STICG Meeting Information from October

Agenda
Scientific and Technical Information Coordinating Group
February 5, 1998
1:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Room 5E-069, Forrestal

1:30 p.m. Opening Remarks............................................................................Dr. Walter Warnick

1:45 p.m. STI Management across the Federal R&D Agencies.................Bonnie Carroll (IIa, Inc.)

2:15 p.m. Electronic STI Management Concept...........................................Karen Spence (OSTI)

3:45 p.m. R&D Project Summaries....................................Susan Tackett and Mike Frame (OSTI)

4:00 p.m. Principles of Technical Reporting......................................................Marvin Singer (FE)

4:30 p.m. Summary/Next Steps...............................................................................Walt Warnick

Theda Bagdy, HR-4	Janice Brown, Oakland Ops.	Bill Buchanan, OSTI
Bonnie Carroll, IIA	Charlie Caulkins, PO-81	Gwen Cowan, HR-51
Cynthia Crego, FNAL	Denise Diggin, HR-224	Carol Duncan, LLNL
Kathy Ford, RW-54	Mike Frame, OSTI	Mark Gilbertson, EM-52
Michael Godin, EM-52	Michael Hoffman, GC-62	Larry James, OSTI
Sharon Jordan, OSTI	Bob Marlay, PO-81	Betty McLaughlin, DP-15
Kathy Macal, ANL	Deborah Nance, OSTI	Alan Schroeder, EE-70
Jeanne Sellers, SRS	Marvin Singer, FE-1	Paul Smith, ER-14
Karen Spence, OSTI	Bruce Style, BNL	Susan Tackett, OSTI
Kathy Waldrop, OSTI

Opening Remarks: Dr. Walter Warnick, Director of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), welcomed the group and noted that several guests had come from the two-day Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) meeting. He then introduced Bonnie Carroll, the Executive Secretariat of CENDI. CENDI as an interagency cooperative organization composed of Scientific and Technical Information (STI) managers from Commerce, Energy, National Library of Education, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Library of Medicine, Defense, and Interior. CENDI members represent the technical information organizations that perform functions similar to what OSTI performs for DOE.

STI Management Across Federal R&D Agencies (Bonnie Carroll, Information International Associates): Ms. Carroll briefed STICG on the similarities and differences in STI management among Federal R&D agencies. The main product of the R&D program is STI. DOE's R&D program, primarily conducted through contractor-operated national laboratories, is more decentralized than most agencies.

A 1990 Office of Technology and Assessment (OTA) study indicated that scientists and engineers involved in R&D spent between one-quarter and one-half of their time on information-related activities. Translated into dollars, that is an important role for information in the R&D process.

While all R&D agencies have STI programs, they meet their information requirements in numerous ways. Three have national libraries: the National Agricultural Library, National Library of Medicine, and National Library of Education. Some have centralized agency-wide programs, like the science mission agencies that have grown up: DOE, DOD, NASA. Some are centralized at a sub-organization such as the Department of Interior, which has programs centralized at a sub-level like the US Geological Survey. There is also the decentralized program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Ms. Carroll pointed out that science and scientific communication is fundamentally changing. Technology is both enabling and confounding. Science backgrounds and technical knowledge are becoming requirements for information managers, and user expectations have changed with greater awareness of the computer age. Surrounded by opportunities for electronic information, there is still the need to fund a management function. The new information architecture is not only a technical fix, but it has national policy impacts, with many other issues and questions to be resolved by the professionals in the Federal R&D and STI community.

Dr. Warnick joined Ms. Carroll to emphasize that, as we transition from paper distribution and get into the world of electronic exchange, many things are going to change with it. Those outside the information community do not fully appreciate the magnitude of the changes involved.

Concept of Electronic STI Management (Karen Spence, OSTI): In 1994 the Department-wide STI community revised the DOE Order that deals with the management of STI, laying the foundation for a decentralized electronic information environment. Last summer, the STI community collaboratively developed a new "Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Strategic Plan" that actually began the transition process. The Plan focused on having STI accessible and recognized by the global community, which tracks very closely with Dr. Krebs' recent planning effort within ER to focus on getting ER's R&D efforts recognized and appreciated, at the Congressional level and by the general public.

OSTI and the STIP participants are working together to transition from the paper-based world to electronic processing. (See Concept) Some of the drivers are: changing technologies, changing end-user expectations, and reduced budgets. The OSTI environment is changing by working more collaboratively with the DOE sites. A new electronic document management system will be in place by October 1, 1998, to automate the process. It will require fewer people to operate and also allow a broader range of electronic formats. The new system configuration also has a reduced metadata record. The Energy Sciences and Technology Database has about 120 data elements. By streamlining the process, around 25 elements will be used. OSTI will continue to coordinate the decentralized efforts and be the central locator and repository.

One impact of decentralized electronic information is that the sites will have to properly review information before it is posted on the Internet. Sites are going to create the metadata and provide it to OSTI. If sites choose to host the information themselves, OSTI can point to it using the URL. STI won't reside in one place and will be accessed at multiple sites across the DOE complex. The DOE and contractor STI community is working together and sharing ideas on how to do business better, as reflected in the following presentations from the four STIP Goal leaders.

STIP Goal 1 Status Report (Bill Buchanan, OSTI): The Goal 1 objective is to provide DOE internal and external customers with the STI they need. The first strategy is to move from a paper-based centralized activity; as of October 1, our primary focus for processing DOE's STI will be electronic. The Goal 1 team developed the shortened DOE announcement record. Another strategy is to develop a list of Departmental subject categories and keywords to categorize DOE's STI. Even though the information is going to be made available in a decentralized way, we still need a central, comprehensive index of all STI to meet the Department's statutory requirements and to have a reasonably efficient and timely way of searching the decentralized information.

Dr. Warnick commented that all components of the STIP collaboration need the HQ's funding programs to be involved. The laboratories want fewer mandates and requirements, plus more of a role in deciding how to get things done, including technical reporting. The laboratories are also concerned because STI is included in Business Management Reviews rather than technical program reviews. Having STI in a business review implies that the information is an overhead item, such as security and finance, rather than having STI viewed as the result of the R&D.

STIP Goal 2 Status Report (Bruce Style, BNL): Goal 2 has focused on consortium purchasing of technical journals for the DOE community, as a needed area for collaboration. The cost of serials is going up about 10% a year. The objective is to negotiate with publishers or vendors to obtain an umbrella agreement which individual sites could take advantage of. A short-term goal is to have one successful agreement that will encourage other publishers and skeptical sites to join the program. Steps are: (1) identify publishers and vendors that may be interested; (2) contact DOE sites to determine interest; (3) gather profiles from interested sites and confirm interest; (4) present the site statistics to the publisher/vendor and negotiate the best price for the best package; and (5) notify interested sites of the pricing agreement, available to the whole DOE community.

The American Physical Society (APS) and Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) are participating in a pilot by making their electronic journals available to HQ. Hopefully, through this effort, other DOE and contractor sites can expand on those agreements. Other possible agreements are being explored.

STIP Goal 3 Status Report (Carol Duncan, LLNL): Goal 3 is promoting the use of best business practices to ensure effective life-cycle management (LCM) of STI. Activities have included creating a draft R&D cycle flow diagram and identifying some of the business practices needed for accessing STI through EnergyFiles (http://www.osti.gov/EnergyFiles). Stages of LCM are: STI identification, creation, determining the output media, review, release, editing, production, output, distribution and preservation. At the last STICG meeting, the relationship between R&D activities and STI deliverables was discussed and the need was identified for a better understanding of how the R&D funding tracks to the STI deliverables. The process needs to show what the program managers' roles are, as well as the contracting officers, technical information officers and others, and the entire relationship to STI. The R&D cycle starts at the formulation of an idea and ends with the archiving the STI product. It is currently unclear at what point (or if) specific STI deliverables are identified. For example, one piece of ER guidance stated STI is to be published in open literature, while another specifies an annual report. When the PI does the work, an STI product is created; but it is not the PI who submits it to OSTI - that has been the role of the STI organization at the various sites. Good communication is essential. However, since the sponsor of the work usually cannot be identified on the STI product, the connection between the R&D project funder and the resulting STI is weak. Goal 3 will continue to look at various mechanisms to close the loop. STI should be created electronically; the information should be made available to OSTI because that is the Department's mechanism for wide distribution of the information; and it should also be provided to the program managers who ensure programmatic needs are met.

STIP Goal 4 Status Report (Jeanne Sellers,Westinghouse Savannah River): Ms. Sellers reported on Goal 4 activities supporting customer-driven STI products and services. STIP participants have a goal of electronic delivery of the full-text STI. Goal 4 established some technical considerations for electronic STI formats, looking at establishing standards, consistent with sites' and OSTI's missions and capabilities. Considerations included file formats and accessibility, search parameters, metadata, full text, electronic linking, and protection. STI has a very high retention and reuse; it is not just going into storage. With that in mind, Goal 4 recommended that the metadata file be done in SGML, HTML and XML. Full-text files would go through a 5-year transition period. Currently, sites can send in material electronically to OSTI in TIFF, PDF, HTML, SGML, and Postscript. These are being expanded to add popular word processing formats and get more people involved. The STIP recommendation is to adopt formats which will ultimately transition to SGML, HTML, and XML.

DOE R&D Tracking System Update (Susan Tackett, OSTI) Ms. Tackett described the R&D Tracking System as the Departmental tool used to track R&D projects. The scope of information in the database includes M&O-administered contracts, direct contracts and grants, cooperative agreements, work for others and LDRD. The system was directed initially in early FY 95 by Deputy Secretary Curtis. The CFO has centrally managed its application since development was completed in September 1995. It is operated and maintained by OSTI. One additional feature was to track STI deliverables to the R&D projects using unique project ID numbers, which has become even more visible with IG's recommendation and interest in accounting for and acknowledging results of R&D work performed. The FY 97 data cycle has resulted in 12,246 projects being collected. Enhancements included edit capability used in the DOE review; addition of CRADA reporting; access across the laboratories; and redesign of the R&D Home Page. The Home Page is a good tool to follow progress throughout the data cycle, as well as access news, guidance, and statistics. Additionally, the R&D Project Summary web database was developed by OSTI; it was endorsed by the R&D Council for announcing R&D projects to the public.

Principles of Technical Reporting (Marvin Singer, FE): Management of R&D has been reviewed many times in the Department, including the recent contract reform effort, the Galvin Task Force, and Yergin Task Force. Each focused on unnecessary and costly management tasks or oversite. A result was setting up of the Laboratory Operations Board and the R&D Council. In the review of Fossil Energy, Deputy Secretary at the time Charlie Curtis got very interested in the whole reporting process. The Deputy Secretary asked the R&D Council to develop a Departmental position on technical reporting.

This set of reporting principles were developed: Reports that the Department technical program managers ask for should fulfill a need. For universities, annual reporting should be the norm. The frequency of the reports should be appropriate. Informal communication is encouraged, and the technical program manager is to be in communication with the research performer. Finally, electronic reporting is preferred. These principles were approved by DOE last fall. Fossil Energy agreed to be a pilot for implementing the principles. Actions being taken (with target date of March 15th for implementing) are: the checklist used for the technical program managers is being revised, and use of this instrument should be considered by the program manager; for existing contracts with less than a year remaining, no changes will be made. Others will be carefully reviewed and evaluated for changes to the reporting requirements.

Summary/Next Steps: Dr. Warnick asked the HQ STICG members to take back to their organizations these messages:

Other announcements are: the first week of May, OSTI has a meeting in Oak Ridge, TN, called InForum '98 Everyone here is invited. We have two interesting keynote speakers: the Director of the National Library of Education, Blane Dessy, and Marty Blume, who has a leading role in the American Physical Society. Dr. Blume is going to talk about his vision for the future of electronic journals. Dr. Warnick will be presenting his concept for a National Library of Energy Science and Technology.