During 2021, HIFIS conducted a survey throughout the Helmholtz Association, querying the needs and current practices of all Helmholtz colleagues in using IT services.
The analysis and report are now online.
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# Why a survey?
HIFIS provides numerous IT services for Helmholtz and collaboration partners, ranging from cloud and technology services to education, consulting, and community building.
From users of these services, we obtain feedback on the quality and potential future developments via various channels.
On top of that, we are especially interested in obtaining information from colleagues in Helmholtz that are *not* already closely related to HIFIS services.
We would like to know more on users' needs and wishes, and maybe organisational bottlenecks, so we can address these in our future service portfolio.
With this motivation in mind, we surveyed a randomly selected subset of employees of the participating Helmholtz centres (15 of 18 queried centres plus Head Office took part) and asked them to anonymously report on their usage and practices of IT services in their field of work, also on software development practices, if that applied for the questioned user.
### Results
We were able to obtained responses from 15 Helmholtz centres and the Head Office.
A total of 594 participants responded to the HIFIS Survey 2021 between May and August 2021.
After filtering for inconsistent and too incomplete responses, a total of 411 responses were analyzed.
Approximately 55% of them were from researchers, the remaining fraction was distributed between Administrative, Infrastructure and IT staff.
All six research areas were represented.
Results are presented and discussed in an [**analysis report that is available here**](https://gitlab.hzdr.de/hifis/overall/surveys/survey-2021/analysis/-/jobs/artifacts/master/raw/report/hifis-survey-2021.pdf?job=build:graphsreport).
### Data and Analysis Repositories
The data and the complete analysis pipeline as well as the report sources are available publicly.
You are invited to check the data and/or do your own analyses.
If you happen to find new interesting results, we'd appreciate [if you tell us](mailto:support@hifis.net)!
* The data set, excluding free text answers, is provided here: <https://gitlab.hzdr.de/hifis/overall/surveys/survey-2021/data>
* The analysis scripts and report sources are located here: <https://gitlab.hzdr.de/hifis/overall/surveys/survey-2021/analysis>
* The analysis backend is built on the HIFIS Surveyval Framework, which can be found here: <https://gitlab.hzdr.de/hifis/overall/surveys/hifis-surveyval>
[Write us](mailto:support@hifis.net) if you are interested on details for these.
### Further analysis
Based on the primary analysis summarised in the report, it can already be stated that further
information can likely be derived for specific sub-groups in additional analyses.
This may yield useful insights on how to shape HIFIS services towards these groups.
We as HIFIS provide various services to improve collaboration workflows within and outside of Helmholtz and in particular to support researchers with their computational work.
To map out effective long-term strategies for building up new and improving existing services, we are surveying Helmholtz employees about their current workflows and working environments on a yearly basis.
We are particularly interested in tools that are currently used and trends towards novel tools that could complement the Helmholtz portfolio.
To get an overview about the current status quo, evaluate our work, and to keep up with the ever changing requirements and demands of modern research, the HIFIS Survey was rolled out in 2019 and will be conducted every year.
To get an overview about the current status quo, evaluate our work, and to keep up with the ever changing requirements and demands of modern research, the first HIFIS Survey was rolled out in 2019 and will be conducted approximately every year.
