Ocean.US DMAC Standards Process

The Integrated Ocean Observing System has a new standards approval process for use by the community. Under this process, members of the community will submit data management standards for consideration by IOOS, and their submissions will be managed using a distributed web system integrating inputs from the IOOS Data Management and Communications team members all over the country. The system provides an ongoing site and process supporting evaluation and agreement on the standards to be used in IOOS.

The recently released DMAC Standards website is a new community tool, designed for distributed submission, review and recommendation of standards for the Integrated Ocean Observing System. The simple user interface facilitates involvement by the wider community, and enables status tracking, documentation submission, and enhanced electronic discussions. Future capabilities will be planned, as the community explores this new tool. Registration is open to the public, or you can log in as "Guest", to investigate the interface (note: this login provides limited functionality).

The web site remains open at all times for further contributions of standards for consideration, although the first set of standards were to be submitted for consideration by October 15 (this date may be slightly extended). Through this facilitated process, the IOOS DMAC Steering Committee will review the standards that are submitted, and decide whether to promote them to the status of Proposed standards, which will then undergo further review. The first standards review meeting of this process will take place in November, with additional meetings scheduled every six months thereafter.

Results from this community experiment will be presented at the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Committee (IOC). An assessment of the U.S. IOOS standards activities will also be presented at this meeting.

The NOAA IOOS program has generously provided extensive support for this process. The DMAC Standards web support tool was designed to make the process more efficient. The website can be found at the following URL http://ioosdmac.fedworx.org. A simple registration step is required which will generate an email to you with your username and password within 24 hours. You may also log in as a guest to explore the site. You are welcome to log in on this site at your earliest convenience.

The website allows for electronic submission of a standard, tracking of the standard through the process, private threaded discussions among Steering Team and Expert Team members to facilitate polling through the 3 tier process (Submitted - Proposed - Recommended), an action item listing and a calendar.