SCOSS Family of Infrastructure exploring operational efficiencies – SCOSS – The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services

"How might Open Science infrastructures and services “interoperate” more to reduce redundancy in operational functions such as marketing, fundraising, human resources, finance, contract management, CRMs, and more?

The SCOSS Family is a network that provides a unique opportunity to experiment together and learn from one another. As a community, we are open to innovative ideas that will not only increase funding to Open Infrastructures, but also make these organisations more sustainable and efficient. At our recent SCOSS Family meeting, we challenged ourselves to consider a scenario where multiple organisations might share operational resources and expertise.

The proposal from Jennifer Gibson (Executive Director, Dryad) was to explore if consolidating some infrastructures’ operations could lead to an overall reduction in overhead costs, allowing each infrastructure to direct more funds towards its core mission. In the long-term, this “interoperation” could result in a more sustainable and interconnected infrastructure ecosystem.

In our discussion, three areas for exploration rose to the top:

1. Increase capacity in fundraising, as well as related marketing, sales and communications
2. Increase efficiency in business operations, particularly in project management
3. Increase knowledge-sharing among Open Science infrastructure / service organisational leaders on strategy, finance and governance challenges...."