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GTOS
is a facilitator, not a collector or "owner" of
data. It serves to facilitate and coordinate the collection,
exchange, processing, integration, and archiving of relevant
data, and to promote the generation and use of data and information
products. Since existing institutions and networks will have
data and information management policies and procedures in
place, it is most unlikely that these will be easily put aside
in favour of any directives imposed by GTOS. The approach,
therefore, has to be of building on existing data and information
management practices by ensuring that their practices are
compatible with GTOS aims.
In
some instances, existing practices may be deficient and partnership with GTOS
will stimulate improvement to the advantage of the new participant. In other
cases, practices will be very much in line with GTOS principles and may have
features which could be adopted to lead to improvement of GTOS overall. Thus
while GTOS principles and high-level policies should be established and agreed
upon, the implementation will use evolving guidelines rather than a rigid framework.
In this
line, a GTOS Data and Information Management Plan was developed in 1998.
The plan defines the context and establishes the overall principles to guide
data and information management, and identifies the policies and proposed actions
needed to move towards practical operations in the future. It is structure in
three components:
- process
elements, which address mechanisms needed
to enable implementation of the Plan, including the creation of Panels, working
Groups and GTOS Data Centres. It outlines what is in place now, discusses
requirements and proposes actions to be taken.
- GTOS
data management, defining policies, functions
and required actions in a number of inter-related areas, including user requirements
for data and information, custodianship of data and information, access and
release of data and information products, metadata, data quality, data harmonization
and archiving.
- GTOS
support, identifying data management activities
that GTOS must undertake as part of its own operations, e.g. management of
the TEMS database and development of GTOS Data Centres.
The GTOS
Plan outlines the bodies and mechanisms through which the various aspects of
the programme will be implemented. The Steering Committee is intended to function
as a high-level body, setting overall direction. The Secretariat will have continuing
responsibility for the implementation of the Plan and for application of developed
policies and procedures.
In
addition to the goals of GOSIC, the Plan focuses on the identification
of Data Centres. these will be existing data and research
centres which are fomally identified with GTOS with regard
to some aspects of the GTOS end-to-end data and information
management paradigm. Their functions may include one or more
of: data collection, data assembly, integration, analysis,
product generation, distribution, and archiving. Centres may
be involved in the first level of verification of data but
not necessarily have facilities for, nor take part in, further
analyses. For example, they may have limited facilities for
electronic distribution of data and/or archiving.
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