FAIR DIGITAL OBJECTS driving worldwide interoperability
FAIR DIGITAL OBJECTS driving worldwide interoperability
Experts worldwide are discussing FAIR Digital Objects (FDO) as the smallest FAIR technical components with maximum freedom to operate. Agreement on this concept would be a breakthrough comparable with the agreement on TCP / IP in the late 80’s for the Internet. Once TCP/IP was agreed as the smallest element to comply with, the Internet took off like a rocket. A similar type of fast adoption could happen again with FDO.
In September 2019 USA based initiatives like NSF, NIST, NIH, SPARC-USA and CNRI organised a meeting together with RDA and GO FAIR on FAIR Digital Objects and FAIR Digital frameworks. The meeting took place in Washington where European delegates presented the consensus proposal. After intensive discussions, broad consensus was reached. This was followed up by a similar meeting in Beijing, associated with the CODATA conference, where the consensus was broadened to China, Malaysia, Japan and other Asian country representatives as well as Africa, and Australia. In fact the basis for cross cloud interoperability could very well be this FAIR Digital Object minimal agreement, leaving maximum freedom to operate at the infrastructure and application levels in the various interoperable sister clouds.
Several representatives of the EOSC Executive Board will attend the next planned meetings (Paris Oktober 28-29, 2019) and Washington (December 5-6, 2019) on this subject.
