Data Competence Center Come2Data - Connecting a local support structure with a focus on Saxony to the rest of the ((research) data) world

Come2Data is one of eleven national data competence centers that are currently under con-struction and implemented through federal funding. The main goals of our center are to foster awareness and acquisition of data competencies and skills, primarily in academia, but also in public administration, and, in the long run, industry and the interested general public. Come2Data pursues an interdisciplinary, regional approach by bringing together existing data-related teaching, training and support services of the project partners (Technical University of Chemnitz, TUD Dresden Technical University, Leipzig Uni-versity, and the Saxon State and University Library, SLUB) as well as expertise, networking and support on research data management (e.g. the regional research data management [RDM] initiative for Saxony, SaxFDM), the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and high-performance computing and analysis methods for data-intensive, interdisci-plinary research applications, such as artificial intelligence and data modelling (e.g. the Center for Scalable Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, ScaDS.AI). Information on services and resources will be aggregated and made accessible via a virtual platform serving as a central entry point. Existing teaching offers and materials will be didacti-cally revised, tailored to the learning objectives of different target groups and arranged in learning paths on a modular basis. Findings and solutions developed as part of pilot projects from various disciplines (specifically, engineering sciences, social sciences, and AI in the context of medical data) will be integrated. In addition, Come2Data will explore and pilot ways of integrating content related to data literacy into curricula and teaching as well as certified data literacy courses. To this end, we have set out to build a comprehensive knowledge base drawing upon an on-tology that is tailored to both reference existing RDM-supporting infrastructure and data-competence-related courses, as well as our own teaching material and a database of experts. These experts can be persons, projects, institutions or networks (e.g. the multifaceted NFDI consortia) who each are specialized in a diverse set of disciplines and have particular knowledge or skills related to the different stages of the data life cycle which we see as a ba-sis for the various aspects of data competencies. Another challenge besides the complex ontology design is the creation of a unified helpdesk across all of our partnering and affiliated institutions, for which we will present a potential tech-nical solution in the form of an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) appli-cation called SuiteCRM. With respect to helpdesk content, we furthermore seek to accomplish the implementation of a so-called legal helpdesk, i.e. judicial guidance and consultation for da-ta-related issues, such as data sharing, data copyright, or the use of AI, to name just a few. Here, we focus on introducing and discussing our (technical) infrastructure, specifically the ontology and the CRM that will serve as foundation for both database and ticket-based helpdesk. On a larger scale, we seek to not only fulfill the above-mentioned project goals, but to further become and remain part of the national (research) data support infrastructure be-yond our project funding phase, in order to establish a permanent and sustainable support network for data-related issues.