RDM Programme: Secure Research Environment (SRE) pilot resources

As part of co-designing a Secure Research Environment at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, the SRE initiative programme team developed a series of activities and resources to support the process. This collection of documents will be useful for those embarking on the journey to develop Trusted/Secure Research Environments, providing guidance through the process and the activities involved the co-design process.

The process involved engaging with the stakeholders, capturing user requirements, forming a co-design group, a landscape analysis of technical systems, validating proof of concepts, co-design workshops to develop processes and guidance, recruiting participants for the pilot and testing and evaluating potential solutions against technical and stakeholder requirements.

We recommend starting with the UoA-SRE-codesign-process-and-resources file as it links to the series of resources developed as part of the co-design activities during various phases of the initiative:

• Interview questions structured using the Five Safes framework to collect information on SRE system requirements and priorities from the stakeholders across the university,
• Empathy maps articulating a user's behaviours and attitude by envisaging the questions faced in their day-to-day activities, their pain points and how they will feel about them, who will influence them, and what tasks must be completed to achieve their (ultimate) goals.
• User stories translated into functional system requirements in SRE.
• Framework used to summarise participant's thoughts on the enablers or barriers for using each SRE option based on the prioritised list of features or attributes developed in the requirements phase (e.g., user interface, storage, ingress/egress, data custodian role, etc.).
• Request form developed as part of user (principal investigator) agreeing to terms and conditions of using an SRE and booking an appointment for consultation with SRE team.
• Workbook developed to collect project details including the people who need to access SRE and the compute requirement which needs to be available in SRE for the project.
• Pre-pilot survey to assess pilot participants understanding of the secure research environments and general awareness of working with sensitive data.
• Task list and feedback form for users outlining the main activities to be completed by the different roles in the SRE (e.g., Researchers and Data Managers) in two systems.
• Post-pilot surveys developed to assess the growth in knowledge/awareness of working with sensitive data post pilot, user experience of the SRE systems, helpfulness of support resources developed and overall participant's experience of SRE pilot process.
• Post-pilot interview questions to assess which system features/attributes research groups found useful, and which emerged as barriers.