Objectives

i) To strengthen and substantially enhance the public scientific infrastructure services provided by the Species 2000 Catalogue of Life programme, including an array of novel services both at the popular and educational level, and at the electronic services level. This will involve engaging closely with the User and Partner communities through the networking tasks of WP 2, as well as working with the knowledge providers in the GSD Network of WP 3, and of the new Multi-Hub Network in WP 4.

ii) To strengthen and make secure the internal community services that take the raw taxonomic materials from an ecosystem of providers and synthesise it into the authoritative Species 2000 Catalogue of Life and its public infrastructure services. These internal services include the year on year production of the Annual and Dynamic Checklists; the work of the Editorial Team in taxonomic integration, editorial scrutiny and quality control; and the operational systems management needed to operate the internal and public services continuously.

iii) To undertake the financial and legal engineering needed to make the Species 2000 Catalogue of Life programme sustainable as a scientific infrastructure service on a European and global scale.

iv) To undertake the scientific co-ordination of the whole project whose central objective is to enhance and secure the public services for the Species 2000 Catalogue of Life.

Description of work (possibly broken down into tasks) and role of partners:

Task 5.1

Design, test and implement a preliminary batch of interface enhancements to the present public services, working with the Services Team.  

Task 5.2

Advise the Services Team on the sustainability of each of the new services in the prioritised list of proposals, and contribute to the triage by which the most feasible are selected for implementation.  

Task 5.3

Work with the Services Team to design the novel services that have been selected, and to co-ordinate their implementation, testing and launch.  

Task 5.4

Work with the Systems Design Team and WP 6 to enhance and operate the annual production service for the Annual and Dynamic Checklists, including unification of the admission gate for the two products, and the roll-out of the new e-2 system.  

Task 5.5

Enhance, secure and operate the editorial, scrutiny and quality control services for the unified production route, working with the GSD custodians in WP 3 and others worldwide.  

Task 5.6

Secure and operate the ongoing systems management for the internal and public services of the whole programme working closely with WP 6.  

Task 5.7

Work with the partner 8 (Sp2000) to establish an enhanced business plan for sustainability, and undertake the associated financial and legal engineering needed to implement this plan over the life of this project for continued operation by partner 8.

Task 5.8

Co-ordination of scientific, IT, networking and business model components of the entire project, including the interaction of this central work package with all the other work packages, and supporting the co-ordination work of the Services Team and the Systems Design Team.

Deliverables (brief description) and month of delivery:

D5.1 mth 12

Initial software improvements and streamlining incorporated into production of the enhanced Annual Checklist 2010, published on the web, and on CD/DVD. [25 PeM](D/PU)

D5.2 mth 24

Unification of the production process and admission gate achieved for the Annual (2011) and   Dynamic Checklists, published on the web and (Annual Checklist) on CD/DVD. [41 PeM](D/PU)

D5.3 mth 26

Business Plan for sustainable development of the services. [25 PeM](R/RE)  

D5.4 mth 34

New array of services available and launched with pack of publicity materials and electronic products. [55 PeM](D/PU)

Milestones

M5.1 mth 12

Base schema and associated tools accepted for editing and attaching databases.

M5.2 mth 24

First batch of new services implemented and under test

M5.3 mth 30

Second batch of new services implemented and under test.