NICIS: Stepping Stones to a Cyberinfrastructure Commons

NICIS: Stepping stone to a SA
Cyberinfrastructure Commons?
Bruce Becker,
SANREN Competency Area,
Meraka Institute, CSIR
bbecker@csir.co.za
CHAIN REDS Conference
Open Science at the Global Scale:
Sharing e-Infrastructures, Sharing
Knowledge, Sharing Progress
20150331
15/03/31 CHAIN-REDS Final Conference 1

Bruce Becker | bbecker@csir.co.za | CSIR | CHAIN-REDS Final Conference | 31/03/2015
Outline
●
“The” Commons ? Some commons...
●
What is this “Open” you speak of ?
●
What is Open ?
●
What is an Open Commons ?
●
Systems Thinking for Cyberinfrastructure in South
Africa : NICIS
●
Implications
●
For researchers, developers and operators
●
For the economy
●
For the region

Wherefore art thou ?
What does it mean
to be a commons ?

Give me a signal...

Dear Internet...
… belonging to or affecting
the whole of a community

Hm. Creative Commons ?
http://creativecommons.org/
...helps you share
knowledge and creativity
Develops
Supports
Stewards
Digital
Infrastructure

Hm. Wikimedia Foundation ?
A database …
to which anyone
can contribute

Hm. Flikr ?
The key goal of The Commons
is to share hidden treasures
from the world's public […] archives.
https://www.flickr.com/commons

Everybody comes from somewhere
Jenny Hallward

Everybody uses the Commons
in their own way
Jenny Hallward

What is a Commons Anyway ?
… belonging to or affecting
the whole of a community...
...anyone can
contribute...
Share

The Commons, Openness and
Science
“The more we understand about science and its complexities,
the more important it is for scientific data to be shared openly”
http://creativecommons.org/science
“Science == Openness” ?

Systems Thinking
ORDER ENABLES CREATIVITY

(Complex Adaptive)
Systems Thinking
●
The number of elements is sufficiently large that conventional descriptions (e.g. a system of differential
equations) are not only impractical, but cease to assist in understanding the system. Moreover, the
elements interact dynamically, and the interactions can be physical or involve the exchange of information
●
Such interactions are rich, i.e. any element or sub-system in the system is affected by and affects several
other elements or sub-systems
●
The interactions are non-linear: small changes in inputs, physical interactions or stimuli can cause large
effects or very significant changes in outputs
●
Interactions are primarily but not exclusively with immediate neighbours and the nature of the influence is
modulated
●
Any interaction can feed back onto itself directly or after a number of intervening stages. Such
feedback can vary in quality. This is known as recurrency
●
Such systems may be open and it may be difficult or impossible to define system boundaries
●
Complex systems operate under far from equilibrium conditions. There has to be a constant flow of
energy to maintain the organization of the system
●
Complex systems have a history. They evolve and their past is co-responsible for their present behaviour
●
Elements in the system may be ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole, responding only
to the information or physical stimuli available to them locally

The National Integrated
Cyberinfrastructure System

VISION: national leadership in the provision of a comprehensive Cyber-Infrastructure,
essential to 21st century advances for South African research, education and innovation.
MISSION: increase knowledge creation through provision of a national platform of
essential Cyber-Infrastructure.
1715/03/31
PRINCIPLES
• Joint planning and budgeting
• Good governance
• Visibility of CI services
• Sustainability
• Constructive stakeholder
engagement
NICIS: TIER 1
Advanced Services
Governance
Strategy Advisory
Board
Senior
Management
User and
Community
Inputs
NICIS: A System for
Cyberinfrastructure

15/03/31 CHAIN-REDS
18
+
NICIS Components: Network

15/03/31 CHAIN-REDS 19
NICIS Recommendation:
CHPC in essentially its current form should take on the role of the Computing
Services area, with some changes to its mandate.
NICIS Components: Compute

NICIS Components: Data

Nice kit ! ...
What about the people ?

“Nous sommes tous de jeunes
barbares
que nos jouets neufs émerveillent
encore.”
- A. de Saint-Exupery
“Terre des Hommes”
Une Terre Pour Tous
http://aaroc.github.io/blog/2014/11/26/Terre-des-hackers

La verité pour l’un, fût de bâtir,
[…] elle est, pour l’autre, de
l’habiter.
Pour le colonial qui fonde un empire, le sens de la vie
est de conquérir.
Le soldat meprise le colon, mais le but de cette
conquete n’etait-il pas l’etablissement de ce colon ?
[…]
Le Colon et le Soldat

Nous étions autrefois en contact avec une
usine compliquée […]
Au delà de l’outil, et à travers lui, c’est la vielle
nature que nous retrouvons,
celle du jardinier, du navigateur, ou du poète.

Open Commons as Exchanges
●
Interoperability:
●
Develop standard interfaces to common services
●
Coordination of OLAs and SLAs to provide coordinated operations
●
Core services to support 3rd party and community contribution
●
Accounting
●
Monitoring
●
Identity and Service Federation
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Specialisation and Skills
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Re-Use : Develop “Building Blocks” and donate them to the commons
●
Reward Structures : Make it worth the while to do things for the long-
run

Implications for … “Commoners”
Educators
Researchers
Developers
Operators
http://brucellino.github.io/blog/2015/02/24/ECommonsStrategy/

Implications:
Teaching and Research
●
Teaching and Research in the same environment
●
Path to scale from university or group resources
to national or regional infrastructure
●
Skills developed throughout, fed back into the
commons
●
The use of the commons becomes part of standard
practice in teaching and research
●
The commons is assured of new ideas, skills and
stimulus.

Fork my Science
●
Science faces a reproducibility crisis:
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/reproducibility/
●
Scientific output is the result of Data, Algorithms,
Applications, Workflows – and interpretation
●
Reproducible science:
●
Discoverable
●
Citable
●
Executable
●
Accessible

Fork my Infrastructure
●
Big science often requires and builds it's own
infrastructure
●
LHC, SKA, CORDIS, H3ABioNet
●
Often developed entirely in parallel to “national” infrastructure
●
Often new techniques and technologies are invented
in these large projects
●
Are they shared, improved and supplemented with
other players in the commons ?

Fork my Infrastructure
●
Operations, best practices encoded
●
Open Infrastructure means Open Code
●
https://github.com/AAROC/DevOps
●
Everything = Code
●
You can test, validate, reproduce research
infrastructure
buildbuild passingpassing

Implications for the economy
●
Where will all the Ph.D.s go ?
●
An Open Commons means expertise can cross
boundaries
●
Technical (tools, applications, methodologies)
●
Institutional (cross-cutting, collaborative activities)
●
Private and public enterprise using the same
infrastructure
●
standardisation around a common set of tools
●
Innovation of new services with-reusable components
●
People develop transferrable skills
Research
Software
Engineer
Infrastructure
Architect
(DevOps)

Implications for the Region
●
Is NICIS a Commons ?
●
No. It can become aspects of one, particularly bringing
order.
●
Is there a Regional Commons ?
●
No. There is an embryonic regional infrastructure
●
EGI.eu / FedCloud provides a very good reference case
●
What's taking you so long ?
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The lack of order and coordination
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The erosion of the commons

Conclusions

Conclusions
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A Commons allows sharing, and community development
●
Specialisation and markets can emerge
●
Cyberinfrastructure is a complex undertaking
●
It needs to be addressed as a system
●
Placing the right constraints on it can make it work
●
Cyberinfrastructure is expensive – but also cross-cutting
●
Open exchanges create lively ecosystems
●
Cyberinfrastructure is public
●
Openness, accountability, transparency and constituency are
crucial to its success

NICIS: Stepping Stones to a Cyberinfrastructure Commons

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