Datanet
DataNet, or Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partner, was a research program of the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure. The office announced a request for proposals with this title on September 28, 2007. The lead paragraph of its synopsis describes the program as:
The introduction in the solicitation goes on to say:
The initial plan called for a $100 million initiative: five awards of $20 million each over five years with the possibility of continuing funding. Awards were given in two rounds. In the first round, for which full proposals were due on March 21, 2008, two DataNet proposals were awarded. DataONE, led by William Michener at the University of New Mexico covers ecology, evolutionary, and earth science. The Data Conservancy, led by Sayeed Choudhury of Johns Hopkins University, focuses on astronomy, earth science, life sciences, and social science.
For the second round, preliminary proposals were due on October 6, 2008, and full proposals on February 16, 2009. Awards from the second round were greatly delayed, and funding was reduced substantially from $20 million per project to $8 million. Funding for three second round projects began in Fall 2011. SEAD: Sustainable Environment through Actionable Data, led by Margaret Hedstrom of the University of Michigan, seeks to provide data curation software and services for the "long tail" of small- and medium-scale data producers in the domain of sustainability science. The DataNet Federation Consortium, led by Reagan Moore of the University of North Carolina, uses the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) to provide data grid infrastructure for science and engineering. Terra Populus, led by Steven Ruggles of the University of Minnesota focuses on tools for data integration across the domains of social science and environmental data, allowing interoperability of the three major data formats used in these domains: microdata, areal data, and raster data.
Some of its goals were later incorporated in the Data Infrastructure Building Blocks program.