A data management plan or DMP is a structured document outlining how information should be managed both during and after the conclusion of a research project (Data management plan, 2019). As we have, the information about data it will help in saving efforts for a long period of time, there is no need to rearrange, reformat or attempt to recall the previous data information. This is possible as the DMP is prepared well in advance before the actual data has been collected, this guarantees that the information is in the correct format, well-structured and properly annotated.

It is important to have a Data Management Plan as it gives an idea about the project to the target audiences. (Jones, 2011) says that having a plan will help you save time and effort and promote the research process. Understanding what information is going to be created and how, helps in determining the data attributes. DMP also allows to make responsible decisions, taking into account the broader context and consequences of various options. DMP makes it easier to share and use the data, to understand a product or make a financial investment plan for the project. All these is done without obviating any policies or standards. When a researcher wants to view some information of a project, he has a look at the DMP for the project and gain insights for the project. DMP is also helpful incase when a new employee is hired for the project or a different research team is going conduct further research on a project. In that case the researchers can directly go through the DMP, as DMP follows all international standards it will be more or less the same world-wide. This helps in reducing the readers efforts and time as he will already have an idea about the structure of DMP.

The case study for the assigned DMP was about “Viral Evolution”. The initiative “Viral Evolution” seeks to develop the ability to forecast the infectious potential of major disease threats through analyzing influenza strains through the WHO network from the earliest point of their discovery and risk assessment by health officials. ComTelDat and AusUni (fictional) telecommunications companies want to use ComTelDat’s phone data to produce population movement information for the project. Globally, such information can be international movement, such as arrival and departure at airports, and local movement of people within (or between) places that can be monitored through their mobile phones. The project will develop the information infrastructure and identify the telecommunications data that can be obtained legally, ethically and morally from the operating systems of ComTelDat so that it can be used in conjunction with health data from other sources.

In this DMP (Data Management Plan), we focus on data recovery and management of influenza virus data provided by government and global health institutions and telecommunications data generated by ComTelDat and other related data, such as demographic data, to provide a basis for research on the evolution of global influenza virus. Data curation is required in this viral evolution project to organize and maintain data storage and archiving, define the level of access pro