Integrated Data Systems & Services (IDSS)

Overview

Scope. The IDSS program supports national-scale performant operational systems and services that broadly facilitate open, data-intensive and artificial intelligence-driven science and engineering research, innovation, and education. IDSS projects should be aimed to broadly impact the science and engineering research and education community in a transdisciplinary and demonstrably multi-disciplinary way, enabling researchers and educators from diverse domains and disciplines to utilize research data, integrate data, and connect data sources with other scientific resources such as computing resources, facilities, instrumentation and repositories. Projects that aim to primarily benefit a single science discipline, domain, project, or application are not supported. 

Emphasis on integration. The IDSS program supports projects that demonstrably contribute to the vision of an integrated, federated and accessible advanced research cyberinfrastructure ecosystem that meets the Nation’s foundational needs for world-leading data, computing, and networking capabilities.  Projects are expected to leverage and interconnect with other existing operational cyberinfrastructure systems and services and other data and relevant facilities, whether supported by NSF or by other entities, as appropriate to project objectives. Inline with this emphasis, all proposed projects, including collaborative projects, must be submitted as a single proposal in which a single award is being requested (PAPPG Chapter II.E.3.a). The involvement of partner organizations should be supported through subawards administered by the submitting organization.

Scientific data lifecycle. The IDSS program aims to develop a portfolio of projects that collectively enable data utilization pathways and workflows across the end-to-end scientific data lifecycle. The IDSS program has an inclusive and flexible view of the scientific data lifecycle that may include stages and functionalities such as acquisition, transfer, management, exploration, analysis, curation, sharing, synthesis, discovery, and archiving, as may be defined by a project or community. A given IDSS project need not support all stages of a reference data lifecycle but must be clear about how the project enables one or more scientific pathways through all or few stages of a lifecycle. 

Storage and curation. The IDSS program supports integrated resources, services and environments to enable hosting, manipulation of, and workflows for research data. The IDSS program does not support costs for permanent long-term hosting, storage, archival, and curation of the research data itself. Projects that involve partnerships, fee-based models, or other such mechanisms to support these long-term data storage and curation costs are encouraged. 

Innovation and adaptability: A portion of an IDSS project is expected to be dedicated to innovation and improvement of operational services over the lifetime of the award. Proposed projects designed to enable research communities to build customized tools and capabilities upon the IDSS-supported project infrastructure are also encouraged. Projects that have the goal of cyberinfrastructure innovation without operations expectations and plans are not supported. 

Relationship to other funding programs. Proposed IDSS projects should not be appropriate for funding by any other current NSF programs or solicitations. The IDSS program is complementary to other production/operations-oriented national-scale cyberinfrastructure programs supported by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) including the Advanced Systems and Services Program (ACSS) and the ACCESS coordinated services program. ACSS and ACCESS address advanced computing needs of the broad S&E community; the IDSS program focuses on data infrastructure. The IDSS program is also complementary to the OAC CSSI and CC* programs. CC* emphasizes institutional and regional capabilities and CSSI primarily supports data and software infrastructure development; IDSS supports national-scale operational projects. Prospective proposers of pilot- and prototype-stage projects should consider other OAC programs such as CSSI or other relevant NSF programs. 

Programmatic areas of interest 
Current areas of particular interest to the IDSS program include, but are not limited to and may involve a combination of:

• Projects that facilitate the connection of data sources with advanced computing resources and analytic environments in integrative ways for an appropriately broad array of use cases. 
• Projects that address the emerging data-intensive workflows and data integration needs of artificial-intelligence (AI)-driven research (including research about AI and research using AI capabilities). 
• Projects that focus on enabling one or more specific points in the data lifecycle applied at a national scale. 

Projects that enhance the ability of the research and education community to access and utilize open research data supported by other federal agencies are welcome, provided that such projects are not primarily benefitting a single science discipline, domain, project, or application, and are complementary to, not overlapping with investments being made by those other agencies for similar purposes. 

An organization may submit only one proposal as lead institution for each of Category I and Category II for each solicitation deadline but may be a subawardee on other Category I and II proposals responding to this solicitation. The restriction to no more than one submitted proposal as lead institution is to help ensure that there is appropriate institutional commitment necessary for responsible oversight, by the potential recipient institution, of a national data infrastructure resource. This restriction does not apply to Category III proposals. 

In the event that any organization exceeds this limit, any proposal submitted to this solicitation from an organization after the first proposal is received at NSF will be returned without review. No exceptions will be made. 

Category III. There are no restrictions or limits. 

IDSS offers the following three categories of proposals: 

• Category I. Development, deployment, and operation of novel national-scale integrated data systems and services, which may include interfacing with or leveraging other existing capabilities, systems and services as appropriate to the project. 
  • Between $10 million to $30 million for up to 5 years. Potentially renewable.
• Category II. Transition of established smaller scale, regional, pilot, or prototype data-focused systems and services to national-scale production/operational quality/level. This may also include enhancement and expansion of existing national-scale data-focused operational systems and services. 
  • Up to $9 million for up to 3 years. Potentially renewable.
• Category III. Planning grants for future potential development/deployment or transition/enhancement IDSS projects. 
  • Up to $500,000 for up to 2 years. Not renewable. 

Letters of Intent: Not required