General strategy

1. General strategy

2. Introduction • Global “financial crisis” • Beginning to cascade into GBIF • Now thinking about the forward strategy and next work programme • Nodes are likely to be more important in this than ever; nodes and GBIFS need to work together

3. Process so far • Initial think piece from GBIFS; increased focus on “services” and a set of potential applications • Reviewed by HoD • Meeting with GBIFS, Nodes Chairs and Science Chairs • Revising all of this into a work plan

4. Current strands of work plan • Governance • Publishing facility (tools) • Network of BIFs • Knowledge network • Biodiversity information (content) • Discovery and access (portal) • Science and policy relevance (users)

5. Current strands of work plan • Governance • Publishing facility (tools) • Network of BIFs • Knowledge network • Biodiversity information (content) • Discovery and access (portal) • Science and policy relevance (users) Nodes input will be very important across all of these

6. Nodes current approach • Currently finalising a participant strategy up to GB20 • Aims to: • Identify key priorities with sharp deliverables • Coordinate efforts • Ensure participants and GBIFS work more closely together • Generally testing whether we can deliver and how

7. Participant strategy • Broad areas are: • Identifying key uses (at regional level) and gaps to delivery of these • Development of Nodes Portal Toolkit • Tools to improve data quality • Developing a library of existing tools and developments • General capacity building

8. Working with GBIFS • In the past have struggled to get the right join up and engagement • Now trialling small focus groups which include nodes and GBIFS (like country pages group) • These help ensure: • Genuine users (through requiring commitment) • Join up between GBIFS and nodes • Broader coordination • Strategy for communication / liaison

9. Current strands of work plan • Governance • Publishing facility (tools) • Network of BIFs • Knowledge network • Biodiversity information (content) • Discovery and access (portal) • Science and policy relevance (users)

10. Radical prioritisation – this year • Governance • Publishing facility (tools) • Network of BIFs • Knowledge network • Biodiversity information (content) • Discovery and access (portal) • Science and policy relevance (users)

11. Governance • Regionally how good is co-ordination / how can we improve it? • How does it fit with the GBIFS roles? • Thinking about engaging with HoD at GB20 (and more generally)

12. Publishing facility (tools) • Engagement in the three groups: • Data quality • Nodes Portal Toolkit • Library of developments • More generally, beyond these, do we have the tools we need?

13. Biodiversity information (content) • We have tried to mobilise around a specific theme: • What are the lessons learned? • How could we improve this area?

14. Science and policy relevance (users) • What are the priority uses / users? • How closely aligned to the focal themes: • Large-scale data • Vegetation data • Invasive alien species • Support for taxonomy • Collaboration with other biodiversity informatics activities • Are we close enough to our users or how do we engage? • What about ideas like Africa’s Science Committee?

15. Summary • Through this phase of GBIF Nodes are likely to become increasingly important • Think hard about what is most critical for the GBIFS to delivery (enablers) • Begin to organise ourselves to demonstrate and test the capability of the nodes • Start with the strategy for this year