Integrating loose ends at the 6th NFDIxCS Plenary Meeting
What further steps are necessary to take in order to create a national research data infrastructure for and with computer sciences? And how should the consortium partners work together to achieve this goal? These and other questions were the focus of the 6th NFDIxCS Plenary Meeting, which took place in Potsdam from the 15th - 16th of September 2025.
Apart from a few organisational questions, the consortium partners mainly reported on the tasks carried out over the past six months and the milestones to be completed in the next six months such as the data entry for the progress report.
The state of the overall architecture of the Research Data Management Container (RDMC), which is one of the core outputs, was also a focus of the plenary and was addressed by the integration workshop on the second day of the meeting.
During the first part of the workshop, project members formed small groups. After they selected a user story, their task was to outline a suitable workflow, identify the relevant components, and assign them to a specific area of the architecture. This exercise resulted in the creation of a variety of workflows which are now harmonised and should, subsequently, be integrated into a blueprint for the RDMC.
The interactive format of the workshop was further accompanied by two presentations, one on search and the other on security and privacy. Both of them not only enriched the discussions on the RDMC’s architecture, but also highlighted the diverse connections between the different task areas.
While the plenary meeting itself provided food for thought for all those involved, the setting of the meeting as well could not have been more inspiring. The plenary was linked to the INFORMATIK FESTIVAL 2025, which took place at the same venue and, thus, provided space for exchange and encounters with the larger computer science community.
