Efficiency and seamless user experience in research data management within and beyond the NFDI can be greatly improved through NFDI-wide basic services. Base4NFDI is a unique joint effort supported by all consortia to develop and deploy such services. Base4NFDI involves institutions from all relevant infrastructure domains and from all major research organisations in Germany. Its resulting NFDI-wide basic service portfolio will benefit all these communities and domains. The target group for basic services is the wider NFDI-community and, in particular, operators of specialised community resources. Base4NFDI builds on two core pillars: 1) organisationally, a community driven co-design of basic services via the NFDI Association and, 2) technologically, a common framework establishing quality assured and coherent models for continuous identification, fostering, development, operation and evaluation of NFDI-wide basic services. True to its mission of supporting NFDI, all strategic and financial decisions on basic services will be made by all consortia in the bodies of the NFDI Association. A basic service needs to be useful to potentially all existing and future consortia. In Base4NFDI a service is understood as a technical-organisational solution, which typically includes storage and computing services, software, processes and workflows, as well as the necessary personnel support for different service desks. To generate proposals for basic services, Base4NFDI will draw on the expertise in the NFDI Sections. They are the loci for exchange between consortia on cross-cutting topics, provide infrastructural and technological expertise in combination with domain knowledge and act as incubators for identifying potential basic service.

Revised edition to reflect budget cuts and adjusted timelines.