SSI: The UK Software Sustainability Institute

This proposal seeks to gain support for the next five years for the UK Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) that will work in partnership with research communities to identify key software that needs to be sustained.Researchers today from many different disciplines rely on software to carry out high quality research. This software must be able to serve the changing needs of the researcher to remain relevant. It must be able to change, adapt, and travel with the researcher on the journey of exploration, innovation and discovery which embodies leading research.Software sustainability is the key to this journey; it is essential that software used in research is managed beyond the lifetime of its original funding cycle, and strengthened, adapted and customised for adoption by researchers within the founding community and outside, in other communities to create a impact which can be transferred to future generations of researchers.The sustainability of important research software requires partnership. Only through close collaboration between software developers and scientists can advances be made both in software development and domain sciences. This is not a radical view. One of the most successful aspects of Agile development methodologies is a focus on ongoing interactions between developers and customers: business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. The benefits of Agile methods for scientific software development are greater than for business software; and our experiences through our work as OMII-UK underline this emphatically. Through programmes such as ENGAGE and eDIKT2 we have worked in partnership with researchers to improve their software. As each community's requirements are different, the system we have developed is well suited to communities and software of varying maturity: one size does not fit all. We propose a Software Sustainability Institute for the UK which will establish a national focal point - a facility for research software users and developers - based around specialist software engineering skills for driving the continued improvement and impact of research software, using as its foundation the concept of Practical Peer Partnerships: bringing together key research groups within the UK with the skilled team members from our consortium to deliver a series of genuine partnerships focused on the improvement of vital research software through consultative advice, such as test design or help with development tools; collaborative partnerships, e.g. by helping with code refactoring; and long-term engagement, for cultivating the relationships which grow communities and harness the momentum of other activities. This will build on the partners existing connections to many different research communities, and to infrastructure initiatives such as the NGS, EGI, NESSI and PRACE.Our approach will ensure that software used in research is managed beyond the lifetime of its original funding cycle: it will be strengthened, adapted and customised for adoption by researchers, within the founding community and elsewhere, to create an impact which can be built on by future generations of researchers - ultimately to deliver new high quality research.

Who will benefit from this work, and how? - academic researchers will benefit from software - both their own and that developed by others - that can be relied on and can be used as the basis of their research. - researchers and developers who develop or extend software will have a facility that will assist them with the maintenance, expansion, exploitation and community development of their codes for the benefit of themselves and for others in the UK, and to make a wider impact internationally. We will explore a range of exploitation and valorisation channels and in particular open source development. Open development offers more than free software. Open development offers new collaborative possibilities for software users as well as software developers. - commercial and public sector researchers will have access to more robust software from the research sector, with the potential and incentive to contribute back. The SSI can achieve this by securing the software that underpins innovations and investigation and by maximising the ability of researchers to take-up software developed by others for the benefit of the UK as a whole. We already have significant links to industry and would pursue the exploitation of software under the remit of the SSI in order to get additional value from the commercial and public sector. - policy makers will benefit from the support of software which is used to define policy. In this proposal we show support from groups supporting decision makers in the areas of climate change, social mobility and changing populations, and transport / environmental pollution policy. Policy makers for research and innovation - national and international - will benefit from a facility that is expert at the issues underpinning software sustainability; experience in the field and a direct channel to the research community of contributors and users. - the wider public will benefit from the results of research which has a direct or indirect impact on their lives. In this proposal we show support from groups providing software that will lead to research in biofuels, climate models, cancer research, clinical trials, criminology and crop research, ultimately impacting this nation's health and wealth. Opportunity to benefit The SSI proposal is one of collaboration and partnership. Our proposed model of delivering software sustainability through practical peer partnerships between engineers and researchers is the best way to achieve value and impact. A range of schemes - consultancy, collaborative projects, support, networks, focus groups of user PALs , research nodes - built on the foundations of our experience and pre-existing collaborations are all there to ensure that researchers benefit. They will deliver high volumes of knowledge transfer and engagement to achieve wide-scale sustainability of research software. There is specific budget for the secondment of research staff in the field. We will leverage our connections with international organisations to amplify the impact of the software we help sustain. We will promote the importance of software sustainability using our strong presence in: technical standards bodies; scientific standards initiatives; major scientific networks; major international projects impacting UK communities in Europe and the USA and major international initiatives. We will build on our experience and encourage and assist key scientific software groups to adopt better development methods, identifying and eliminating duplicate activity, bring together islands of expertise to create critical mass in the community, foster the integration of similar software products and facilitate a fuller dialogue between developers and users. In doing so, the SSI will foster global economic performance, prevent wasteful reinvention, improve returns on initial research investments and ultimately improve the competitiveness of the UK by making our researchers more innovative and productive.