D2.2.2: Procedures for additional PRACE committees
Creators: name: Bela Dias, Ana
name: Mahdi, Virginie
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2011
Subjects: Deliverable
HPC
Research infrastructure
Terms of reference for Committee
Working rules for Committees

description: The deliverable D2.2.2 “Procedures for Additional PRACE Committees” has the objective to present the updated terms of reference of the PRACE governance bodies and the Working Rules of the already established PRACE Committees. Preliminary definition of the PRACE governance has been done during the PRACE Preparatory Phase (PRACE-PP) project in deliverable D2.2.3 “Governance document” [1] as a set of relationships between the organisation’s management, its council, its members and other stakeholders. The major objectives of the Governance Structure are related to the use of supercomputing to support scientific excellence, cost-effective and optimal utilisation of the PRACE RI and in the future, through its continual renewal, to maintaining world-wide leadership.<br> Further to the creation on the 23rd of April 2010 of the PRACE legal entity, the PRACE Infrastructure has started its operational activities by providing access to computing resources to the European research community, through a single peer-review process, to support best science and competitiveness in Europe. This has been made possible thanks to the prompt establishment of the four statutory bodies mentioned in the PRACE statutes: the Council, the Board of Directors, the Scientific Steering Committee and the Access Committee.<br> After a brief presentation of the current PRACE AISBL governance structure in section 2, section 3 describes the terms of reference of all PRACE bodies, by describing their organisation, functioning and decisions. Particular emphasis has been put on the inter-relations between the bodies to simplify the understanding of the whole PRACE governance structure. The terms of reference of the advisory bodies must be approved by the Council and at present only the terms of reference for the Board of Directors, Scientific Steering Committee and Access Committee have been finalised. The terms of reference for other advisory bodies (Financial Advisory Committee, Technical Steering Committee, User Forum and Operation Committee) are also discussed in this document and still subject to a decision<br> from the Council.<br> In section 4, the working rules, which aim at describing the operational and practical rules within each body, are presented for the governance bodies at present installed, i.e. the Council, Scientific Steering Committee and Access Committee. The Board of Directors, due to its character interim, has a set of working rules defined informally by its non-permanent Directors, in the expectation of the recruitment of a full-time PRACE Director. The working rules of the PRACE AISBL governance bodies are defined and approved by the governance bodies, being the only requirement that these working rules are in line with the terms of reference of each body. These working rules are always evolving in order to adapt to the present and future challenges of PRACE AISBL.<br> Building a world-class European HPC service and infrastructure is a highly ambitious undertaking. In order to regulate such complex Research Infrastructure, it has been necessary to create an efficient, fair, and flexible governing structure. This has been achieved by the PRACE Research Infrastructure through the installation of the four main statutory governance bodies: the Council, the Board of Directors, the Scientific Steering Committee and the Access Committee. Having fulfilled this first objective, a set of processes to create new committees could be decided by the Council, after a close examination of the needs of the PRACE AISBL.