The Ottawa Data Champions team is funded by the Alliance’s Data Champions Pilot Project. Our goal is to develop a pan-Ottawa data champion program and research data management (RDM) training program to improve the quality of data management and sharing in biomedicine. The team represents a collaboration between the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and the Faculty of Medicine, Library, and Office of Continuing Education at the University of Ottawa.
Our team includes content experts in RDM in different areas of medicine (e.g., pre-clinical, Indigenous, genetic sequences, clinical, routinely collected, and big data), implementation scientists, and information scientists. We have expertise in patient data privacy and, in continuing education methods, and in launching RDM education. Learn more about our team members.- Ottawa Data Champions team
We will conduct activities in 5 areas: 1) training and mentoring; 2) promoting and advancing RDM; 3) addressing disciplinary challenges; 4) informing future initiatives and 5) driving culture change.
Our activities will include launching an RDM in medicine speaker series, launching a website of discipline specific data resources (e.g., case examples of data management plans (DMPs) for different types of medical research), and implementing Data Champions program and a train-the-trainer RDM course.
Our vision is to launch this program in Ottawa with the view that it could be scalable nationally, after our initial pilot, and could be used as a core framework with customization across other disciplines. We are committed to evaluating the effectiveness of our program.
Research Data Management (RDM) has become a renewed priority for the Canadian Tri-agencies (CIHR, SSHRC, and NSERC). They released a new policy which will require: 1) researchers to submit data management plans (DMPs) as part of grant proposals; 2) research institutions to develop and make public RDM strategies; and 3) a goal to implement data deposits of funded research. The Digital Research Alliance of Canada has funded Data Champions groups to build research capacity and address the educational, infrastructure, and community needs of the research community to implement the Tri-Agency RDM policy.
