The Data Commons Pilot Phase Consortium (DCPPC) is an NIH project to tackle the challenges of data-driven and data-intensive biomedical research:

• The data sets are too large to download
• There's minimal interoperability between and across data set providers
• Local compute capacity often is too limited to meet dynamic research needs

These challenges are preventing biomedical data from reaching its full potential in basic research, clinical, and translational medicine.

DCPPC aims to improve this through these 10 major project objectives:

1. Develop an interoperable global unique identifier system for digital objects
2. Create authentication and authorization policies and protocols for controlled access to digital objects and derivatives
3. Enable search and indexing of digital objects and data sets
4. Design and implement multiple robust and sustainable software stacks implementing Commons standards
5. Develop standard application interfaces for ease of collaboration
6. Create and maintain a library of use cases for the Data Commons
7. Engage and support the Commons community across multiple levels of expertise
8. Establish formal governance procedures to chart the course of the Data Commons and DCPPC
9. Form and enact regular evaluation methods and metrics
10. Apply FAIR guidelines (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) throughout the entire project
    

The Data Commons Pilot Phase Consortium (DCPPC) was formed in response to the NIH RM-17-026 research opportunity announcement. Also see the NIH project page.