With the “Digital Austria” initiative and the eGovernment Act coming into effect in 2020, the Austrian administration set a clear focus on digital transformation. 

Such a focus presents various opportunities for the research landscape: Digital processes facilitate communication between funding organisations, research institutions, researchers and ministries. They also provide qualitative, transparent and secure information. They have the potential to reallocate science and research resources and to support innovative cooperation platforms and synergies to strengthen Austria as a research location.

A key goal of digital transformation is to make available structured and electronically stored data that only needs to be collected once. This once-only principle is a fundamental principle of the EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016–2020 and a central focus in Austria.

Before the RIS Synergy project, however, data entry in research information systems was completely decoupled: For one, researchers had to fill in the CRIS databases of their research institutions to meet internal governance requirements as well as reporting requirements internally and to the ministries. For another, researchers had to enter the same data into the systems of funding organisations for application management. There were also similar activities in project approval and reporting processes in both systems.

Using standardised interfaces should minimise additional efforts and error rates when making duplicate entries and should facilitate implementing security and quality requirements.

The project consisted of two parts:

1. Interfaces
2. Concept Study for a Research Portal

Interfaces

First step was the analysis phase of “Interfaces”. User stories were described and use cases in seven working groups were developed: call information, project master data, research output, financial data, organisational structure and account management, standards, and data management plans. Use cases  were systematically described, grouped and analysed for technical feasibility, and then prioritised, since not all use cases can be implemented during the project.

The following use cases were realised within RIS Synergy:

• Distribute, retrieve and provide programme and call data via funding organisations
• Provide and retrieve project proposal data via funding organisations
• Provide and retrieve project data via funding organisations
• Provide and retrieve project output with DOI via research institutions
• Provide and retrieve authentication data of the research institution
• Provide and retrieve the organisation chart of the research institution

During the project it was also possible to realise further use cases:

• Run a pilot for the FFG masteraccount for universities
• FUNDify: Tool for maintaining and enriching research institution-specific call information
• Input tool: Application and project data provided by funding agencies can be accessed, compared, enriched and imported into the university's own system by universities.

In the implementation phase, pilot partners (universities and funding organisations) developed and realised interfaces. In the following pilot phase, precise documentation was carried out, which enables all Austrian research institutions to connect to the interfaces and use them.

Concept Study for a Research Portal:

Taking into account the interfaces developed as part of the project, the concept study establishes the framework for an Austrian national research portal.
It includes the following work packages:

• Analysis
• Thematic definition
• Variants

The analysis phase saw the formation of three working groups:

1. Target group analysis
2. Inter-country comparisons
3. Lessons Learned

The results of the analysis phase defined the topics that should be examined in greater detail. Based on these results, a recommendation for a potential Austrian research portal was developed.