5. Organizational and workplace culture issues (Australia)
5.1 Overview of roles and responsibilities
Realisation of the objectives of the 2003 metadata management strategy, and upholding and advancing the principles set out in it, remains a responsibility shared across the ABS.
As upholding and advancing the principles was seen particularly as the responsibility of every new project within the ABS, the project planners, project managers, business analysts and IT staff associated with these projects had a particularly important role. Data Management Section (DMS) developed particular guidelines to assist such key people in understanding the practical meaning and intentions of the principles and how they might apply in the context of a specific project. DMS also provides direct interactive advice to planners, analysts and IT staff.
DMS was also assigned the lead role in terms of co-ordinating the development of specific metadata management infrastructure and ensuring this infrastructure fits together as part of a logically integrated Corporate Metadata Repository. It has the lead role in monitoring overall progress in regard to the strategy and identifying areas where refinement to the strategy, updates to policy and practice or other measures might be required.
Statistical subject matter areas are required to make appropriate use of the available facilities, adhere to the policies and follow the relevant guidelines. In particular, these areas remain responsible for the extent, accuracy and other aspects of the fitness for purpose of the metadata content related to their particular collection, classifications, data elements etc. While DMS ensures the necessary "repository infrastructure" is provided, and that the infrastructure remains "fit for purpose" in a changing organisational and technical environment, DMS does not become responsible for the quality of the content held within each repository.
In addition to documenting their metadata initially, senior subject matter staff became responsible for "signing off" that the documented content was both accurate and sufficient. Subject matter areas also became responsible for ongoing custodianship of that metadata, including ensuring it remains up to date and answering any enquiries its definition might generate from others.
At a higher level a Metadata Strategy Group comprising "Branch Heads" drawn from across the ABS was formed to elaborate upon and drive forward and "champion" the strategy. This group has direct access to the very top management with the ABS and has regularly brought critical issues and proposals before top management for input and funding approval.
5.2 Metadata management team
Data Management Section (DMS) resides within the Data Management and Classifications Branch (DMCB) of the Methodology and Data Management Division (MDMD) of the ABS. DMS consists of around a dozen staff supported by around half a dozen programmers (application developers) from the ABS Technology Services Division. In addition to looking after
- policy and strategy related to metadata
- the work program related to the Corporate Metadata Repository (CMR)
- user support and training related to the CMR
DMS also look after work program, user support and training for the output data warehouse and other aspects of data management policy and practice within the ABS.
The two other sections within DMCB are the standards areas for economic and population statistics, looking after the development, definition and promotion of key content related statistical frameworks, concepts and classifications.
Each of the three subject matter Groups within the ABS (each Group, loosely, consists of two Divisions) includes a "co-ordination section" that assists with
- requirements gathering and prioritisation for new metadata facilities and for improvements to existing ones
- targetting and co-ordinating "user acceptance testing" of, and feedback on, new/changed facilities
- co-ordinating definition of implementation programs for new processes and systems, monitoring progress of implementation and escalating the most common and most serious implementation issues to ensure they are addressed
- aiding communication between DMS and end users (translating terminology and impacts between the two)
- meshing the CMR work program with other work programs relevant to that Group
DMS also works closely with the publishing area to facilitate appropriate content from the CMR flowing through appropriately into publications or directly onto ABS web pages. The level of content flowing through in this way is increasing in terms of its scope, volume and interlinkage. Making metadata available to the public via the web raises a range of additional content, process and management issues for subject matter areas, DMS and Publishing that need to understood and addressed in an appropriate and sustainable manner.
5.3 Training and Knowledge Management
DMS provides a range of training. This includes an overview of concepts and systems related to metadata management. Such training is regularly made available to new starters within the ABS and other staff.
A Corporate Metadata Repository (CMR) Assistant is available from the home page of the ABS intranet. This provides a portal to overview and detailed information about the available facilities as well as related policies, guidelines and training courses. It also provides direct access to the facilities themselves by allowing users to click on the component of interest as represented in a high level diagram showing how the various facilities fit together.
As the CMR is "part of the way the ABS does business", the generic training offered by DMS is only one strand. The economic and social statistics areas provide training that includes explanations of how the CMR facilities fit within, and are used within, their business processes. The training about dissemination processes in the ABS likewise includes information about how content defined in the CMR can be drawn into the various dissemination channels and made available outside the ABS. DMS provides development assistance and input on the components of these training courses that relate to the CMR.
Similarly the corporate "Assistants" related to Business Statistics, to Household Surveys and to Publishing cross reference relevant content from the CMR Assistant where appropriate.
The strategy of presenting information about the CMR in the context of a particular wider business process, rather than trying to present everything about it exhaustively in a major CMR specific training program, appears to be working very well.
5.4 Partnerships and cooperation
The ABS is very keen to share information and experiences and to collaborate within METIS generally, as well as on a narrower (eg bilateral or "working group") basis.
A second major international opportunity for partnership and cooperation is seen to be around SDMX. ABS has provided extensive feedback on previous proposals and outputs from the consortium, and volunteered to take part in case studies. The consortium seems committed to providing National Statistical Offices with even greater opportunities to shape, rather than just respond to, the initiative in future. The ABS looks forward to that.
The ABS also contributes actively to international committees associated with other metadata standards of relevance to it, such as ISO 11179.
The ABS interest in collaborating on relevant open source software has been noted earlier.
As described in Section 1.2, the National Data Network (NDN) provides many opportunities for various collaborations. Many of these collaborations are within Australia but they also include, eg, collaborating with the US Bureau of the Census in regard to their Data Ferrett product. This included trial mappings of ABS data and metadata content into the schema associated with that tool which highlighted some useful information content which can't currently be accommodated within that schema. The NDN initiative takes the ABS beyond simply collaborating with other statistical agencies and into collaborating with the geospatial community, the research community and others.
5.5 Other issues
Over the past 15 years the term "metadata" has become common parlance within the ABS. The value and importance of metadata is widely recognised.
Some of the practical complexities of managing and actively reusing metadata throughout the statistical cycle are (not yet) so widely and well understood. This means there is a degree of disappointment and frustration expressed in some quarters that more progress hasn't been made more quickly and that we haven't yet made metadata simple to manage and maintain as well as "all powerful" in driving and describing all processes and outputs.
There is also still a tendency for projects to want to structure metadata in an exactly optimal manner for their processes and manage it directly in that form. The services layer "plumbing" to allow such an approach to be implemented efficiently, while drawing content from corporate metadata repositories that are not structured in the same manner, is far from being largely - let alone fully - in place.
