Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fiedel here on A Given Home Monday, and we're looking to the east today with Steve Zercher at Kansai Gaidai University in Kobe, Japan. We always need to look at the east, because we here in Hawaii have a better perception of the east than other places in the world. Japan is very positive for us, but Japan is having a big problem with coronavirus these days. Can you give us a little praisey on how the chart has moved up and down and down and up lately? Yeah, so we're under a state of national emergency now in Japan, so the Prime Minister decided to announce that a week or so ago, and that gave the local governments, initially it was in seven regions, the ability to issue edicts that people do stay in place and businesses close. So basically what you and Hawaii have been going through for what it's been about a month or so now, I believe, is now in place. Initially it was just for part of the country where most of the virus infections had been growing. And then a few days ago, the Prime Minister announced it for the entire country. So the entire country now is under a stay in place recommendation, and businesses are being encouraged to shorten their hours or in some case only have food be available on a delivery basis, like again in Hawaii, that happened just as I was leaving in March in Hawaii. Unfortunately though, the infection rates are still by Japanese standard, still increasing quite significantly on the order of three to four hundred a day, sometimes as high as five or six hundred. So even though we have been under this new regimen now for a fairly decent amount of time, the flattening of the curve as we've seen in other countries is not yet occurring. So it's still unknown whether or not we'll be able as a country to flatten the curve and have the infection rates go down to a manageable number and one at which the government would feel comfortable and people would feel comfortable opening up the schools again and being opening up the businesses again and so forth. So what's the hole in the boat Steve? Something is wrong. Something is wrong. These methods should be working. You should be able to flatten the curve if you have a well organized and enforced quarantine arrangement. Something is a problem. What is it? That's a good question. The recommendations, these statements from the government are non-mandatory. So even though in general Japanese people, Japanese culture is more obedient and more likely to follow statements from the government, there are businesses and people who are still going out and about and still conducting themselves in a way that they had been doing before the national emergency had been stated. Also it's hard to tell because there may be a legacy influence. These infections may be occurring because of infections or transmission that occurred a couple of weeks ago before the national emergency had actually begun or started. So the expectation is that those numbers will begin to go down as they have in other countries. But if they don't, it will be because the adherence to these rules are still not 100%. I would say probably 70% being followed, but that last 30% is still open.  Another good question, Jay, you're on your game today, so as usual. There's two reasons for that. One is the same thing that you experience in the United States. There's a reluctance on the part of the government to be too overly controlling on this because the influence on business would be so severe. There's always that question, if we move to a total shutdown, then the economy will get even worse than we know it is right now. And then also as a part of the nature of Japanese government, they do not actually, they claim to not have the right to order that. They can only recommend. They can only say, this is what we think you should do. And in most cases, that's sufficient. They don't have the right at a national level and also at a regional level to issue the mandate. They probably can do that if they want to, but they're saying that they cannot do that, so they're resistant or reluctant to do that. You know what tells me, I'll tell you what it tells me. Is it in the past, even within your years of teaching at Kobe? If the government said something, even asking for voluntary compliance, people were very likely to do it because that's the basic Japanese culture point. That's the way it works, you respect the people and authority. But things have changed. That's what it tells me. And that a few years later, the government makes a quote suggestion and everybody wants to follow it. They have changed. They have changed in their relation to the government. There's a sense of individualism. There's a sense of the societal fabric.  That could be a part of it. There could be an evolution of the perception of the role of government and the willingness to adhere to these recommendations. Another factor too is that there's certain cultural traps that this is exposing. One of them has to do with how business is conducted in Japan. But we talked about this in previous shows that Japanese employees are measured by the amount of time they spend in the office generally. There's a strong preference for people to work in the company and telework is something that's really not utilized very much in this country. Now, since the crisis has begun, there's been a lot of encouragement on the part of government and also by companies as well, some of them, to have the employees stay at home and do their work remotely. And that's having some effect at the commuting on the trains. You can see that the number of people are down, but still the trains are crowded during the work hours. So why is that? There's still this preference that if you're not in the office, you're not doing work. It's really not possible to do work outside of the office. And one small example of this that I talked with you before we started rolling on this is the use of a chop or the, it's called a Japanese honko. So it's required for business documents to be officially approved. That it has to go through a series of stamps by various offices. And this is done by an individual who has control of his individual honko or chop and only he or she has the ability to do that. So even if the employees want to stay at home, oftentimes they have to go to work in order to carry out that particular process, which is deeply embedded in Japanese business culture. And even though there's lots of software products that can simulate this, there's hundreds of them. Many Japanese companies have started this up. There's still this preference for this process to be done in person. That the sense is if it's not done in person, it's not official. So that's causing people to work. These are holes in the boat. And we'll talk about how they might be changing. But the changes are not sufficient to flatten the curve. And so I give you a prediction. I give you a prediction that whatever is coming down from the government is not sufficient to make people voluntarily comply. The curve will not be flattened or not sufficiently flattened. There'll be more cases, more deaths. And after a while, there'll be a blame game. And Abe won't last in office. And then somebody else will come in and say, no, you've got to stay home. You really have to. And then the curve will come down. That's tragic because it means that the cases between now and then, the deaths between now and then are not necessary. And the Japanese are learning the hard way. So are the Americans, by the way, would make a big difference there. Right, I think the approach to the crisis is similar between the two countries. That there's not been a clear strategy. And even when the stay in place announcements are made, they're not adhered to. So the government's vacillating somewhat on this. And also, it varies by region. So maybe the governor of one region will be more active and encouraging businesses in a stronger way to try and shut down. But where I live, for example, the governor is less active. So if he doesn't want to influence business negatively. So it's that, again, business versus health. Well, what do people in Japan think about? The contention that's going on now between business versus health. Between Trump's demand that everybody return to business, is inciting the right wing and Republican crowd to go protest and protest to open the economy up again. What do people in Japan think about that? They must have interesting reactions to that. That is being reported, but I think it's perceived as a fringe element. And certainly none of that is happening here. So one thing that Japan doesn't have is this kind of, they're fringe parties and especially on the far right. And every once in a while, you'll see them in the public. But in general, that type of activity doesn't occur. The role of religion, for example, in government is much less reduced. As opposed to the United States where evangelical groups have a lot of political influence, a lot of political power. So when it comes to the Trump people that kind of overlaps between politically right wing and then religious. So Japan doesn't have that. That type of reaction is not occurring here. So I think my impression would be if people here read about that type of activity, they just think that that's some kind of strange idiosyncrasy of the American political system. Well, it is. Can't imagine that. They were accurately, that's an accurate perception. Yeah, that's not happening here. I mean, people may not be happy with this and they may be breaking the rules. But they're not protesting. There's not a sense of, I think in general, people believe that the government has muddled, has not done this in a clear and comprehensive way. But they're making the best efforts and that generally they're doing the right thing to try and reduce the health impact. What about the technology? Japan's a very innovative place, a very robust kind of technology culture. You would think, and I know you have some examples of this, that there is movement. That there are things that are happening in the daily life in Japan that wouldn't have happened before. And then people are getting off old culture points and onto more innovative ones because of the virus. Can you talk about that? Yeah, yeah. So I'm within my micro environment as a dean at Kansai Gaidai University. I've been at the school for almost 10 years. I'm very familiar. I've grown accustomed to how things are run or managed. It's usually in a very slow, incremental way. Whenever I had made requests for changes in the past, usually the administration, I'm never quite sure who makes these decisions or how they're done. But the answer is generally no. But to my delight, I've discovered that in the last two months, as the department that I managed moved from in-class education to Zoom, like we're doing right now, education, that the administration recognizes that we're in kind of a special situation. And my requests for changes, like for example, processing expenses, in the past that had always been done in person, J, literally, you have to fill out a form and paper, submit it, get it approved, then you go by your file folders or whatever that may be, then you get the receipt and the file folders and you take them to the office that processes this and you show them the receipt and you show them the product that you bought. Can you believe that? This is how it works. So I sent a note a couple of days ago to the people who manage this and say, hey, look, we're being told not to come to campus. We can't show you the receipts. We can't show you the file folders or the paper. Can we do this digitally? And they said, oh, that's a very good suggestion, Steve. And we'll think about that in the back. So there are these types of accommodations that are occurring because I guess Japan recognizes, again, this is a micro level, but I think you can apply this to the country as a whole, that we need to do things differently. And sometimes it's really resulting in positive improvements, which should have been done years and years and years ago. Like the honko, the stamp that I talked about earlier, that should have been eliminated decades ago. But now it's clear that it has to go. So another example is that professors in the past have not been able to access the database resources, like JSTOR, for example, unless they were in the library. Oh, you cannot do research unless you're physically within the walls of the library. You cannot do it from home and log in. So I made that request a few days ago. Two hours, they said, OK, we can do it. Before, I was always told no. So this is one thing that's occurring underneath this crisis, which I think maybe will bode well for Japan once we get out of this six months from now, whatever it may be. Yeah, I think that's happening in the US, too, that sort of thing. I have similar examples to give you. But I noticed that these things we're talking about, both you and me, these things are not profound economic changes. They're not changes that deal with large concentrations of capital or sweeping differences in the way our capital structure operates. And at the end of the day, I just want to keep my eyes on this, and I'm sure you want to keep your eyes on it. We know we're going to be different. We know whether it's we're out of here in three months or six months or a year, we know it's all going to be different. Health care, for example, we know that it's sweeping. But the question is whether it'll be better or whether it will be more difficult to achieve a quality of life, whether we'll eat better, sleep better, be able to do the things we want to do, and whether our government will function better. Actually, I feel that it wouldn't be too hard for our government to function better here in these United States. That would be easy. Anything that happens would make that easy. But I think the changes could be really profound, and not just a matter of whether you need a chop, but changes that involve everything, all of our relationships with each other, with the material world, with the government, with other countries, with cultures. And that makes it through such an exciting time, although it's a little dangerous too. What are your thoughts about that? Yeah, I have that feeling as well that through a crisis, positive change can occur.  But if you step back from that and take a look at how society is being affected by this, and it is, I think the major point, Jay, is that it's putting people into a state of thinking or being open to change and to doing things in a different way. So one small example is in Japan right now, if you're in grammar school, you have no access to computers at all, which is remarkable, right? So my children who are going to Japanese schools for their grammar school days never saw a computer in school at all. And then we put them into international school into seventh grade, and it's required that they have a computer. And my boys are just shocked about that, right? So Japan had been planning for many, many years to introduce technology into the grammar school level, to have every child in school in Japan have a computer, which is a good thing, right? I mean, because that's the world that they'll be living in for the rest of their lives. It's always talked about and pushed into the future. But because of this crisis, it's going to happen now. Japan recognizes through this crisis that they're behind when it comes to introducing technology and having Japanese children grow up with it. So it's something that they feel comfortable using and will then therefore accommodate change on a faster basis using technology. So that set of macro level, we're talking big investment there and a huge impact on how Japanese education is carried out because of the crisis that the window for that, which is always like two or three years from now, every year, it was two or three years from now as we go forward, is happening now. The government is going to pass regulations and allow this to occur through this crisis. So that's a macro example of a fundamental change that will occur to society and have tremendous impact on business, whoever provides the computers, if it's Apple or somebody else, it's gonna be huge. Yeah, well, crises tend to reveal the inside of things. And you remind me of the mass arrests in Hong Kong these days over the weekend where the PRC arrested the Democrat, the democracy leaders, including what's his name, Martin Lee over there, which is really an astounding thing to do in the middle of a crisis. And the Chinese government has really not been up to a high moral plane on dealing with the crisis. They've made it hard for people unnecessarily so. And now, diverting everything to a really negative move in Hong Kong, why? It's hard to believe that they're doing this, but I can't imagine why. And I only mention this to say that there will be people who take advantage of the crisis. There will be opportunists, including political leaders who will use it for their own advantage. Some say that Trump is doing exactly that.  Yeah, I think that this crisis in Japan is also exposing some of the weaknesses in the leadership. We've had the same prime minister now for many, many years, prime minister Abe. And through, I would say primarily manipulation of the media and the use of political propaganda, not really based on results, but more on perception of results, he's been able to maintain popularity and control. But through the crisis, there's a big growing frustration with his lack of leadership. And sometimes he acts totally independent of others, makes decisions just on his own. And it's beginning to frustrate his coalition partners and also his popularity is beginning to go down. So at a macro level, what you're talking about, I mean, not the surveillance of people, what you're talking about in Hong Kong, but at a macro level, there may be a significant change in the Japanese government as a result of this crisis. And again, to get to your question, who will take his place? Will it be someone who can lead Japan forward? You know, Abe is more of a reactionary type of leader. He's thinking about more about the glories of Japan in the past. This is my perception, but Japan needs a progressive open-minded, courageous leader to move it to the next level. Otherwise, Japan as a country will sink from number three in the world to number four, five, six, seven, you know, it will drop down on the top 10 list of major economies. You can see that happening unless there's greater strength of leadership. So the crisis is creating the opportunity for maybe someone to come in who's like that, but I can tell you that probably we won't get someone like that. We'll get someone who's more or less similar to what we have right now. I'm sorry to hear that. What about the young people? I hate to be cynical about it. What about the young people that you run into in Kansai Gaidai University? The Japanese now, I'm not talking about the international crowd. Right. The Japanese, what are they like? They're sensitive to these issues. Are they aware of the possibilities? Are they thinking about becoming more influential in the society there? Where are the leaders coming from? Yeah, I don't have a sense of what they're thinking now because I'm not seeing them face to face anymore. We stopped that in the beginning of March. So it's been six, seven weeks now. I'm interacting with them, but it's through digital means. So I don't have a sense of that. Before that though, my sense was that the Japanese, and this is not, unfortunately, this is not a positive thing to say. They're apolitical, generally. And when they do express their preference on politics, it tends to be quite conservative, which is kind of counter to how youth is generally perceived. Younger people are tended, like in America, they're Bernie supporters and so forth, predominantly. My nephew in Hawaii was so disappointed when Bernie pulled out. I mean, he was apolitical up until Bernie appeared, and all of a sudden he became, hey, I really like this guy. This guy's good and he was depressed. I don't see that type of level of political engagement, generally, in the student state. When I asked him about what's going on, this is a pre-crisis. Have you read about this? And generally the answer is no. Well, it's a lot of people, not people in the U.S., a lot of kids like that here in Hawaii. And it's regrettable because now is the time we need them. And not to be ideologues about it, but just to be informed. But you raised one other question I'd like to ask you, we only have a minute left here. That is, so you have been engaged, and many faculty around the world have been engaged with your students online, on Zoom. And that's a different paradigm, it's a different way of teaching, different way of getting response. But it strikes me that inherent in what you're saying is that, although Zoom has Zoom-type programs, have a really powerful technological leverage in teaching students and in doing the classroom, so to speak. There are things that you miss, also. Maybe you can't provoke, engage, get their reactions, teach them, open their minds possibly in the same way as if you were flesh and blood. What do you think? Yeah, that is the observation of the professor so far. So we're kind of a small case study because we were teaching in class, we started classes in late January, so we went late January through February in person. And then like that, Abe made an announcement that all classroom engagement had stopped. So we switched over. And I met with the faculty just last weekend and we kind of discussed this. And I think that is the sense that the engagement with the students is much reduced. We have a problem of missing students. So our students are primarily international students and we encourage them once this crisis really began to grow in Japan to go back home. So about 60% of our students have returned home. So now our students are spread out all over the world. You can imagine, so you may be teaching Zoom and your students are everywhere. So we have a certain percentage, maybe like 5% or as high as 10% of some cases of students that have just disappeared. And we can't contact them that are not responding. So that's an issue that we're facing. And for the professors who truly like the engagement and discussion, teach them that way, for them it's been a very, very hard transition. Now Jay also just briefly, this semester, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. And I was interested in online education, which in Japan because of this digital gap that exists, online education in Japan basically doesn't exist. So I started an online course with the University of Hawaii, West O'ahu. And we've mixed local students, West O'ahu students with Japanese and also international students. So we've been running that through the semester starting in late January. And that of course has continued uninterrupted because we weren't in class to begin with. And that's actually turning out quite well. It's not the same as teaching in class, but that class we're using synchronous once a week and then asynchronous for the rest. And my sense is that my observation, I'll have to ask the students once the semester's over what they think, but that seems to be going okay. And there is a genuine learning process that's going on and there's team engagement and the Zoom sessions, just like we're doing right now, are effective. You can put them into groups, for example, and they do discussions. And the students just pick it up right away and enter into discussions. It's actually pretty smooth. Well, maybe the technology is ahead of us. So Zoom is creating all these different changes and methodologies to teach people. So maybe it's a matter of taking advantage of those new innovations and also learning more about how to teach. And at the end of the day, it'll be pretty good experience. One other wrinkle, Jay, to this, is that Zoom, of course, was developed and utilized up until when the crisis started as a business meeting forum. It was always set up in a business context because people are in stay-in-place and part of Japanese business culture is to gather together after work and go drinking. And now that cannot happen, right? So you cannot do that any longer. People are using Zoom. So they're in our compai parties or drinking parties that are carried out after work hours. People have a wine or a beer in their hand. They connect with their colleagues, 10 or 20 of them. And it somehow works. So my wife went on this. She works for a major American company. And she wasn't really all that positive about it, but she ended up talking with these people for like two or three hours and drinking quite a bit of wine in the process. So now I've actually set this up for my professors at the end of the semester to celebrate what we've gone through. I'm going to be buying beer for them, craft beer and send them all craft beer. And we're going to use Zoom as a semester party. So this is another kind of wrinkle that's appearing Zoom is becoming a social tool in addition to it being a business tool. So Jay, we've talked about sharing martinis. We can't do that right now, but maybe over Zoom, we can have a martini party. I'm on, you're on. Thank you, Steve. I learned so much from you about so many things. Talk to you in a couple of weeks. Be well, stay safe. Yeah, see you in a couple of weeks. Hopefully in summer, I'll see you in person if it all works out. I'm looking forward. You take care. Thank you so much. Watch your hands.


Welcome everybody. My name is Joel Herndon and I'm joined today with my colleagues Jake Carlson and Jonathan Petters. The three of us together are representing the Association of Research Libraries led realities of academic data sharing or RADS project as we'll call it during the rest of the presentation. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 2021, RADS brought together six research institutions with a shared interest in building research evidence-based models for research data sharing. This research takes place in which the policy landscape for research data management and sharing has grown increasingly complex. Over the last decade federal funders have become increasingly prescriptive about how federally funded research is the timing for its sharing as well as the details of how it is shared. The RADS project wanted to see how these changes are impacting both our research administration and services on our campuses as well as the research that our researchers are conducting. We had three primary research questions that we wanted to investigate as part of the RADS project, specifically how do our institutions and the staff working in research support at those institutions support research data management and sharing. Secondly, how are researchers preparing, staffing and implementing research data sharing as part of these new funding requirements and what does it look like when they do share their data as far as where it appears and the metadata quality associated with it. And finally, what is the institutional cost to implement these policies, both for the entire institution and for the individual researchers as a whole. Before we could answer these questions, we had three methodological considerations that we had to take into account. First of all, we are very different institutions as far as how we're staffed in the offices that we have to support research. And so we had to create a common framework that we could use to compare our different structures across these six universities and indeed other universities across the U.S. And so we made the decision to group our different service groups on campus into four large categories that captured a pretty wide range of research supported our institutions. We talked to libraries, both libraries and archives in the data sharing space, IT units, everything from central IT units down to very specific departmental and professional school IT groups and other different locations on campus. For research administration, we had a very broad definition. We looked at everything from the central office of research or the office of vice president or provost for research down to very specific research administration units looking at intellectual property as well as the campus institutional review boards and the leadership of those boards. We also talked to research centers and institutes on our respective campuses. These groups often don't have a campus wide focus, but they are involved in research data sharing. And we were very keen to understand how they were supporting particular disciplines as well as particular subject areas at our different universities. Our second consideration that we had to look at very closely and we consulted with quite a few groups on this was trying to craft a common set of data sharing activities so that we could have a common vocabulary both for the grant and for talking with our research administrators and researchers on all our campuses. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here in the methodology. We'll talk a little bit in the results about some of those activities, but I will give an announcement that there will be a publication from ARL in January that you can look at all these activities and use them if they are helpful on your campus for mapping out how this data support is happening. Finally, we did a great deal of work as well building a model for estimating data sharing cost. At most universities there's a fairly good understanding of how much research expenses are for grant funded research, but data sharing is fairly new. And so it required a lot of subtlety and nuance and trying to tease out what are these additional costs both for researchers and for the research administration. And we have an additional publication coming from ARL in January that you can see that Specifot gives the details of that model and some of these expenses. So our survey, at least two did we sample. As mentioned earlier, we had two large groups, the research administration structures at our university and researchers. For both groups we conducted an online survey. We had about two months that individuals could complete that survey and we followed up with individuals that were willing to join us for a qualitative interview online. For our administrators, the six institutions identified roughly 140 people and we had about a 50% response rate covering all of those four areas that I mentioned earlier. We found that very helpful, both the survey results and talking with them in detail to get the context of their answers for really giving us an idea of how universities across the U.S. are approaching these questions. For researchers we took a slightly different approach. We actually looked at all of the funded research since the Holdren memo requiring data sharing at our universities in three different funding agencies, the NIH, NSF and Department of Energy. We picked specifically five subject areas that were present at all of our universities and had about an 8.4% response rate but with about 3,500 PIs involved in that study that translated into hundreds of responses and quite a few interviews in person. So once again we had a very rich set of information across multiple disciplines about what data sharing is looking like in North America today. With that I will let John talk a little bit about the results. Alright, thank you Joel for getting us started there. Some results, a very small amount of our results will be more available in the report but to give you a little feel for the kind of information we found. Okay, so Joel had already mentioned these data management and sharing activities. We had 27 of them that we categorized through five different phases of research. And just through here if we talk about research life cycle that has a start and an end if it does have a start and an end. Going from a planning design start up of projects, data collection storage and management where researchers are trying to answer the research questions they've set out for. Making the data broadly available as results come in and as the project nears its conclusion. Data retention including preservation, archive and long term access to that data for a longer term period. And a project closed out in compliance where the research areas and their institutions need to make sure that the project is met all its requirements from the sponsor and the sponsor is happy. So again we do have the first version of this is available online already and a later version where we've done some revisions with more community input for these activities will be available soon. So the phases of research we'll talk a little bit more about in the results here. Keeping in mind there's more activities as we go. So for researchers, we asked researchers to report to us in our survey the activities that they did whether they did them themselves, within their research team, the research lab. Did they do them with institutional assistance somewhere on campus? Did they do them with external assistance somewhere off campus, maybe up here in another institution? Or did they just not do them at all? Under not do, there could be two kinds of main categories. Either they didn't do it because it wasn't applicable to the research they're doing or it's something that maybe they should have been doing but they didn't do. We did not distinguish or discriminate between those two. So that's the kind of information we got from researchers, for the institutions, for the administrators and the support units. As Joel already mentioned, these are the four categories of support units we surveyed and we just more asked them, do you support this activity or not? Yes or no? It's the Office of Research, Research Institutes, Research Libraries and Information Technology offices. So to share a little bit of the results for our researchers. So we're looking at what we're looking here at the top five activities that the researchers said that they were doing themselves and the percentage of the respondents that said that they were doing themselves. Just the top five, we got 27 activities altogether. So for all these activities, we have 90% or more researchers saying we mostly took care of this themselves. So making decisions about what data to share or host, preparing the data for sharing, creating quality control mechanisms or procedures, developing their own documentation, documentation of the data, and monitoring integrity of preserved data. So I'd like to point out two things about these top five activities. One is some of these activities that we're seeing as the top five are clearly ones where there are some support around the institution for some of these activities. Preparing data for sharing is something research libraries have services for, at least at our institutions. But some of these activities also may be ones where the researcher really should be the ones who are in the driver's seat for it. So developing documentation of data, the researchers created their data, they're collected their data, they understand it the best. So there may be other people who could help them, but they should be the ones who are primarily documenting their data. So a couple of things we see there. We talk about top five activities that the researchers are doing with institutional assistance. We see developing materials transfer data use agreements, ensuring data security were appropriate around HIPAA or export control, things like that. Determining intellectual property and copyright considerations, evaluating data security needs, and preparing IRB protocols and informed consent. So a couple of things we might say about these kind of results we can see are generally these top five activities are things that have some sort of legal concerns around the research, and so researchers are seeking out help in these cases. We also see that the percentages are quite much lower than the ones for data by myself, right? We're arranging 64% to 25%. But also we need to be careful, of course, about interpreting our results. So I look at down here, evaluating data security needs and only 26% of the researchers are evaluating data security needs. That might make us immediately worried, what is the other 74% of them doing? But maybe some of these people are doing research that doesn't really have some sort of data security concern. Like a lot of environmental science, the data is rather nonsensitive in many cases. So careful about over interpreting what we're looking at. Okay, so let's move on to a little bit about our support services.  The main point of this is to demonstrate we have very detailed information here, but I couldn't possibly go through all of it in the time allotted. But it's all available, we have wonderful tableau visualizations one of our colleagues generated. But at a high level what a lot of libraries said that they're doing. Providing support for public access to research data among the following phases. So primarily libraries are providing support. Our libraries are providing support around planning, design, and start-up of projects. So it might be mostly around data management planning services we have established. Making data broadly available, data retention, long-term access. These things are around institutional repository services that we have set up. Helping find other repositories for researchers to deposit in. Developing support within data collection storage and management around these operational aspects of the research. Some of us are slowly standing up some services and support for researchers. At Virginia Tech we have this informatics consultant who can help researchers with computational workflows and survey design, things like that. Less support provided and project closed out in compliance though. And that tends to be the purview of the office of research where they tend to be more responsible for the close out and ensuring the requirements have been met. We can look at similar information for information technology offices. And for the ones for the offices, the categories that provide support across campus, not the research institutions centers. IT office has typically provided the broadest level of support across all these phases. So all four phases that we talked about already except again for project closed out in compliance, which again is typically the office of researchers purview. But IT office has provided support in all of these things and a variety of activities across these several of these phases. I believe that's why I want to leave here. We have takeaways and Jake can talk about more of our conclusions of things that we've seen from our work. All right. Thank you, John. So as John said, excuse me, overall researchers are doing the majority of data sharing activities on their own. And that's not necessarily surprising or a bad thing as John explained. Researchers have always had to manage their data and share it with their colleagues who they're doing the work with. The shift really comes from having to prepare it for others to find access, interoperate and reuse at a meeting the fair principles. We didn't hear in our interviews researchers expressing some confusion, some frustration around understanding the requirements, mostly around how they translate and affect them themselves in their labs. So how do they take these fairly nebulously defined requirements that research funding agencies are putting out and translate them into operational activities that they themselves can do and feel comfortable and confident that they are in fact meeting those requirements. I think something else to consider is that administration and service units were also still adjusting to these requirements from data funding agencies for funding agencies rather. Many of the services and support provided by the institution are focused on the needs of the institution over the needs of the researchers themselves in terms of looking at it from the institutional perspective of how to ensure compliance is happening, how to focus on minimizing risk and other sort of things that are more institutional perspective. It's not that they're not providing services to the researcher themselves, but it's not their primary mission or reason to exist. Library services and IT services to some extent are more generally focused on the needs of the researcher, but researchers are still performing many activities or indicating they're performing many activities themselves rather than taking advantage of what the library has to offer. And there may be a couple of different reasons for this. They may not know about our services, so outreach I think is an ongoing challenge for libraries and other service providing units. They may not believe that libraries have the necessary depth of expertise to really get into their particular situations in managing their data and sharing their data. There may be questions around our capacity to be able to address these fairly complex and fairly sophisticated issues, particularly if we're working with more than one researcher at a time. And we may have empowered researchers to be self-sufficient in some cases. If you look at data management plans, for example, if a researcher works with a librarian to put forth a data management plan for one project, they're probably using that data management plan as a template in carrying that forward for subsequent projects. We do see a couple of opportunities looking at our data for developing more and better connections between service units and researchers. For IT departments, John talked about data security services. 49% of researchers said that they do not have security concerns, and that's maybe due to their lack of human-focused or sensitive data. But even for the 51% who did say that they have those concerns, only 40% of those spoke with IT, as John mentioned. So there's clearly, I think, room to potentially develop a stronger relationship between researchers and IT units. 90% of researchers in our survey did not create quality control mechanisms for their data. And there, again, that really is, I think, the purview with a researcher to decide to do or not to do. But in situations where they are using technology-intensive platforms or really need sophisticated workflows, really having that connection with IT may help advance their cause and produce a better data set as a result to share. For central research offices, we heard 87% of researchers saying that they ensure the funding agency requirements are met themselves without talking to other folks. And that obviously is an area of concern as enforcement becomes more stringent, as requirements become more specific. I think we really see an imperative for central research offices and researchers to connect to figure out how do we, in fact, demonstrate compliance in a way that we're all comfortable and confident with. For research institutes and specialized centers, as John mentioned, there is a variety of different services that they offer. Some of them are pretty holistic. They offer services across the data lifecycle. However, research institutes may not be offering their services across the institution, but might they serve as a model for the institution in considering what kinds of services to offer and how to connect with researchers to offer them. We also thought that maybe research centers could be labs or pilot particular kinds of data services, and if they resonated with success, could that be scaled up to the institution as well. At libraries, as we all know, offer a variety of services to researchers, but really thinking about how do we help researchers connect their individual dataset to the larger community of practice as being a particularly rich area for us to invest in? So thinking about how do we assist them with making decisions on how to put their data out there in ways that will resonate with the community, particularly when their datasets don't fit neatly into what a repository might offer because it's too large or the formats are not in alignment with what the repository can support. How do they navigate that particular field then and satisfy the requirements effectively? Thinking about selecting and applying licensees for reuse, so what can researchers do with the research data once they have it as an area of concern for researchers and a place where libraries might be able to help direct them, and in adopting PIDs, if we discussed at CNI and other places, as really the glue to hold all of this together and to have research data count as scholarly object of first-class order. We also saw opportunities for cross-campus collaboration. So there are a number of activities that really span or might require expertise beyond what one unit could provide in their themselves. So for example, in developing recommendations, policies, and practices for deaccessioning data, only 50% of the IT units that we spoke to in the survey offered that particular service. But even for those who do, we think having involvement of libraries, of research offices, and even research centers might produce stronger policies and make for better practices. Only 50% of researchers did identify and budget for the cost of data management and sharing, and given the wide variety of potential costs and expertise across the university, here too, working together might be more effective in to make this more normative part of research practice. And then finally, training and education. As you've mentioned, outreach is particularly challenging. We all tend to offer different training sessions, but we tend to do it in isolation from each other. If we were able to connect and perhaps offer more holistic training, might that help researchers better understand the larger suite of services that they have available to the university and to connect with them more effectively. We have a number of models, emerging models of institutional cooperation on data. I'm not going to go into each of them due to time, but I want to give a special shout out to Cornell. Wendy Kozlowski, unfortunately, couldn't be with us today. She is a part of the RADS project, and I think her work and Cornell's work really is a model for us to think about in making these kinds of connections across the university to provide more holistic services. I want to stop at a case study potentially. I just joined the university at Buffalo four months ago, and I'm already seeing opportunities to apply what we've learned in the RADS data to my new position at Buffalo. So prior to my getting to Buffalo, but earlier in the year, Buffalo formed an institutional-wide working group on data sharing, looking at things like our infrastructure and our storage of support, graduate student education and what they need to know to manage and share data effectively, and developing a data repository and associated services. This culminated in the proposal to the provost, which we're still waiting to hear back from. But once we do hear back, I think taking what we've learned from RADS from six institutions across different universities and applying that locally might help us to ask better questions and consider where specifically we might want to make investments to advance what we're doing at Buffalo. And then in addition, we're also working with the Sponsor Program Services Reorganization. They're trying to break up what they've been doing to make it less centralized and more connected to their academic departments to learn more about what the researchers are doing and what their needs are for data management and sharing as well as other aspects of getting a grant and working it through. They do offer training as well on things like ORCID and SCI and CV, and we are working with them to do some co-training where it's appropriate to do so. But there too, as they think about what they're trying to accomplish and the models they want to use, having information from a much larger survey of the RADS survey can help inform local practice. And I'm really pleased to say that University at Buffalo will be a part of RADS too, which was recently funded by the IMLS to refine our instruments and to run them again and to develop a toolkit that others can use and make use of. So thank you IMLS for that funding. I want to close by recognizing that this work was done by more than just John Dole and myself. We have a lot of people involved. I particularly want to give a shout out to Shauna Taylor, our project manager who kept us productive on a lot of complex issues. Cynthia Hudson Vitale is our PI, she has questions on this project. She's the one to direct them to you. And as John mentioned, we do have a website containing information about the RADS project as well as a number of reports that we're coming out pretty soon, many of which in January. And so with that, I want to open this up for questions. Thank you. In the follow-up interviews to your survey, which I assume they were after the survey, were you able to determine from the faculty researchers when they said, I did this myself, how much graduate students were involved in this work. And that also relates to the question of training and workshops and, you know, might that have been under-reported, the library and IT impact on offering training to graduate students who then had this role rather than the actual researcher. Is this on? Yes, okay, good. Yeah, I think that's a really insightful question. My assumption when researchers said that they did this themselves, they didn't mean just themselves as an individual human being, but their lab, their graduate students, their partners were the ones to do it themselves. That said, I think we spent a lot of time in the interviews trying to clarify what we meant by certain activities and what we meant by certain costs. There was one of the things we want to do with RADS too, is to take what we've learned from those interactions and those interviews to make them more clear. And I can certainly see, you know, training in around graduate students to, again, sort of make this more of a normative part of research and to better, I think, plant the seeds for culture change around what kinds of services are provided and how they're used. John or Jill, do you have anything to add to that? I think I... Is this okay? I think I'd like to add one more methodological note that I mentioned into, well, I mentioned one aspect of it, but I want to be clear when we talk to researchers, this is a perspective over the last ten years. So funded researchers over that time period and the information we're receiving are things people might have been doing eight years ago or six years ago and so when you hear these researcher results and reporting out, this is what they were doing at the time, when you're hearing the information about the research support units on campus, that perspective is within the last year, so that is fairly current information. So it's a little hard to tell, have the structures changed. We do know that we've done quite a bit in the libraries, which we're representing, quite a bit of training for grad students and I do think that's made quite an impact. We've heard in many of the interviews that grad students play a core role in the data management for different labs on campus and I do think that's an aspect in grads too, we'll be looking at even more closely about how much of an impact that was often listed as a cost element as far as funding students as part of the study, so something we're very keen on understanding better. It is really hard to see from the stage so I don't know if there's anybody with a question. I don't see anybody. I think we have a question for the audience. I think many institutions are already asking these questions about how you're supporting research data sharing and management on campus but I can say for the six institutions that are part of the study, the grant was really a catalyst for talking with individuals that we might not as this pattern others are seeing where you're having opportunities to talk for example to finance officials on your campus about how are we funding these types of activities in the libraries and IT and central research or how can we work together across these different units whether it's the IT unit in the libraries the IT unit in the office of research, has this changes in the funders policy triggered new discussions or created new opportunities for partnerships? Yeah. Yes. Sorry. It's scouting over here if you can't see me. Sorry, you weren't using the mic so I didn't know you were talking. But I have the mic now so I'm going to talk. Yes. A lot of people at University of Nebraska-Lincoln started getting worried last summer about the advance of NIH changes and enough people we were already I had just been there a year but enough conversations were sort of already happening between libraries in the office of research that really set the stage but because of that these conversations really came to the fore quickly and meant that everybody in the office of research in the sponsored projects and so on and libraries were talking about this also with IT and high performance computing and so we did a lot in preparation for January 25th it was great and then everyone seemed to calm down so but yes it did cause the requirements helped bring these conversations forward faster I think. Thanks. Yeah, so sorry, Steve Wiede from Yale University sort of in the beginnings of really thinking about our research data in a holistic way but some of the partnerships that we have started to build we had a strong partnership with the central IT department for example as they had brought up the proof of concept and then there was a quite long gradient of support from the proof of concept going over to our production system at the library which took it over and the other partnership we had was with the data intensive social sciences center and the reason for this was we lacked a lot of expertise in the exact technology stack that was being used for data management and we needed partners outside the library who did have that knowledge to act as subject matter experts which normally the subject matter experts in the library stuff are in the library because it's library software so this was kind of new for us and actually having a named partner stakeholder product owner outside of the library was a really unique experience. Yeah, awesome. That's great. Time for one more? I think so. So quick question. Listen to the RAD study. I'm wondering how you see or if you see or if I am completely misinformed and mistaken in seeing complementary nature of this study which is focused on large research universities and the study that Ithaca is doing with that broader cohort of R1s, R2s and others that we heard briefly the lightning around last week. We're part of the Ithaca study and so I'm wondering do you see these complementing one another? Are there any cross units, people who are part of RADS and also part of the Ithaca study or are these really two separate things and I'm simply not smart enough to see that? I don't know that anybody is a part of the Ithaca study who is part of the RADS group of areas of overlap and complementary intent. The RADS study I think is a snapshot it's trying to capture as much as we can about people's understanding of what was done retrospectively. I think as Joel said we're trying to shift more proactively with RADS too as to are there things that we can help sort of set up going forward and to the extent that I know the Ithaca study it seems like that's sort of a common area of interest and mission going forward so yes I think the more that we have these kinds of studies and we're seeing different types of information come up the better we can sort of amalgamate and get a sense of what's really going on here so it makes perfect sense to me that we have multiple areas of interest in this space. It looks like we're out of time so if there are no more questions thank you all for coming.


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I'm back with the breakfast this morning, and to make sense of our conversation would have Ola Podeh show me who will join the conversation to talk about the issues, none. Notwithstanding, proposals and campaign promises to end fuel subsidy, organized labor have insisted that until the federal government provides both us an alternative for subsidy removal to workers, plans against the removal will be kicked against. organized labor said putting some of these measures in place would serve as an alternative to fuel subsidy removal. The federal government has allocated 3.36 trillion a year for fuel subsidy in 2023, as the country's debt profile hits one hundred and two billion dollars. The Minister of Finance Zyna Pakmet said the 2023 budget proposal has a budget deficit of 10.78 trillion. He also said that it would be funded through domestic and multi-lateral borrowings and proceeds from privatization, with about 11 trillion spent to so far on fuel subsidy in seven years. The federal government admitted that the facility was no longer sustainable. Therefore, advocating is removal. We have two gentlemen joining the conversation and to kick start the discussion on the breakfast. Thank you so much. He's an energy consultant in Abyukuta. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. So what do you make of the concerns of labor? To the extent that labor exists to protect its members, which in this case are comments of employees. What we are totally right in their objectives is a different thing. But in terms of what they are doing, they are doing what they are set up to do. So what normally governments will do is basically to engage them and allow them to see the reality that is on the ground. In the respect of the reality that is on the ground, that they will expect whether some understanding from labor to see the logic of things and then a way out of the fashion. I mean, Abyukuta said that the key things we do is are government and labor. It's like in our scenario.   You're asking that there should be certain measures that should be put in place before, you know, fuel subsidy removal, however, so that you would cushion the effect. And I'd like you to talk about that. Now, one of such concerns is the issue of having a refineries functional. Do you think that that's doable? The issue of subsidy and refinery is that in number of times are not properly analyzed. The fact that they say refinery does not necessarily mean that the prices will go down. It's important to know that. However, the way subsidy things are calculated is why people are, I mean, are looking at that. Because refinery is still going to buy crude. The crude is not going to come to them for free. And they are going to buy it at the same price. The second part of the refinery is that they finally is actually at liberty to sell crude abroad. So in the NIRA show for, it came and it does not become competitive for them. They want to sell it abroad. So there are certain, and it's a private company. So there are certain realities that needs to be kept in perspective when we talk about the refinery coming in. As for labor demanding that certain things be in place before the forms of city happens, those are also legitimate concerns. Because you cannot leave the economy to the raw forces of demand and supply. The economy can collapse. So society has to know it can collapse. So there must be certain things that was being placed. So the government haven't determined that there's a need for increase. We will basically the idea of the first subsidy over. There will be balance in it. But what is more important is not so much that in the increase or the same first subsidy over. We need to realize that at least about four or five times in the past, government has to have removed first subsidy only to announce a few months down the line that there was under recovery or something was not in place. So when first subsidy is going to be fully removed, it is important that the whole thing is transparent. It's also important that the parameters for determining this, this remover and the figures they are clear to everyone. Because in the absence of that, we will just be running around and first subsidy removal will just be another need. So are you saying that it's not important that we have our refineries working, that we are not still talking about subsidy removal and still having to import the refined crude into the country? That's very far from what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there is two more expectations on the refinery. The refinery is not going to be magic. So the refinery is going to also spend money to refine the crude. The main difference between the crude, I mean, the finished product that is coming from the refinery and the one that you are buying from outside is the transportation it takes to bring it to Nigeria. So the refinery is going to operate like any other refinery. The refinery is also going to buy crude. Now, in this refinery buys crude and they refine it. And for any reason, the crude, I mean, their cost of production, they are not able to meet it, just like we have in the power sector. They may be looking at, because the private company, they may be looking at selling abroad and then nobody will be really legitimately able to stop them. Or they will have a situation where there is uncertainty and crisis. These are facts. So it's important that in as much as we have this expectation to come from the refinery, which is good, we also need to also realize that it is not a government company. It is a government agency that is set out for development. A private company is set out to make profit. There's a big difference between the two. So, yes, we are optimistic, but we cautiously optimistic in this regard. That's my view. Well, it's already sounding like it would be preferred. It would be just be a preferable thing to have the product imported being bad. I mean, it's almost the same thing as saying you are having to import the product and refining the product to just buy yourself, especially when, you know, this agency does not exist for profit purpose, but just to render essential service. But we move away from that. I also like you to share your thoughts on, you know, there's been several promises and campaigns and we know, you know, the thoughts of this government prior to this particular time on the issue of subsidy. And up until this moment, we see the budget, what the federal government has allocated to fill subsidy, 3.36 trillion for 2023, despite the fact that the country's debt profile is on the high. We're looking at 102 billion dollars. What are your thoughts? I believe that there was a community within the hands of reps that investigated the subsidy. I think it is important for members of the media to try to get the percentage of currency. I think in there, there is some analysis on the cost of the subsidy and how the subsidy comes about. Subsidy is not the enemy. I think it is the nature of the subsidy that makes an issue. It is not so much about the amount of subsidy. Into what is the issue is that the amount of that subsidy is not going to the subsidy activity that is what we need to look into. And that's the responsibility for all of us. The other side of it is that we can ensure 100% deregulation, where there's important for it to be balanced. It has to be important for everybody and only limited to a few people. But that also has its own issues. So at the end of the day, it is our own responsibility. And when I say our, I'm talking about every Nigerian, particularly the media, to understand in figures in NARA and combo subsidy. Because for now, when we talk subsidy, it is not an educational term. Who do we understand the basic? So those are the things that we need to look at. We need to understand the figures. We need to understand how any people can get figures. We need to understand how the ministry of finance approves those figures. And on the basis of that, we can now actually discuss this subsidy in a more intelligent parameters. When you mean more intelligent parameters, what do you mean? Because over time, there's been argument that, you know, who is the federal government subsidizing for? Some people are in support of the removal of subsidy. And one is still questioning why subsidy hasn't been removed. Even despite all of the campaigns prior to 2023, the government has said, hey, we're going to take out subsidy. And we're here now. So what aspect are you talking about? You know, what points are we saying? What intelligence are we talking about? Who are we subsidizing for? So let me ask something with three questions. How much is our subsidy?  How much of that in terms of the amount of subsidy is actual cash? How much of it goes into transportation? Let's not talk about the cash now. No, no. You know why that is important. So I'm asking, who are we subsidizing for? When we talk about subsidy, there was subsidizing. Who exactly benefits from subsidy? You benefit from subsidy. How do I benefit? Do I own a car?  Madam, whether you own a car or not, you enter a car. Even if it is Uber, even if it is the bus, as long as you enter a car, you benefit from subsidy. So the idea that subsidy belongs to a certain class is just so people don't understand it. And that is why I talk about a more intelligent, deep dive into one subsidy issue. Subsidy is really discussed as an exotic term because when you talk about subsidy, people don't really understand what it is. And until we understand the fundamentals, we will still continue to go into the circles. You cannot become a medical doctor if you go into physics and chemistry. If we don't understand these fundamentals, these viral figures, things, we will not really understand the subsidy. It is understanding the fundamentals that will allow a more intelligent discussion on the subsidy issue. And that is the point I'm trying to make. No, so as much as, I mean, you are here now. So I think it would be great for you to explain tonight. Durants, what subsidy is, maybe they need to understand. So the issue about subsidy being an organized crime, even when this administration had even alluded to that. So maybe you tell us what subsidy is and what we need to understand that we're missing. Well, I'm not sure anybody has said subsidy is an organized crime. I think what you are referring to, or what you may be referring to, was a comment by one of the enemies of the IOCs that talked about fuel cuts being organized crime, fuel cuts to being organized crime. What could be, is not peculiar to the petroleum industry. What could be as a term is an economic term. It's a petroleum term. It's a term referring to the fact that certain products or services may not be afforded to the general public, through the way to move to the process of demand and supply. And as a search, and as a result, what government does is that they take in part of the cost. And so it's like a distance. And when they now sell it at that, subsidy exists in every nation of the world. However, like I said, it is not the economic term subsidy. It is how the subsidy is being implemented. And if you don't understand how this petroleum subsidy is being implemented, you cannot have an intelligent discussion on it. That is my point. So how does it work? That's the question. I mean, you're here and we're asking that, you know, you tell us how it works. Apparently, we're having an intelligent conversation. You can go ahead. I mean, there's time. So we can talk about it. That's a simplistic question. It's like saying that tell me how to become a journalist in five minutes. I mean, there are certain, what I'm saying is that there are fundamentals to this thing. So what are the fundamentals? Yes, the fundamentals include understanding how it works. Understanding how it works is not something I can explain to you in five minutes. We have responsibilities as Nigerians to understand governance. Because in essence, everybody is part of the system. My point is that it is not enough to be talking about this thing on the surface. There is a responsibility to understand the things of how it works. And that's investigative journalism. And that is not going to happen by explaining in five minutes how it works. I can explain the framework for you. But you know, you're not just talking to me. You're talking to a lot of persons who are listening, not just in Nigeria, across different parts of Africa. So I mean, you have an opportunity, you have a shot at that. It would be important to just put us through it. So just ignore that I'm not here. You're speaking to some persons. However, it is there's also some part where you're supposed to do summary. You know, it's also part of it. I'm still saying that you cannot understand the details of how something works in five minutes, in ten minutes. It's not possible. And I am saying that it is the responsibility of every citizen to at least try in their own private time, understand the fundamentals. And it is when two, three, four people understand the fundamentals, that you can have a critical mass of people having intelligent discussions on this matter, so do you agree? The thing is, the conversation that we're having now, we're not talking about subsidy as a semantics part of English, you know, just the word. We're not just having it independently. We're talking about field subsidy and the fact that, you know, labor has raised some concerns. And that's what we're talking about. And they're also different, you know, perspective. You have different civil society organization who understand the dynamics or the fundamentals that you have raised. And a lot of them have come out to say, especially, I mean, you have that of policy alert, saying that Nigeria has constantly fostered corruption through petrol subsidy. So you're saying that, no, it's not, we can't constantly say that, we're saying that on the surface because we don't understand. So would you be saying that, you know, all this civil society organization are not in the know of what they are saying? My question again to you at this point would be, do you agree with policy alert that, you know, the subsidy regime and the entire subsidy conversation is shredded, you know, in corruption? Madam, I believe in speaking to the fact that anybody can see anything because that a question part of the Constitution does not mean the question is saying the truth. The point is, what I am saying is that people need to speak to figures and facts. The figures and facts are there to speak for themselves. However, there are very few who understand the figures and facts. What civil society is discussing is the political aspect of subsidy. What I am talking about is the technical aspect of subsidy and without understanding the technical aspect, you will not be able to have an intelligent discussion on the political aspect. Then if you don't give up on politics, do I feel right? Do I don't feel right? Do I want it? Do I don't want it? And that will not be in progress. I have asked you, and this would be, you know, another time I'm asking that maybe you can give us maybe just a line, a sentence. It's not a problem if it's in five minutes, you don't have to. But let's understand what the technical aspect of subsidy is that Nigerians don't understand. Okay, so let me, how is the subsidy calculated? You have to look at the cost of food. That is a public field. You have to look at the cost of transportation to the refinery. That's also public. You have to look at the cost of refinery, refinery and petroleum. That's the public cost as well. The second transportation, and that when it arrives on the ship, there's cost comes, duties, there's cost duties and all that. Anyway, you have all of these things and they come to a certain cost. What NNPC is saying is that that cost comes to a certain amount, maybe 800 Naira per litre or whatever. And we are saying that the account is selling it at 150. And that they want to, and they want to remove that 500 Naira that they are currently bearing. I mean, that figure is hypothetical because I'm not talking about figures now. And that figure, 500 Naira that they are moving per litre is what is coming to that 2.7 trillion that you are talking about. What I am saying is that it is the responsibility of every Nigerian to actually understand if with figures that they are quoting for us is authentic. It is not enough to just say that there is crime. That's an accusation. You have to understand and be able to point to the areas where there are issues. And if you don't understand and cannot point to the areas where there are issues, it's just an accusation. So what I'm saying is that for us to have intelligent discussions on this matter, we need to understand and be sure of those figures. Does that make sense? So the consent of Labour, I bring it to you again. Labour has asked the federal government to stop fuel subsidy and its importation. Do you think that that's not intelligent enough? That has nothing to do with what I said. The Labour is coming to a conclusion with their own interests. Is that the best interest in this industry? It doesn't matter. What Labour is doing is what they should be doing. But my own job is not to support anybody. My job as an analyst is to save the things as they are. The media has a responsibility. Labour has a responsibility. Government has a responsibility. Everybody does their job. So in other words, you have nothing to say as to the consent of Labour. You don't think it's okay for us to stop... No, I want to understand. No, the thing is, I really want to understand.  I mean, we know that, you know, with fuel and, you know, it's products we have to import because our refineries are not functional. And we've also had the Minister of Finance saying that over time we have had to borrow, you know, to import because we don't really have, you know, funds. And now Labour has a concern. And Labour is saying we can't continue this way, you know, make the refineries functional. Let's stop the entire process. Whatever it is. So I'm asking you, do you think that the concerns that Labour have asked or have raised asking the government, you know, to stop the importation of petrol and also, you know, the removal of substance. Do you think it's rational? Whether or not is what they should be doing? That's not the point. The question is, is it rational? Why would anybody say it's not rational? There's a difference between what is rational and what is right or what is rational and what is wrong. What is wrong can be rational. What is right can also be rational. So the issue, I believe what we are trying to say is that whether it is the right thing. And I think that what I'm saying, I think you are looking at this thing in terms of lack of right. There are multifactorial issues and multifacial issues that are involved here. And I keep mentioning that what Labour is doing and saying in terms of their own objective is right. Labour has a purpose and their purpose as Labour is different from the purpose of government and NNPC as an organisation. Labour cannot be there to protect the interests of the NNPC. That is not their job. Labour is there to protect the interests of their own organisation and they will do that. The NNPC is there to protect the interests of the industry and what they do and they will do that. So I don't understand what exactly you want me to say. What I am saying is that everybody should do their job so that society can function. Labour is not just representing the interests of Labour. They are representing the interests of the people. That's why they are calling it because it's not just that. But we need to go away. I'm being prompted that we have no time. Thank you so much. Olupa, thank you so much for being part of the show this morning. You're welcome. Thank you very much. All right then, Olupa, show me energy consultant all the way. He joined us from Abiyakuta. Many thanks.


So here the Linaro connect and who are you? I am Marcelo Zufo. I am a professor from Sao Paulo University, Brazil So what are you talking about here the Linaro connect? Well My topic is embedded computing So I do teaching on embedded computing. I do research and also I promote innovation my country on embedded computing So you are in Sao Paulo? Yeah, I'm down in Sao Paulo, Brazil the financial capital of Brazil a very active city with a very strong industry in electronics there and How many students did you work with? Well at the electronic systems department. We have 40 students per year is studying several degrees of embedded systems Particularly last year we have wonderful Workshops at Linaro about how to design drones from scratch using the 96 boards And I'm replicating these experiments at my classrooms in Brazil So and you also have a SMT PCB design lots of different things. Yeah One of our major projects is to design from scratch Drones with the 96 board platforms. It's a wonderful experience because we can Embed but virtually any software on this so it's very interesting embedding artificial intelligence Computer vision techniques on such drones and that is what we do for education We have drones. We are this moment looking how to swarm then The 96 boards are the ideal platforms to such kind of activity in parallel to that we have a SMT line there and we are successfully manufacturing some shield boards and some single board computers and This all this is on open source software Yeah, that is the beauty of Linaro is this wonderful community on open source and I do believe that is the future of the IOT industry and Your students and the people that you work with have a great skills in that kind of space Yeah in the open source. Some of these students are going to key Companies in market on the automotive sector in the aerospace sector to Brazil is quite strong On the aerospace. We have the third biggest aircraft company located there and there are a range of applications for IOT on agro mining and weather weather environment environment stuff. Yes, and So, so you what kind of drones you're working with? Well, our idea is to work with what we call intelligent drones or Autonomous drones drones that human doesn't touch and they do everything for you for this particular class of drones We need a lot of artificial intelligence and we need to do these artificial intelligence inside the drone what we we say Edge of the drone so that is why ideally the 96 boards are a Good platform for that because they basically are full computers with enough run and processors and storage to run complex artificial intelligence our inside it and Maybe there are some new boards that will come out with new processors with more more AI And so you're working on the AI algorithms and all that stuff. Yeah we had started with I mean we had played with virtually all 96 boards in our drone we have used before the high keys the bubble guns and the Snap trackers more recently we start to play with the ultra 96 boards That have a tremendous potential because they have a very strong Xynex FPGI FPGA inside it and that is quite relevant to optimize Neural networking artificial intelligence based algorithms in such kind of platform and You have experience with doing stuff for the FPGA also right some students have done some projects Oh, yeah, we support from the narrow. We are successfully also designing open GPUs So we have a project down there where using 96 boards. We are designing from scratch a GPU that is getting complex and complex Time-to-time and we hope on a near future Synthetizing the GPU on ASICs based on 96 board technology So a synthesizing Complex algorithms for FPGA to an ASIC. How is it some how complicated is that? Is that the high-end? The knowledge in the space also that's that is the beauty of Linaroo we have here in this conference a perfect integration Between hard and softer what we call the continuum between hard and softer. So we have engineers here designing state-of-art embedded computing But at the same time Engineers designing the whole software pipeline. So that's a continuous Continuum and this continuum is going further In terms of microelectronics when we start to play with FPGAs We are approaching the very low level Hardware in such platforms and that is also about Linaroo so in the several degrees of the technology stack microelectronics embedded systems and software We has a community on an open source fashion our approach in this in this conference and one of the things I heard from John Maddock Hall is a lot of talking about the optimization of the multi-core processors using performance getting most performance possible, right and you working a lot on that because if you have this amazing a 96 board high performance board you want to use all the performance there, right? Some something that very few people pay attention particular on arm technology is This low energy footprint Something that is intrinsic to the 96 boards they offer high-performance computing with a very low Power footprint That is a ideal for autonomous vehicles where energy constraints is a requisite So that is the case of drones. We successfully are using the 96 boards in drones Because we forget to talk about that. We have multi-cores. We have multi-treading In fact, we have parallel processing offering incredible high performance With low power footprints. Usually when we say low power Footprint is lower than two what that are quite relevant to enhance the autonomy of such autonomous flying vehicles But so then to take advantage of that you need to be able to to program the software is so perfectly and optimize and and do new new Re-optimization there all the time to get even more out of it with even less power Well, that is the linear community. I mean at this conference. We have experts on software optimization compiling security and connectivity So all these three elements general purpose high performance computing sensors and actuators Connectivity are the foundations of what we call modern IoT and all these Relevant aspects could be find out in such conference everywhere And what is a relationship you have with the John meddock hall? Well, John is a very long Activist on open source Has I am in my country? So John pushed me to this conference and it what is really cool on linear is this continue between Industry and the open source community. So the guys at this conference are fully based on open source but doing very deep Technology for the foundations of modern industry Nice, and he's right now. He's in Sao Paulo. Oh, yeah, that is a very interesting thing This this week is the engineering student week in Brazil So at our university we have around a thousand five hundred students attending and They invited John my dog to be the keynote this time So John unfortunately could not be Two places at the same time So it was really interesting because John is in Brazil Being a keynote in this conference in fact exactly this moment He's running a number of workshops in open source embedded computing and I'm here attending Nice and you are networking with the all the people around here some interesting Things that could happen. Oh, it's fantastic all the time. We can see the enhancement of the linear ecosystem So it's amazing The 96 board is an infinite source of innovation Every time that I came to this conference a bigger number of 96 boards show up a bigger number of Meson in boards are showing up and every day these boards are more interesting new processors with the amazing Capacity of processing we just See today the first arm service with more than 24 cores the social next technology An incredible amount of new meson in boards meson in boards with Laura sick Fox LTE Unincredible precise sensors and actuators. So that is linear. It's a continuous growing Cooperative community so did you have some conversations with a sheer attack or with the Scylings and everyone Marvell We always go there and we'll have more information to To have so sheer attack zionics arrow Marvell social next our key technology providers on the IOT workspace and It's very nice because all key engineers are here and you call you go How deeper do you wish in the technical discussions and you bring that home? And you'll be ready to deploy real solutions to society based in the formation that you get Do you think there's a potential that several of your students will Come work at linear companies or at the narrow? Well Linar is still not strong in the region where I live but in bed the computing industry it is So what we see is that the arm ecosystem is growing dramatically because the IOT revolution And I can see a value to my students because what they learn from the technical point of view in such conferences Could be immediately applicable on real industry and real industry means the agro industry The automotive industry the mining industry and the aerospace industry And hopefully all the politicians are gonna understand this and say the huge priority Let's do something big with robotics With drones all that in Brazil Well, that is that is interesting humanity now Robotics Mechanism thing has a major trend everywhere You walk here around Vancouver on toy shops, and you'll see Robot toys everywhere, and we're pretty sure that Leonardo technology are inside these devices


We're moving on underneath tonight and it's important to bring us something away from the 2023 elections. If you want a country where fairness, equity, and justice truly reign, then we must go back to the drawing board and embrace restructuring. These were the words of the leader of the late King Kaodomaki at a lecturing book presentation in his honor held in Ikeja Lagos. Plastivist correspondent Love Ikuko Yedokun was there and brought in this report. It is one year since the passing on of Yenka Odomaki. This book lunch was put together in his honor. His wife wrote the book to immortalize him. Life without him is almost empty for me because each day I sleep, you know, when I wake up I feel his presence and at times I feel that, oh, that up to today I still have his phone with me and when I switch off that phone, when I was in the U.S.  Then I send information to the phone at times. So life has been, you know, has been terribly difficult. It's so, I mean it's so difficult for me to agree that it's no longer here. Trubius flowed from friends, family and close associates for the late Yenka Odomaki. We are siding by this passage that are consoled by the legacies he left behind. The legacy of commitment to truth and improvement of a society based on equity, justice and fairness. Nigeria is a work in progress and there is no doubt that as we work for the betterment of our society, the indelible memory of exploits of Yenka Odomaki will remain evergreen. The greatest tribute we can pay to Yenka Odomaki is to decide collectively here that we are going to continue the battle for a new Nigeria, a new Nigeria that will be anchored on justice and fair play. I thank God for his life. I'm only imagining today if the dead can only look back. Many would not believe they do. My faith says they do. Because the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 12 that we are surrounded by cloud of witnesses and not only that we are at the miss of the spirits of just men made perfect. I'm sure if you look back today you will realize that he had not lived in vain. Keeping the legacies of the late Odomaki is Paramount's wife. Just like her latest band, she wants to see Nigeria return to true federalism. All the ideals that Yenka lived and died for, I will continue to keep it. These legacies, I will keep it. I will continue by the grace of God to remain strong and I promise that I will never let you down. Yenka Odomaki died at the age of 54. From Lagas Lab, Ikuku Uyiduku, Plus TV News.


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