BioCommons presents: How to build national bioinformatics services

Earlier this month, BioCommons led the international 'Knowledge-sharing workshop on the design and operation of national- and international-scale bioinformatics services' as part of the ELIXIR All Hands 2021 meeting.

Bringing our experience in the development and operation of targeted infrastructure, platforms and services for bioinformatics, the BioCommons team and over 100 members of ELIXIR nodes came together to discuss shared ambitions, challenges and successes. The Australian perspective of nurturing the evolution of ‘grass roots’ and best efforts research infrastructure, to robust, highly available, supported and trusted services was presented. The BioCommons' collaborative approach that prioritises strong engagement with end-user and infrastructure operator communities was offered as a valuable path to understanding the research community's needs, helping direct the deployment and resourcing of appropriate infrastructure to maximise impact.

Excellent case studies were also presented from the ELIXIR Hub and nodes in Belgium, France and Spain. Capitalising on having so many knowledgable and powerful people engaged in the session, BioCommons took the opportunity to raise some big and difficult questions about funding sustainability at the national and international levels. With lots of references to keeping pace with emerging requirements and better demonstrating impact the sometimes contentious discussions ran the workshop overtime and generated 15 pages of notes! The workshop sparked plenty of new ideas and leads and we were thrilled with the response. 

BioCommons also showcased some of the work that Galaxy Australia and BioCommons are undertaking at the 'Strengthening the integration of Galaxy in the Tools Ecosystem' workshop, and participated in a raft of other discussions at workshops and talks across the ELIXIR All Hands meeting. The virtual event was held 1-11 June 2021 during our evenings in Australia. We were privileged to be invited to come together with the ELIXIR community in recognition of our collaborative partnership on many projects.