Management Response and Action Plan – Evaluation of CANARIE

A — For inclusion in the report

The findings and recommendations of the Evaluation of CANARIE were provided to the Digital Research Infrastructure team of the Science and Research Sector (SRS) at ISED. Management has been consulted and agrees with the findings included in this report and will take action to address all applicable recommendations by February 2020.

B — For follow-up purposes - Detailed actions to address the recommendations in the report

Recommendation Planned Action on the Recommendation Responsible Official (position) Target completion date

ISED should consider reviewing CANARIE's eligible activities, particularly those pertaining to research software, research data management, and DAIR, to ensure that their objectives are clear and unique relative to those of other organizations in order to simplify the DRI landscape for the R&E community.

Budget 2018 committed $572.5 million dollars to implement a DRI strategy that takes into consideration the roles of current organizations within the DRI ecosystem, including the role of CANARIE. Key objectives of the DRI Strategy are to clarify roles and responsibilities to promote effective collaboration in the DRI ecosystem, and improve governance by bringing responsibilities for Advanced Research Computing, Data Management and Research Software into a single, new organization, with CANARIE remaining responsible for the network. Therefore, CANARIE will gradually ramp-down its activities in research software and data management during its planned 2020-2024 mandate, and will no longer receive federal funding for these activity areas once they are taken on by the recipient of the new DRI contribution program. The recipient of the DRI contribution program will be responsible for determining the future vision and governance framework for research software and data management.
In addition, a review of all of CANARIE's activities will be conducted as part of its next mandate renewal process, including the DAIR program.

Senior Director, DRI

February 2020

Consideration should be given to a review of expected outcomes in order to ensure that CANARIE's programs are aligned with its objectives.  ISED should review CANARIE's logic model to determine whether additional indicators and an associated data strategy should be developed to monitor CANARIE's impact on the commercialization of information and communication technology products and services.

A review of CANARIE's logic model, with particular emphasis on its Private Sector-supporting activities, will be completed as part of its next mandate renewal process.

Senior Director, DRI

December 2019