Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (NFDI4Earth Deliverable D2.2.4)

Deliverable D2.2.4 Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network Hela Mehrtens ([email protected]), Klaus Getzlaff , Stefan Kern , Sibylle Hassler , Ivonne Anders , Ines Langer , Sören Lorenz 2024-12 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15196214 nfdi4earth.de Citation Hela Mehrtens, Klaus Getzlaff, Stefan Kern, Sibylle Hassler, Ivonne Anders, Ines Langer, Sören Lorenz. 2025. Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (NFDI4Earth Deliverable D2.2.4). NFDI4Earth Community on Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15196 214 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license. Acknowledgement This work has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the project NFDI4Earth (DFG project no. 460036893, https://www.nfdi4earth.de/) within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI, https://www.nfdi.de/). NFDI4Earth D2.2.4 Executive summary In this concept we describe the annual quality improvement cycle of the NFDI4Earth distributed User Support Network (USN). The definition of indicators, a timeline to collect the information and an action plan to react on the outcome is part of this concept. Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) Abbreviations ESS – Earth System Sciences KH – KnowledgeHub LHB – Living Handbook OS4A – OneStop4All OTRS – Open Ticket Request System RDM – Research Data Management USN – User Support Network Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Quality improvement indicators 2 2.1 Total number of user requests and number per category . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.2 Efficiency of support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.3 User experience and feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.4 Composition and personal size of the USN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.5 Integration and monitoring of the external experts network (Expert HUB) . . . . 4 2.6 Outreach activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3 List of actions 5 4 Timeline of quality improvement reports 6 References 6 Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) 1 Introduction The NFDI4Earth consortium encompasses the entire spectrum of Earth System Sciences, along with a wide variety of research data, data infrastructures, and data management methods. One of the main objectives of NFDI4Earth is to establish a federated data infrastructure built on existing applications and repositories, enabling researchers to manage their data in accordance with the FAIR principles. To support various user groups, such as researchers, research data managers, and infrastructure providers, NFDI4Earth offers a range of interconnected measures. Central to this effort is the information portal ”OneStop4All” (OS4A), which provides access to all NFDI4Earth resources. If the available information is not sufficient to address a particular question, users can contact 'support experts' through a ticketing system. Solutions offered will also be documented in the Living Handbook (LHB) to facilitate further reuse and continuous improvement of the OneStop4All. Given the complexity of Earth System Sciences and the diverse nature of its community, it is not feasible for a single group of research data management (RDM) support experts to cover everything. Instead, a network of specialized support groups is envisioned, functioning as a distributed User Support Network (USN) that ideally serves the entire NFDI4Earth community. (Lorenz et al., 2023) To evaluate and improve our service regularly, an annual quality assessment is under construction to check the support: Is the service well known in the community? Do we manage to answer questions in a reasonable time? Do the agents, that are available to answer questions in the ticket system, well cover the disciplines and services? Does the expertise fit to the needs of the user? In this concept we describe a set of indicators to get a defined picture of our service every year that can help us to improve the user support in NFDI4Earth. We expect the current ticket system to serve the documentation needs of the support agents and to organize the distribution of the support in the first phase of NFDI4Earth. A more sophisticated system with calendar, templates and internal knowledge base like the SharePoint tools of the 'Dresden Kontaktstelle Forschungsdaten' might be necessary, when the support network is growing and becomes more established. This will be a new task in a possible second phase of NFDI4Earth. It should be noted that the support provided by the USN must always be considered in conjunction with the support provided by the OneStop4All and the use of the Educational and Training Portal as well as the KnowledgeHub (KH). A reduction in support requests via the USN does not automatically mean a reduction in the quality of NFDI4Earth support. We assume 1 Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) that there will be a steady increase in the number of requests to the USN in the first few years of the portal. However, it is possible that later there will also be a decrease in the number of inquiries in some areas when significantly more and more suitable content can be found via the OneStop4All. 2 Quality improvement indicators As described in the introduction, users have the option of contacting 'User Support' via the NFDI4Earth website form or a contact form via OneStop4All. Through the website form, various topic categories have been set up here in the form of corresponding queues and is summarized in Lorenz et al. (2023). The ticket system, is the Znuny, which allows us to derive the number of opened, closed tickets. This ticket systems allows us an evaluation as a quantitative indicator, which we expect to be relatively low in the first year (2024). 2.1 Total number of user requests and number per category In general, absolute numbers and their change over time are not a direct indicator of the quality of support and, as already mentioned, the number of requests is directly related to the not yet publicly accessible OneStop4All. As there will be a delay in making the OneStop4All accessible, we assume that awareness of the USN will increase afterwards. Furthermore, it must be assumed that the OneStop4All will only have more usable and findable content in the coming years, which will initially lead to an increase in inquiries in connection with the growing awareness. This means that an annual increase in inquiries should be aimed for in the first few years, which represents an increase in support. This will enable us to support more scientists, data managers and service providers year after year. •Action 1: Ensuring the findability and accessibility of the USN •Action 2: Increase brand awareness If the support categories created (queues in the ticket system) contain more requests on similar topics and more requests overall, the following measures can be taken to improve support. •Action 3: Expansion of the LHB to include articles on frequently requested topics •Action 4: Expanding the support categories to include additional topics 2 Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) 2.2 Efficiency of support Once a request has been received via the ticket system, the 1st level support team responds within a maximum of 2 to 5 working days. For less complex and general questions, the 1st level support team answers the request directly itself. In case of more complex queries or queries requiring more expertise, than the corresponding 1st level support team, the query will be resolved by 2nd level support. It is possible to measure in the ticket system how many queries were answered directly by 1st level support and how many were passed on to the 2nd level support. The relation is called 'First Contact Resolution Score'. The aim is to improve this score and ensure that as many questions as possible can be answered directly by 1st level support. The Znuny ticket system allows to measure how much communication was necessary and how long a ticket was processed. It is possible that a long processing time is caused by an overload of agents, e.g. due to too many requests or too few time resources for the task. A lack of knowledge and therefore longer research time can also be a reason. •Action 5: Increase number of agents •Action 6: Improve knowledge base to be used by agents If the reasons for a longer processing time lie in the search for suitable experts, the following action must be taken. •Action 7: Increase external expert network Overall aim is to reduce the time spent on the individual support and the number of interactions required to resolve the request. 2.3 User experience and feedback Immediately after a request has been resolved and before the ticket is closed, a short survey is sent automatically to the requester to obtain feedback on their satisfaction with the process and the solution offered. The integration of direct feedback into the ticket means that no personal data needs to be stored out of the system and the feedback can be provided directly on the request/solution. This allows the service to be improved over time, which will be evaluated by the user support team. •Action 1: Ensuring the findability and accessibility of the USN •Action 8: Analyse feedback and improve user experience Furthermore, all measures should be taken to improve the efficiency of support (section 2). 3 Concept for Quality Improvement of the User Support Network (D2.2.4) 2.4 Composition and personal size of the USN The USN started with 8 partners from the consortium team of the project, all of them were asked to name at least one person as helpdesk agent. The number of partners and agents at the end of the period will also be a 'quantitative indicator', due to more agents the support resources are higher and quality will increase. •Action 5: increase the number of agents The aim is to increase the number of agents and participating institutes and to cover as many specialist disciplines as possible in order to provide optimum support. 2.5 Integration and monitoring of the external experts network (Expert HUB) Earth System Sciences is a very large field of research, and at the moment it difficult for the user support team to answer all questions in detail. For this reason, a network of experts is being built up and, if necessary, involved in answering queries. External experts, listed in our support team through a separate list, are visible in the ticket system as persons taken in copy (CC) to support the user support network agent in giving support. These tickets have to be marked with a tag ‘expert’ and can be counted accordingly (quantitative indicator). This is an indirect professional breadth which will increase the quality indicator. •Action 7: Increase external expert network 2.6 Outreach activities The outreach of the USN team is expected to grow with the number of agents and experts, and with the number of support requests, as recurrent questions will result in new LHB articles. Expending the network with national and international experts will spread the idea of NFDI4Earth and the USN. A list of Living Handbook articles and participation on conference is given in the annual report to describe the outreach of the USN as a quantitative indicator. 4