Local and regional RDM services: Brandenburg on the way towards institutionalisation of sustainable research data handling

FDM-BB [1], Brandenburg's state initiative for research data management, was established in 2019 to build a strong foundation for RDM infrastructure across Brandenburg and to act as a regional interface between local and (inter-)national stakeholders. As a direct result of the initi-ative's important groundwork (such as a stakeholder analysis [2], requirements analysis [3] and recommendations for the implementation of RDM [4]), the cooperative project IN-FDM-BB ("In-stitutionalised and sustainable RDM in Brandenburg") [5], [6] is being funded from October 2022 to September 2025 [7]. The project aims to institutionalise RDM at all eight state-funded universities (of applied sciences): This is achieved through local data stewards, common standards and practices and centralized infrastructures and RDM services. Such a cross-institutional approach is clearly beneficial but also has its own challenges: Bran-denburg's universities with their approximately 50.000 students are very diverse in terms of size and disciplines. The universities' wide range of disciplines requires interdisciplinary RDM services while taking into consideration discipline-specific requirements as much as possible. Similarly, a balance must be struck between state-wide services and university-specific needs. Despite these challenges, the cooperative approach meant that each university was able to bring unique expertise to the table to jointly identify and offer (IT) services that each university alone would not have been able to provide for its researchers. In addition, universities that had not yet implemented centralized RDM services were able to benefit from those universities that had already established (some) RDM guidelines and services. The main project outcomes that demonstrate the successful cooperative approach of Bran-denburg's RDM initiative will be presented: - Each university implemented (or updated) an RDM strategy and policy by using (qua-si-)standards such as DIAMANT [8] and RISE-DE [9]. The joint aims of the state-wide RDM strategy [10] were always considered throughout this process. - Professional RDM training was developed, based on the requirements of researchers at Brandenburg's universities [11]. In particular, two certificate courses, one for stu-dents [12] and one for researchers and RDM staff [13] (two iterations each), were of-fered free of charge. The demand for each course exceeded the available spaces, strongly supporting the need for RDM training among researchers and students in Brandenburg. - Two RDM-specific IT services are offered at all eight universities: the Research Data Repository RADAR [14] ("RADAR-BB") and RDMO [15], the Research Data Manage-ment Organiser ("RDMO-BB"). Each university is responsible for content-related maintenance while the University of Potsdam is responsible for hosting of the services and providing technical support. - Dedicated RDM staff is essential for the institutionalisation of RDM. It is anticipated that Brandenburg's budget will include funding for continuously running the central technical services and for a Brandenburg-wide RDM coordinator [16]. Additionally, some of Brandenburg's universities are able to offer permanent RDM positions [17]. - Beyond state boundaries, strong ties with regional and (inter-)national initiatives have been formed throughout the project that foster lively peer exchange and -learning [18]. Having reached many milestones on the journey towards institutionalising RDM in Branden-burg, we will discuss future steps, challenges and visions.