Your role: Policy maker

Introduction

As a policy maker, you are responsible for the development of a strategic data management framework and the coordination and implementation of research data management guidelines and practices.

It is essential that you have knowledge of local, national and international data-related procedures and regulations. General data concepts have to be translated into practical guidelines for organisations and collaborative projects.

Close collaboration with policy-related roles such as directors, project coordinators and funders is vital for this role.

Data management responsibilities

As a policy maker you are coordinating and aligning efforts on the quality, security and management of institutional or collaborative project data.

In your role of policy maker, you may need to:

Advise, develop and monitor a RDM policy, institutionally or nationally;
Ensure compliance of the RDM policy to codes of conduct and regulations, including ethical and legal compliance;
Align the RDM policy to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles and the principles of Open Science;
Identify the requirements of adequate data-infrastructure for RDM to comply with the institute’s RDM policy and alignment to (inter)national data-infrastructure and tools;
Determine the adequate level of knowledge and skills on RDM;
Maintain a network of aligned RDM expertise inside and outside the organisation or the collaborative project.

Data management guidance

RDMkit pages

The Compliance page helps comply with the institution policy, including legal and ethical aspects.
The National resources pages point to country-specific information resources such as local funding agencies and research councils, and information on local policies for open science, national regulations on data ethics, and domain-specific infrastructures and tools.
Data protection helps to make research data compliant to GDPR.
Data sensitivity helps to identify sensitivity of different research data types.
Licensing gives advice on how to assign a licence to research data.
Data management plan guides through writing a data management plan.
Project data management coordination gives support in coordination and organisation of RDM in collaborative projects.

Other resources

Contributors