News

Excellent response to this year's QCIF survey

: 16/05/2018

A growing number of researchers have indicated that QRIScloud is becoming an increasingly critical component in helping them to deliver research outcomes.

This positive feedback was gleaned from the almost 280 responses from QRIScloud users and research leaders who participated in this year’s QCIF survey.

Many researchers said QRIScloud was a useful, largely reliable service with excellent support. One UQ researcher said: “QCIF provides world-class eResearch services and support that can drastically increase productivity, collaboration and stewardship of research outputs.”

“I have 100% peace of mind that my data is securely stored,” said a USQ researcher about QRIScloud.

QCIF recorded a survey ‘Net Promoter Score’ of 34.4, which continues to build on the 2017, 2016 and 2015 scores of 31.2, 23.2, and 8.0 respectively.

The quality of the feedback was excellent and helps us understand:

how we are helping users achieve their research outcomes
how we can continue to improve users’ experience with QRIScloud
what future services, features, and capabilities users are looking for us to deliver.

On the continuous improvement front, the survey responses highlighted the following key themes for us to focus on:

Improve service descriptions to clarify how services can be used for different use cases.
Increase training offerings to help users make the best use of services.
Improve the setup and use of Nextcloud.
Reduce the amount of downtime of services.
Reduce the amount of time it takes to approve requests for resources.
Improve software support and available capacity on HPC clusters.

QCIF’s service delivery team has begun working on a number of these requests and looks forward to continuing efforts to deliver improved services and user experiences with QRIScloud.

We would like to thank all those who took the time to respond to our survey. To deliver further feedback, please contact Service Delivery Manager Stephen Bird: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you would like to participate in next year’s survey, please ensure you have registered for a QRIScloud account.

Events

eResearch Australasia 2019

21–25 October 2019, Brisbane

IASSIST 2019: International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology

27–31 May 2019, Sydney

Webinar: Nextflow—Scalable, Sharable and Reproducible Computational Workflows across Clouds and Clusters

14 March 2019, webinar

Australia's GPU Hackathon

25–29 March 2019, Perth

News

Hacky Hour starts at QUT

QUT now has its own weekly Hacky Hour to help its research staff and students with research-related IT problems.

QCIF’s Dr Nick wins largest ARC grant in QLD

A QCIF eResearch Analyst’s research project was the highest funded in Queensland in the November round of Australian Research Council grant announcements.

QCIF signs up as a Software Carpentry member

QCIF has made a formal commitment to the growth and spread of Software and Data Carpentry in Queensland, with the support of the global Software Carpentry Foundation.

QCIF welcomes ODI Australian Network’s new CEO

QCIF collaborator Open Data Institute Australian Network has secured Scott Waters as its new CEO.

QCIF Projects

Live traffic congestion mapping

Providing travellers with real-time information on traffic conditions and congestion in the South East Queensland area.

Visualisation of methane gas on Little Nerang Dam

The interactive 3D visualisation shows how the greenhouse gas is generated in the dam's sedement zone. It allows non-technical stakeholders to make better informed decisions about methane management.

Improving the Automated force field Topology Builder (ATB) and repository

Helping the UQ Molecular Dynamics group to improve the capacity of their software to handle at least 100 molecules at a time, up from 20, QCIF has enabled the group to continue its disease research at the cutting edge.

Tropical Data Hub

The Tropical Data Hub (TDH) is a JCU developed centralised data store making it easier for researchers to manage data related to the tropics. An open portal, it facilitates a multi-disciplinary approach to issues around climate change and conservation.

Adapting to climate change: Terra Nova

There's an important distinction between climate change and climate change adaptation. Research into climate change looks at questions of how the climate is changing and how this change will affect the environment. Climate change adaptation looks at how we can respond to these changes – how we can reduce the impacts of stresses on human and natural systems including our cities and regions, our agriculture and aquaculture, and the biodiversity of our environment, and how we can harness any beneficial opportunities. In other words, what should we do to prepare and adapt?