Curating the CASS Impact Framework process

Membership: Open (contact the chair to participate)

Meeting schedule: 12:00pm-1:00pm ET Tuesdays, bi-weekly from 2025-01-14

Chair: David Bernholdt (ORNL)

Charter

Purpose: The purpose of the Impact Framework Working Group (WG) is to develop and refine the CASS Impact Framework process, and advise on and curate its use across the consortium. The CASS Impact Framework (IF) process is intended to provide a uniform, but flexible approach to gathering information to help the CASS member organizations understand the status and progress made by supported software projects with respect to the quality and sustainability of the software, and the impact those and other improvements have had on the usage of the software and on its ability to support scientific discovery.

Read the rest of the charter (the CASS by-laws require additional information in the charter)

Relationships to other working groups: We will collaborate with the Metrics WG to identify or develop, implement, and analyze appropriate metrics to support the needs of the IF process.

Expected lifetime: Standing. We plan a process of review and refinement each time the IF is used.

Expected membership: Open

Reporting expectations: Quarterly

Charter approval status: Active as of 2025-08-12

Additional resources

Work product

The primary output of the Impact Framework WG is the Impact Framework document. Versions of the IF document are available below. We expect to update the Impact Framework on an annual basis in response to user feedback and experience.

Impact Framework version 1 (2025-09-08)

The first version of the Impact Framework document was approved by the CASS Steering Committee on 2025-09-08. We plan to work with member organizations and their stewarded product teams to roll out the document to capture progress and plans for stewardship activities starting in Fall 2025. Where possible, we plan to do this as part of each member organization’s planning and reporting cycle, though in some cases we may initially be out of cycle.