to avoid limiting choices and build communities around tools like eduMEET was highlighted. The value of NRENs' strong role in negotiating access to commercial tools within the EOSC context was emphasised, as was the importance of unity for NRENs dealing with commercial cloud providers.
Community Clouds and Commercial Solutions: The choice between community and commercial clouds was discussed. Participants emphasised not limiting options and the need to build communities around products like eduMEET.
Cloud Procurement and GEANT's Role: The conversation touched on cloud procurement, particularly GEANT's role in infrastructure services (OCRE Framework). It was noted that well-defined objectives, resources, and strategy are vital, with regular monthly meetings as part of the coordination effort.
Data Protection and Digital Sovereignty: The importance of data protection laws and digital sovereignty was acknowledged, aligning with EC priorities.
NREN Roles and Collaboration: NRENs' unique role in facilitating access to commercial tools for the GÉANT community was underlined, recognising their negotiation strength. GEANT's role as the commercial services supplier within the EOSC context was highlighted.
Collaboration Challenges: Challenges in collaborating across administrative domains, especially with Microsoft O365, were acknowledged, with eduMEET seen as a potential solution.
eduMEET and Collaboration Tools: Discussions focused on integrating eduMEET and similar collaboration tools, emphasising their importance in cross-border educational collaboration. For instance, Moodle integration with eduMEET was highlighted.
Commercial providers. The discussion centred on using commercial and non-European services in education and research, with NRENs playing a crucial role in improving access to commercial tools for the GÉANT community. As cloud service costs rise, collective procurement and community cloud offerings are increasingly vital. The post-COVID era emphasises the need for expertise in videoconferencing. The main point is the significance of choosing between commercial and community clouds. For example, Zoom's success reflects the value of community demand, and there's a desire to foster communities around products like eduMEET. Data outside the network and user access from home are now important considerations. NRENs have a unique opportunity to negotiate better terms for their communities.
Research Data sharing. The discussion emphasised the value of trust within the community and the need to establish GÉANT EOSC nodes. These nodes serve as platforms for NRENs to explore new tools and services for sharing research resources among themselves, essentially functioning as proof of concept (POC) vehicles. While some participants found the concept more relatable than others, the collective engagement of NRENs was proposed as a more impactful approach. The central question revolved around the services and resources that NRENs should provide through these channels. The discussion highlighted the importance of focusing on the services and resources NRENs can offer and the most effective means of making them available to researchers and EOSC, with GEANT nodes serving as a practical vehicle to aggregate efforts at the GÉANT level.
Education. The discussion focused on the need for streamlined collaborative efforts in education mobility services, highlighting the significance of thorough analysis. Legal constraints in managing academic records presented problems, leading to the exploration of personal data wallet concepts for educational data management. The discussion stressed the importance of NRENs working together to create a European higher education interoperability framework.
Education Mobility and Identity. Reps from NORDUnet, PSNC, KIFÜ, SWITCH, SURF, and GARR discussed the need for an efficient model for education mobility, emphasising EU ID wallet collaboration to explore its potential (determining its format, interoperability). The main aim is to explore the potential of the identity part.
Handling Educational Data. Insights were shared about the challenges of managing course and student records, which can differ by country, and there may be legal restrictions preventing data access. There was also a question whether these limitations were set by institutions or governments. Also the idea of a personal data wallet linked to identity for educational data management was introduced, which led to discussions about what this means.
European Interoperability Framework in Higher Education. All participants expressed interest in contributing to a European interoperability framework in higher education. Collaboration and contributions from NRENs and organisations were encouraged to drive the development of this framework.
Artificial Intelligence. The conversation revolved around AI-related matters, particularly the rising demand for GPUs in university research centres and AI services that NRENs could provide. NRENs had started dialogues with research groups to provide computing resources for AI tools. Emphasis was placed on improving access to large-scale computing and defining market conditions. The widespread use of AI in education was recognised, leading to a discussion about their role in this growing field. Plans were underway to provide compliant access to ChatGPT, including federated login, with potential future enhancements.
AI Topics: The discussion revolved around exploring AI topics, assessing AI tools, and NRENs' role in this growing field. Efforts to collaborate with research groups on digitisation and language models were noted.
Role of NRENs in AI: NRENs play a crucial role in facilitating high-scale computing and addressing the demand for GPUs in AI. Plans for compliant ChatGPT access were in progress.
AI in Education: AI's extensive use in educational activities, community organisations, and initiatives in network security data using AI models were discussed.
Key take-aways
NRENs:
- play a crucial role in EOSC, aligning with FAIR data principles, and should prioritise collective actions for resource sharing
- unite their efforts for procurement, particularly when engaging with commercial cloud providers.
- recognise the necessity for user-centric educational tools, open-source solutions, and an interoperability framework to enhance education mobility and identity management.
- have expressed interest in contributing to a higher education interoperability framework, advocating for collaboration and contributions from NRENs and organisations.
- will continue discussions regarding AI on fairness, data attribution, and collaboration, with NRENs facilitating dialogue and promoting data diversity
GÉANT
- will provide guidance on continuing operations around the OCRE 2020/2024 Framework.
has the choice between community and commercial clouds, having also the need to avoid restrictions and build communities around products like eduMEET.
Next Steps
Preparation of a roadmap update with community input by willing contributing authors, addressed to the GÉANT General Assembly, and containing:
- guidance for planning of needed continuing operations activities around the OCRE 2020/2024 Framework
- recommendations for exploiting the opportunity of a now sufficiently mature eduMEET, toward a wider and interoperable European R&E videoconference federation
- options for continuing/expanding the Cloud Strategy work beyond a sourcing strategy framework for infrastructure cloud
- a recommendation to study the use-case of a European-scale research data storage facility, and options for the GÉANT community to lead on this in the interest of data sovereignty and also achievable scalability cost savings across Europe
- a concept for a more permanent "commercial engagement" function in the GÉANT community, with scenarios "small"/"medium"/"large" depending on requirements and expected outcomes. There is a specific and temporary opportunity for GÉANT to claim a role within the EOSC ecosystem as the collective procurement engine to provide compliant agreements with commercial providers within that marketplace
- a recommendation to pursue a coordinated technical exploration around the concept of "EOSC nodes", and how that can work in practice for NRENs; potentially this ends up more a T&I subject, but with some contact to Above-the-Net
- a recommendation to continue and upgrade the Services Incubator facility, to allow early investigation of new service ideas, e.g. for education; in coordination with corresponding topic-specific community fora e.g. SIGs
- a recommendation to create a place in the community program where an ongoing conversation on AI can take place and individual learnings from the community can be shared for the benefit of all
This roadmap will not be able to be implemented directly in the existing GÉANT project landscape, such as GN5-x, and is not intended to be. It may not be possible to implement all of the developed ideas at all. Therefore, the roadmap shall contain decision aids for the General Assembly to understand and ratify that decisions in favor of certain proposals then work against other ones, provided no other funding and manpower sources materialise.
Selection of specific activities for inclusion in imminent project calls are made together with the GÉANT Project Planning Committee - GPPC, based upon the most current roadmap available at the time.