Everything you need to know about Federated EGA Affiliates: Q&A

Addressing common questions about Federated EGA (FEGA) Affiliates and providing answers.

FEGA Affiliates have recently been defined as the third tier within the newly approved “Federated EGA Structure and Organisation” document, alongside Central EGA (CEGA) and the FEGA Nodes. In this blog post, we aim to answer the questions that may arise on this topic. For more general information about FEGA Affiliates, you can refer to this blog post.

Let's now start with the questions and answers!

FEGA Nodes

A FEGA Node is a national-level service that accepts submissions and provides archiving and access services within a single country's jurisdiction. Nodes provide end-to-end services for submitters in that jurisdiction, including submission support, processing, permissions management, and distribution.

FEGA Affiliates

A FEGA Affiliate is not a national submission service. Instead, it archives data from its own legal entity and/or selected partner institutions (for example, consortium partners).

Affiliates are designed for organisations and consortia that need to keep data stewardship and access decisions within their own governance model, while still enabling discovery through the broader FEGA ecosystem.

Here is a practical checklist of the core expectations for a FEGA Affiliate.

FEGA Affiliate checklist

1. Discovery and metadata
• Submit non-personal metadata to CEGA to obtain EGA accessions and enable discovery (with metadata validation handled by the CEGA Helpdesk).
2. Operations and resilience
• Maintain a data storage system and a defined backup/recovery approach.
• Ensure operational capacity (personnel and infrastructure) to deliver Affiliate services.
• Maintain systems and practices that support local data security and align with EGA best-practices.
3. Access and user support
• Provide data distribution or access (e.g in a trusted research environment) to authorised users to datasets hosted at the Affiliate.
• Provide permissions management for datasets archived by the Affiliate (the CEGA DAC (Data Access Committee) Portal is always at your disposal to use).
• Provide a minimal helpdesk with sufficient capacity to support relevant DACs and approved users.
4. Membership term
• Commit to a minimum membership term of four years.
5. Governance and participation (lightweight by design)
• Affiliates integrate into the FEGA network operationally, but without the committee obligations associated with Nodes.

Consider the Affiliate tier if:

• You host (or plan to host) controlled-access datasets that must be managed under your organisation’s or consortium’s governance,
• you want studies to be discoverable through EGA, but need access control and/or distribution to remain local, and
• you are not aiming to operate a national submission service tier..

We encourage any potential Affiliate to reach out to their national FEGA Node to explore collaboration at the national level. Why?

• Federated models within a country already exist in FEGA, where a national Node operates like a Central EGA for their country.
• FEGA Nodes can also represent the interests of any Affiliates within their jurisdiction at the FEGA Committees.
• FEGA Nodes have experience and can support you on your FEGA journey.

We’re excited to open this formally defined pathway for organisations and consortia to participate in the federation. If you think the FEGA Affiliate tier fits your needs, start by assessing:

1. Your scope (organisation/consortium-held data rather than public external submissions),
2. Your ability to provide the core services (permissions, distribution/access, helpdesk, monitoring), and
3. Your readiness to submit non-personal metadata to CEGA for accessioning and discovery.

To express interest, please contact us here, and we'll help you understand the onboarding steps and how Affiliates integrate into the FEGA network.