Last year myself and a “data committee” examined pain points at NBMG as they related to the data lifecycle. Over the past year, we’ve made a lot of progress in many of these areas. Over the next few weeks I’ll write quick posts about improvements that have already been made, tools that are now available to you, and ongoing work and future plans to make improvements in all of these facets of DM at NBMG.

PLAN

• No formalized data planning unless required by a grant
• DMPs may not be maintained with products after the fact
• Preservation data cycles need to be planned, too
• No formal plan for data dissemination

ACQUIRE

• Need to create formalized processes for digitizing non-digital data stores at GBSSRL
• Need to create better ways of inputting data at GBSSRL (e.g. mining district file metadata is first entered onto a physical piece of paper, and then typed up)
• Others could likely benefit from some training on using ESRI tools or others for digital data entry in the field

PROCESS

• Lack of infrastructure for collaboration (e.g. ESRI enterprise)
• No versioning system for projects

ANALYZE

• Huge variety of tools being used in this stage, and likely a lack of reproducibility (analyses being conducted in Excel, etc.)

PRESERVE

• Lack of integration among datasets, even when data overlaps
• Lots of data in legacy formats
• No “single point of truth” for many datasets

PUBLISH/SHARE

• Lack of consistency among dissemination platforms
• Code that is hard to maintain on some dissemination platforms
• Lots of data that isn’t disseminated

DESCRIBE

• No formal metadata standards
• Many datasets are missing metadata
• Lots of physical data that doesn’t have associated digital metadata
• Lack of documented inventory about what data does exist
• No way of tracking provenance

MANAGE QUALITY

• No formal QA system – lots of data likely has major quality issues
• Lack of knowledge or standards that define what quality data are

BACKUP & SECURE

• No security or access restriction mechanisms for current data stores

FILE SYSTEM

• No formal file system structure
• Huge amount of redundancy on Nickel
• Lack of process to archive data
• Lack of process for sharing data
• Lots of “one-off” beginnings of structures
• No process for staff leaving department