University of Twente Student Theses
The FAIR-iT framework : Towards the adoption of the FAIR principles in an enterprise context
Kerssens, M. (2023) The FAIR-iT framework : Towards the adoption of the FAIR principles in an enterprise context.
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| Abstract: | The FAIR guiding principles are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable and they can be used by organisations to govern their data assets through human- and machine-actionability (M. Wilkinson et al., 2016; GO-FAIR, 2018). The performed exploratory and structured literature reviews suggest that the FAIR guiding principles are mostly used in research organisations, but research about their use in an IT enterprise context remains absent. The benefits for research organisations have been written about abundantly, but their benefits to the IT consultancy sector remain uninvestigated, at least to the best of the author’s knowledge. The aim of the research at hand is to investigate the existing gap in the use of the FAIR guiding principles in IT consultancy storage and archiving of engagement data. A structured literature review was performed and 4 case studies were conducted. The results from the exploratory case studies show that there is room for the implementation of FAIR, as the employees at the selected enterprise experience challenges in the process of storing and archiving engagement data and finding data back once it is archived. As a result of the systematic review and case studies, the FAIR-iT framework was developed with the following principles in mind: findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable, internal, and trustable. Importantly, the last two principles have been added to emphasise the benefits that companies can gain from implementing the FAIR principles according to their corporate standard and are more focused on the governance of data. The added principles are not separate from the foundational four principles, but are supportive and only emphasise what the original principles already encompassed. The framework also provides a data preparation flow to help employees feel empowered in their tasks and broaden their skills so that they can take on the responsibility of caring for engagement data. Finally, the framework also provides a plan for change management once an enterprise decides to implement the FAIR-iT principles in its workflow as literature has shown that user acceptance is of importance in implementation projects (Akrong et al., 2022; Shah et al., 2011). The findings of this study implicate that enterprises can benefit from the adoption of the FAIR principles, but that there is a different angle to be taken than when they are implemented in research organisations. Enterprises are more reticent about their processes and data to maintain a competitive advantage, and because of contractual agreements with relation to the data of their clients. This is why the FAIR principles will be useful for internal use at first. However, as several case study participants noted: there might be a future where there is room for collaboration rather than competition, and that is where the use of the FAIR-iT principles will flourish; once they become the FAIR-T principles. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 01 general works, 54 computer science, 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Information Technology MSc (60025) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/96723 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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