Introducing NOAA's Climate Data Record Best Practices into NCEI's Center for Weather and Climate (CWC) Products

NOAA established its Climate Data Record Program in 2009 at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI, formerly the National Climatic Data Center) to provide sustained and authoritative climate information from satellite data. The CDR Program was built following best practices in program management and configuration management with the goal of developing and sustaining CDRs in a transparent, cost-effective, and scientifically-defensible manner.  During the NCEI reorganization in 2015, the responsibility for the sustainment of CDRs moved to NCEI’s Center for Weather and Climate (CWC).  CWC leadership recognized the value of the CDR Program’s project management approach and implemented the best practices across its extensive product portfolio.  First, a full CWC product inventory was conducted.  Then, each product was scored in 8 unique areas.  A quad matrix was created which plotted each product’s total score against the labor needed to sustain that product.  This product prioritization matrix helped identify high value products (high score with low labor costs) to keep and the low value products (low score with high labor costs) to potentially cut.  Conducting this organized approach allows CWC leadership to easily determine where they can free up labor from the low value products that can then be redistributed to new products based on user needs and requirements.