INPUT REQUESTED: What types of content would you like to see included in this data standards repository?

[juliaklindpaintner]

This GitHub issue is collecting feedback to inform the development of a data standards repository on resources.data.gov. Based on Action 20 of the Federal Data Strategy, the repository will include not only data standards themselves, but also “information about the different types of existing standards of all types.” We need your input on what kind of complementary content would be of value.

Action 20 suggests this information should include:

• policies related to using voluntary consensus standards
• information about standards-developing organizations and communities of practices inside and outside of government
• a catalog of data standards already in use by the Federal Government

In addition to this, we have considered the following:

• process for determining an appropriate standard to use for a given use case
• process for aligning on a standard within an organization / across organizations
• information on how to work with standards bodies

Please comment below with any reactions to the above or recommendations for other types of content to include in this data standards repository. If you prefer, you can send any comments to data-federation@gsa.gov.

If you have feedback on what metadata you would like to see displayed for data standards listed in this repository, please provide your comments in response to #158.

[ftrotter]

Previous administrations created a page that articulated clearly the governments responsibility to support Open Data formats and prefer machine readable data. Things like pdf documents instead of word documents. CSV instead of Excel or SAS data files. What makes a data standard open is that it is freely available. That page lived here:

https://project-open-data.cio.gov/open-standards/

But now that page auto-forwards to the main resource.data.gov page, and, as far as I can tell there is no page on resource.data.gov that does the same job.

What was critically important here is that it listed out which standards bodies actually make the standards for machine readable formats like CSV, JSON and XML. As far as I know, there was no place other than this where the policy (favoring open data formats) and the actual list of organizations that release such formats (IETF, W3C, ANSI, etc) are listed in the same resource.

The use case here is that people like me, who seek to cause the government to release data, need to have a single URL that we can provide to government employees that details their obligation to release data in open formats, and details exactly what qualifies as an open format and why.

Thanks,
-ft

[NPS-ARCN-CAKN]

Open data and open data fromats are laudable goals. I'm a data manager with the federal government. Metadata is the most important thing that data consumers need, that is very difficult and time consuming for data producers to create. Many standards exist, what is missing is software to make it very easy to create metadata. In fact, software that initiated metadata as data is imported, keypunched or otherwise processed would be incredibly useful, bringing metadata into the scientific life cycle and the awareness of scientists. Settling on a very basic standard that is not onerous to write is needed. Metadata is definitely not institutional policy for any scientist I've ever worked with, currently.