EuroHPC opens up new opportunities for competence development, cutting-edge research and the development of data-driven business such as platform economy and artificial intelligence.
- Europe's strengths are openness, transparency and the rule of law, which are in Europe's DNA, Veispak emphasized.
The EU is also investing in data-intensive research through the European Open Science Cloud. The aim is to create a comprehensive European service environment for sharing the results of publicly funded research. There are still challenges to the transparency of data.
"Barriers are more about regulation than technology," Veispak pointed out.
“Long-term storage of data is our responsibility to future generations. We don't know what the data will do in 50 years' time, but with certainty more than we can do today, Veispak said.
RDA Secretary General Hilary Hanahoe emphasized the unique importance of grassroots work by RDA members, both for research and for societies around the world. RDA is a community of nearly 9,000 members that develops concrete tools for sharing data across national and scientific boundaries. There are about 250 Finnish members in the RDA.
Heikki Mannila , President of the Academy of Finland , and Tuuli Toivonen , Assistant Professor of the University of Helsinki , also spoke at the opening ceremony . Mannila encouraged the audience to consider what new skills the use of data will require in the future not only for researchers but also for students. Toivonen expressed concern about the mass of data depicting human activity becoming the private property of large, mostly American, companies.
- Who really has the right to the data? Are we heading towards data oligarchy? Will Transparency Become Closed? asked Toivonen.
The 14th Biannual General Meeting of the RDA, established in 2012, will continue in Otaniemi, Espoo until Friday, October 25, 2019. With the theme "Data Makes the Difference", the event explores the potential of data in decision-making and societal challenges.
The event is co-organized by Aalto University, CSC - Center for Information Technology in Science Ltd, University of Helsinki, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Delegation of the Finnish Scientific Society and the RDA Europe project.
The largest contributors to the RDA are the European Commission, the US National Science Foundation and the Australian Government. The membership of the RDA is made up primarily of researchers, experts in research administration and research services, science publishers and science policy makers.
This communication was first published 23 October 2019 by CSC.
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