Service packages purchased by the Ministry of Education and Culture for higher education institutions in 2018
The Ministry of Education and Culture has concluded an agreement with CSC on supplying service packages for educational, scientific, cultural and administrative needs.
The services help to enhance the operational basis of Finnish research and education and the structural development of higher education institutions. They also strengthen cooperation and IT system interoperability in education, science and culture and improve the interoperable solutions available to all higher education institutions. Most of the services for researchers provided under this agreement are supplied free of charge.
With the data management and computing development programme carried out between 2017 and 2021, the services will also be available to state research institutes operating under the auspices of other ministries. In addition to research use, data management services and research tools are now also offered for teaching at higher education and research institutions. The use of the services under the agreement will contribute for full-scale use of CSC's data management and computing environment, which will be updated in the coming years.
The Ministry of Education and Culture is purchasing the following service packages for higher education institutions:
- Higher education and research information network Funet
- Information management and architecture services for higher education institutions
- Analytics and data infrastructure services for the Ministry of Education and Culture
- National data infrastructure services for science and culture
- Data management and computing service package
Funet network services provide all Finnish higher education institutions and other organizations meeting the agreed membership criteria (such as state research institutes) with uncongested and reliable data connections in both Finland and internationally as well as network services that support research and education. The agreement also contains provisions on the basic services essential for the network infrastructure and supporting network use, such as the FileSender file sharing service suited for large datafiles and the training and expert services for Funet network cooperation. The Department for Higher Education and Science Policy will pay at least half of the costs arising from Funet network services on a centralized basis. The rest of the costs will be covered by funding obtained from higher education institutions and other member organizations.
Information management and architecture services for higher education institutions maintain and manage an overall view of higher education ICT services, the reference architectures for studying, teaching and research support and administration, the information model for higher education institutions and other separately agreed shared architectural descriptions and definitions of interoperability.
The Ministry of Education and Culture's data infrastructure services disseminate information from higher education and research institutions to the authorities as well as produce reports on the state of Finnish higher education institutions and research for the needs of the ministry. The aim is also to streamline communication over organizational boundaries on the basis of data reserves as well as to promote the use of information about higher education institutions and monitor its impact.
Services required in the digital preservation of research data and digital cultural heritage for expert consultancy, development, implementation and infrastructure services are provided under the national data infrastructure services for science and culture. Digital preservation of research data (FAIRDATA) is one of the areas developed as part of the service package. FAIRDATA provides a package that in addition to PAS development work also includes the updating of the IDA research data storage service and the development of the Etsin research data finder and the METAX metadata warehouse. FAIRDATA also includes services provided by other actors. Projects that have been granted separate funding are monitored through an annual agreement structure.
The data management and computing service package covers the maintenance of the data management and computing service package developed for the research needs of higher education and research institutions (DL2021) as well as expert services in the field of scientific and computing applications and methods for full-scale use of high-performance computing environment. Competence development needs and the measures required in the process are considered as part of the service package. The purpose of the service package is to strengthen the basis for high-quality scientific research in Finland.
The computing server environment includes the equipment, systems and software such as the supercomputer, superclusters, application and virtual servers as well as the other server platforms required for the environment, plus their storage and periphery systems and system software. The agreement also covers the maintenance, supervision, data security and development tasks of the computing server environment.
The content of the service packages and their objectives are laid out in sections 3.1–3.5 of the agreement.