The call for bids to undertake the Phase C DRP Work Packages

Under the terms of our in-kind proposal, the UK will be taking on 25% of the annual Data Release Processing workload; 50% will be performed at the French Data Facility, located at CC-IN2P3 in Lyon, and the remaining 25% will be undertaken by a US Data Facility, led from SLAC but including staff from several DOE labs and other sites. The three data facilities will operate as an integrated, distributed team, running the same software, but on potentially different kinds of computing hardware, as available in the three countries. The US Data Facility is responsible for the middleware needed to support this distributed mode of operation, and, of course, the DRP pipeline software itself is the responsibility of the Rubin Observatory.

The UK in-kind proposal includes 5 FTE of staff effort to undertake our quarter-share of the DRP workload. The details of the work required to meet that obligation is still under discussion with the USDF leadership, and the range of existing skills required will be dependent on the choice of middleware technologies selected by the USDF, some of which remain to be confirmed.

Once those discussions have concluded, we shall post here a set of DRP WP or role descriptions (whichever is more appropriate), along with a timeline for institutions to bid to undertake them, in a manner similar to that followed for the DAC WP in Phase B. Further information about this process will be circulated to the lusc-announce email list.

Update (20/12/21): We have now agreed with STFC and our Oversight Committee a plan for determining how to allocate the DRP staff effort in Phase C, as follows:

A “DRP Prep” programme will run from now to the 31 March 2024 (i.e. a year into Phase C). This will involve a range of DRP data challenges, undertaken with our US and French Data Facility colleagues, working towards the automated, distributed processing we will need for LSST operations. Through this we will learn the detailed mix of expertise needed for our quarter-share of the DRP workload.
We have approval for 2 FTE of staff effort to devote to the DRP Prep programme between now and the end of Phase B on 31 March 2023, and the Exec Group are considering a plan for how that should be allocated.
A bid for continuation of the DRP Prep funding for its final year will be included in the Phase C proposal, which will also seek approval for a 5 FTE envelope of DRP funding from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2027 (i.e. the final three years of Phase C).
An open call will then be made during 2023 for grants to undertake specified DRP operations work packages during that three-year period.