Open Science Work Flow Transformation and Training in Support of NOAA/NMFS   4

Background
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Western Acquisition Division (WAD), on behalf of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Office of Science and Technology (OST) is seeking possible sources able to provide professional services in order to implement the Open Science Work Flow Transformation and Training project. The background includes the White House Office of Science and Technology Science Advisory Board's recommendation to implement FAIR data principles, champion open source software, and apply consistent Open Science principles across NOAA. It also highlights the urgent need to transition to Open Science practices across NMFS and upskill the existing NMFS workforce to meet a variety of Open Data and Open Science mandates for federal agencies.

Work Details
The contractor is required to perform several tasks under this contract. Task 1 involves planning, developing, and implementing an Open Science community approach to mentoring across the NMFS centers/offices. This includes organizing bi-weekly meetings for NMFS Open Science mentors, community-building activities with Open Science communities, providing meeting summaries, and acting as the overall project manager for the activities planned by the NMFS OS mentor team.

Task 2 requires conducting team-based 2-month workshops on Open Science and reproducible scientific workflows for cohorts of 40 staff each. The contractor will assist in developing the nomination and selection of teams and staff for participation, organize pre-training Q&As, develop strategic training plans, run the workshops, coordinate with organizations working with the Open Science Community for DEIA Early Career marine scientists, develop performance metrics for the workshops, and report on recommended new training activities based on feedback from the workshops.

Task 3 involves coordinating the delivery of data science courses and workshops, including virtual courses focused on data science skills such as R, Python, Git, GitHub, Open Science workflows or any other identified skills gaps. Additionally, one workshop on geospatial data analysis in R and/or Python focusing on cloud-native workflows for big data is required. The contractor will manage communications, sign-ups and progress of NMFS staff in the online training program, evaluate the online training program, develop the workshop agenda for big data geospatial analysis, provide and manage a cloud development platform for participants as part of training program and workshop.

Task 4 entails amplifying the work by NOAA Fisheries Open Data and Open Science leaders across science centers and regional offices by helping create opportunities to showcase their work in existing channels (e.g. professional conferences) and by communicating this work directly with NOAA Fisheries leadership. The contractor will also develop a community engagement strategy, organize webinars to showcase the work of NOAA Fisheries Open Science for the wider NOAA Fisheries community.