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The Faculty of Information Technology is dedicated to the development of a unique portal to facilitate work with data

Publication date: 
2019/09/10
The groundbreaking Data Stewardship Wizard web portal, developed at the Faculty of Information Technology, CTU, facilitates the work of researchers and data administrators in the current trend of massive data volume growth. It is an extraordinary cooperation of Czech and Dutch institutions to solve one of the pressing issues of the present and near future - big data.

Data is an important phenomenon of contemporary society. Major contributors to this are Smartphones and the Internet of Things (IoT). And it is IoT, bioinformatics, astroinformatics, and other disciplines spewing petabytes of data every year. In general, the current trend of growth in data production can be attributed to the spread of computer technology to all areas of human life and disciplines. The project is carried out by scientists at the Center for Conceptual Modeling and Implementation (CCMi).

 
Data needs to be managed, maintained and accessed in some way. This brings not only technical and organizational challenges but also challenges in political and ethical terms (data confidentiality, licenses, etc.). In this context, a new profession has also emerged, the so-called Data Steward, who has extensive education and experience needed for planning and the correct and efficient handling of large, valuable and sensitive data. In the coming years, hundreds of thousands of such data managers will need to be educated around the world. The international infrastructure of life sciences data called ELIXIR is working to develop effective solutions. The Dutch node of ELIXIR together with the Czech node, namely the FIT CTU and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences, developed a unique web portal titled Data Stewardship Wizard. The portal aims to help these data administrators with their difficult task under the motto “from burden to benefit”. That is, from the burden of data stewardship to the benefits. 

Scientists are typically not experts in data management, but they have to cope with these tasks. The Data Stewardship Wizard is able to guide scientists towards the right data handling and management and is also an effective tool and training material for data stewards. It is used by ELIXIR and GO FAIR initiative to train them. This tool will make it easier for data scientists, or administrators, to design a tailor-made project.