Work Streams
GA4GH Foundational and Technical Work Streams develop standards and tools that are designed to overcome technical and regulatory hurdles to international genomic data-sharing. Read the Standards for Professional Conduct for participating in GA4GH Work Streams.
Foundational Work Streams
Foundational Work Streams provide guidance to both Technical Work Streams and Driver Projects in the areas of regulatory, ethics, and data security in genomics. They develop standards and programs identified by the Driver Projects as immediately relevant to the community and will support existing efforts being led by Driver Projects, as well as independently establishing policies and guidance documents that cut across the Organization and have the potential to shape the field more broadly.
Data Security
Creates technology standards and best practices for protecting data and services consistent with the GA4GH policy framework, including the development, customization, and adoption of standards for identity management, data security, privacy protection, and service assurance.
To report potential security flaws in a GA4GH technical tool, please email security-notification@ga4gh.
WORK STREAM LEADS: DAVID BERNICK, LUCILA OHNO MACHADO
CONTACT: fabio.liberante@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Regulatory & Ethics
Focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of international data sharing. Building on a novel human rights framework, the REWS aims to create and harmonize forward-looking consent and privacy policies, and anticipatory data governance models.
WORK STREAM LEADS: DIANNE NICOL, YANN JOLY
CONTACT: lindsay.smith@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Technical Work Streams
Technical Work Streams are the key production teams of GA4GH and consist of leaders in their respective sub disciplines from around the world. They work together to develop technical standards that are of most relevance to the practicing genomic medicine and research communities. These groups work to both discover and harden existing “working standards” and to create entirely new standards where needed. Browse the genomic data toolkit.
Clinical & Phenotypic Data Capture
Supports the clinical adoption of genomics through establishing standard ontologies and information models to describe the clinical phenotype for use in genomic medicine and research, including the capture and exchange of information between electronic clinical systems and research.
WORK STREAM LEADS: MELANIE COURTOT, DAVID HANSEN
CONTACT: lindsay.smith@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Cloud
Helps GA4GH Driver Projects take full advantage of modern cloud environments. Its initial focus is on ‘bringing the algorithms to the data’, by creating standards for defining, sharing, and executing portable workflows. Standards under discussion include workflow definition languages, tool encapsulation, cloud-based task and workflow execution, and cloud-agnostic abstraction of data access.
WORK STREAM LEADS: DAVID GLAZER, BRIAN O’CONNOR
CONTACT: reggan.thomas@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Data Use & Researcher Identities (DURI)
Facilitates and enables the harmonization of researcher identities by defining who is a bona fide researcher and one or more identity providers that respects this definition and can provide a portable electronic identity. DURI will also generate a data use ontology that will be used to both state use restrictions as well as researchers’ purposes.
WORK STREAM LEADS: TOMMI NYRONEN, JAIME GUIDRY AUVIL
CONTACT: fabio.liberante@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Discovery
Creates a unified data discovery platform to accelerate genomics and clinical data access and utilization around the world.
WORK STREAM LEADS: MICHAEL BAUDIS, MARC FIUME
CONTACT: fabio.liberante@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Genomic Knowledge Standards
Develops, adopts, and adapts standards-based components to enable the exchange of reference genomic information through common APIs, thereby enabling the downstream analysis of genomic data.
WORK STREAM LEADS: ROBERT FREIMUTH, ANDY YATES
CONTACT: reggan.thomas@ga4gh.org
Available resources
Large Scale Genomics
Creates standardized methods for accessing large-scale genomic data (reads, variants, and expression data) by file-based, API-based, cloud-based, and distributed access.
WORK STREAM LEADS: OLIVER HOFMANN, GERALDINE VAN DER AUWERA
CONTACT: reggan.thomas@ga4gh.org
Available resources
