New Information Systems for Data Stewardship at NCEI

Data archiving is a key part of the data management lifecycle. Traditional data management requires continued coordination and resources for adequate stewardship between the producer, long-term archive and its users. When faced with data archiving, producers usually have many questions: Who do I contact? What documentation and metadata so I need to provide with my data? How do I send the data? How long will it take to archive my data? Etc. Answers to these and other questions are necessary for proceeding with data management planning and sometimes for the development of the data itself. The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has assisted data producers in managing and archiving their data by providing discovery, access and other services to support scientific data archival. NCEI has created guidelines, templates and tools for data producer to comply with standard data formats and metadata conventions, which are necessary for increasing data usability and preserving information content. NCEI is also streamlining its archive interfaces. A new API in development will allow data producers to submit data and actively manage their data after it's been archived at NCEI. For process improvement, NCEI is using the NASA Earth Science Data Preservation Content Specification approved/endorsed by the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP Federation) as a guide for deciding on the contents to be archived. These resources communicate NCEI's expectations to data producers in advance regarding what should be provided and how it should be formatted for a long-term, useful data archive. The common, distributed approach to the data management lifecycle increases efficiency, scale, and quality of the data preserved for future users.