Enhancing Research through IT Expertise

EnhanceR is the continuation of the eScience Coordination Team (eSCT) project, moving and evolving the services it provides into the era of national services for digital information. It continues consortium from eSCT, made up of specialist Research IT support units from leading academic institutions, adding a new partner who has moved into research IT support during eSCT.

The eSCT project piloted a collaborative consultancy and support service, setting up initial structures and processes. EnhanceR takes a longer view, strengthening the service, refining processes and looking toward medium and long-term sustainability. It aims to establish an effective national service for the support of Research IT in the Swiss Academia, and to integrate with the program’s national strategy as described in the White Paper for a Swiss Information Provisioning and Processing Infrastructure 20201.

This shift to more sustainable models requires negotiation with customers and funding agencies, greater harmonisation among contributing support teams, greater engagement with research groups and discussion with partner institutes to integrate the emerging services into their long-term plans.

EnhanceR will advance this work through new efforts, specifically on outreach, on provider harmonisation and on working together with stakeholders and swissuniversities to support and contribute with the National Organisation. It proposes a hybrid funding model to facilitate the service adoption by the user community and, at the same time, to progressively transition towards possible long-term structures.

The result of this will be a better service, more effectively exposed to customers, easier to use and better integrated with the ongoing development of a national research ecosystem and National Organisation, and therefore one that can be relied on in the long-term. It will provide researchers with a platform for optimising their research activities and reducing the time-to-solution, which will make them more competitive in their respective domains.