Data governance for responsible research

Responsible research is one of the three research principles at Monash University and Research Data Governance is one of the core areas for responsible conduct of research at Monash. Responsible management of research data requires significant investment of time, effort and resources from both institutions and researchers, but lack of clarity on institutional and researcher responsibilities leads to inconsistent data governance practices across the institution.

To address the inconsistencies, we developed a program to:
1. Clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of the institution and the individual researchers/Principal investigators
2. Develop a roadmap for addressing the capability gaps to perform the identified roles and responsibilities, which includes policies, processes, people, technology and literacy.

Our approach was
1. The ARC/NHMRC’s “The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018)” and the supporting guidelines in their “Management of Data and Information In Research” have been used to outline the responsibilities of the institution and the researchers. This has then been overlaid with the emerging concepts from the broader Data Governance frameworks used in industry.
2. A Gap assessment of capabilities available at the institutional level has been conducted through surveys, interviews and consultations.
3. Tools, guidelines and literacy programs available for researchers has been evaluated

The gaps assessment has been used to develop a comprehensive program plan to address policies, guidelines, tools and literacy programs required to roll out consistent data governance practices across the institution. This has complemented the application process for the data user accreditation under the DATA scheme.

To see the other public resources from the Research Data Strategy Team please visit our group page.