2026: Infrastructure, Sustainability, and Civic Data#
VERSO entered 2026 in a substantially different institutional position than it occupied at its founding. Two years of Sloan support had produced a continuously running student internship program, more than 40 public GitHub repositories, relationships with state agencies and nonprofit partners, and a formal home within the Office of the Vice President for Research under the Vermont Complex Systems Institute. The defining challenge shifted from building the program to making it durable without year-to-year grant dependency.
Institutional Changes#
At the VERSO Kickoff on January 16, 2026, Kendall Fortney reviewed the cumulative grant record since 2022: a substantial number of proposals submitted, a majority funded, and the remainder either rejected, pending, or in progress. The review illustrated both the strength of VERSO’s grant pipeline and the ongoing effort required to sustain a fully grant-funded program.
In January, Kendall’s position was reclassified to a technical staff track that better reflects the scope of the work. The process, initiated in 2024, recognized that the VERSO Director role had expanded into technical leadership, research software engineering, infrastructure stewardship, and independent grant development.
In May, VERSO established a formal consulting income-expense account through the Vermont Complex Systems Institute. Research groups and programs can now pay directly for RSE services on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Early clients included the Gund Institute for Environment, the Leahy Institute, and several Vermont Complex Systems Institute research projects. This consulting model became the most consequential sustainability decision of the year because it created revenue without requiring VERSO to be named on every grant proposal.
Kendall was also designated UVM’s institutional liaison for HELIOS, the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship, following the departure of the UVM Dean of Libraries. The designation embedded VERSO more deeply in UVM’s open-research policy and compliance infrastructure.
Funding Received and Pending#
On March 13, 2026, NSF awarded Empowering Vermont Open Data (Award 2531964) $584,821 for March 15, 2026 through February 28, 2029. Kendall is principal investigator. The award funds VERSO’s administration of UVM Dataverse, a Year 1 workshop series, annual open science training, and the inaugural Vermont Open Data Summit in Year 2. It also provides partial support for an assistant librarian position.
The Sloan VERSO grant received a one-year no-cost extension through June 30, 2027, with approximately $227,486 remaining at the close of the original period. The extension allows VERSO to continue staff salaries, RSE consulting work, student stipends, and ORCA operations while longer-term institutional funding develops.
VERSO contributed as key personnel to the pending $50,000 NSF FINDERS Foundry planning grant for the Vermont AI Literacy Initiative, led by Julia Zimmerman. Through the Vermont Data Collaborative partnership with the Leahy Institute, VERSO also gained access to Ford Foundation funding and formalized its role in the Vermont Professionals of Color data project through a Leahy Institute seed award. The Agriverse/NIFA Open Data Framework proposal remained under review as of July 2026, and VERSO contributed to a Vermont Rural AI Hub proposal submitted in June.
Major Projects#
Vermont Professionals of Color Data Portal#
VERSO is developing an interactive public data visualization portal for VT PoC Network, integrating VT PoC 2022 and 2024 datasets with U.S. Census and ACS data, the Vermonter Poll, and Vermont state datasets. A 15-member BIPOC Data Advisory Group supports cultural integrity and interpretation. A community data report was drafted and shared for review in June, with data-walk materials and community notes prepared for the January-December 2026 project timeline.
FAIROS Workshops and Civic Data#
VERSO began planning three FAIROS Year 1 workshops for October 2026, November 2026, and March/April 2027, leading toward the Vermont Open Data Summit in Year 2. The office also explored a partnership with the Center for Rural Studies and Spatial Analysis Lab on a Vermont Municipal Vulnerability Index RFP. VERSO’s proposed role focused on data integration and visualization; involvement was not confirmed as of July.
Events and Outreach#
VERSO continued participating in monthly NSF FAIROS principal investigator meetings, the RISE Summit, and United Nations Open Source Week. Kendall gave a Data Science 1 guest lecture on February 12 and led a two-hour career and programming workshop for Upward Bound students on July 14. Open Science 101 planning became an ongoing program, supported by a UVM course page and building on the NASA OS101 workshop held in January 2025.
VERSO is organizing the Vermont Open Data Summit for October 9, 2026, at UVM Innovation Hall. The planned event will bring together students, staff, faculty, and Vermont community partners for sessions on open data, open science, and civic technology, with refreshments and afternoon networking.
Decisions That Shaped the Year#
Three decisions capture VERSO’s maturation in 2026. First, consulting became the primary near-term sustainability vehicle rather than waiting for general university funds to flow through the VCSI transition. Second, the FAIROS award made the VERSO Director a named NSF PI, reflecting independent grant-seeking capacity and institutional maturity. Third, UVM Innovations modified its invention disclosure process to accept open-source inventions, creating a formal recognition pathway for ORCA work.
VERSO also decided against ad-hoc university VM hosting for an internal software pilot. After a researcher VM request was denied because Kendall is staff rather than faculty, the team evaluated several managed hosting platforms. A managed platform was judged the most viable short-term option, with UVM infrastructure remaining the longer-term goal.
The common thread across the year was durability: infrastructure stewardship, earned consulting revenue, open-source policy recognition, and student leadership began reinforcing one another. Having demonstrated that an academic OSPO can work, VERSO spent 2026 building the institutional mechanisms that let the work continue.