On November 2016, the RES coordinators launched a survey to rate the level of satisfaction about the services and resources provided. This survey was completed by 149 users and the results obtained showed that they are very satisfied with the overall supercomputing services. The best-valued question was regarding the support team, with an average rating of 4.6 out of a possible 5 points. However, some respondents rated negatively other aspects. For instance, some users indicated that the awarded computational hours were not sufficient, they had some technical problems related to being assigned to different machines in consecutive periods, or they were dissatisfied with the dissemination information.
The survey results were analysed by the RES Users Committee (CURES), and this committee wrote a report with some recommendations to improve RES services. The RES Council evaluated these recommendations in their last meeting to propose future improvement actions.
Since this survey was launched, the RES have made some progresses to improve its services for users. The total computational capacity of the RES has been significantly increased during 2017 thanks to the installation of MareNostrum4 and other updates in several RES nodes. As a result, in the last call (2017 P3), the RES provided 88 million of computing hours to 107 research projects. Besides, the dissemination information form has been improved, and now includes the possibility of merging the forms of continuation activities and there is more time to add publications.
The new RES website is useful to improve the dissemination of research results from users, especially in the section “Research”. We encourage users to send to dissemination@res.es their highlighted research results or news of general interest for the RES. On the other hand, the web section “Access” contains detailed information about the application process. We have also open new channels of communication with users, like the RES Newsletter and Twitter.
You can download the report with the survey results.
