What is NOAA data management?
Data management ensures maximum use, value, and trust of data by present and future generations through policies, standards, and processes that enable broad discovery, access, interoperability, and reusability of data. Data management is intrinsic to data and scientific integrity, a core pillar of NOAA’s mission. While there are laws and regulations that guide the implementation of data management at NOAA, the overarching goal is to enable innovation to address environmental and societal challenges.
The data management life cycle provides a conceptual framework to define roles as well as actions, operations, and processes required to manage data as a strategic asset, meet the requirements of federal law and policy, and achieve the mission. There are six primary components (Plan, Obtain, Process, Preserve, Access, and Disposal) and four cross-cutting components (Document, Track and Monitor, Quality, and Security) of NOAA's data management lifecycle. This model was developed for NOAA and is based on a number of existing federal models.
- Plan - Plan and design the project, program, or research from onboarding to project closure, including methods and resources for data management.
- Obtain - Obtain the necessary data through observation using NOAA-owned or leased systems, purchasing commercial data, or producing through models, data integration, or data analysis.
- Process - Work with the data to make it useful to users and create products, including but not limited to transformations, calibrations, flagging, binning, subsetting, and scientific algorithms.
- Preserve - Identify essential records, determine data required to be preserved, determine the method of preservation, align preservation with records retention schedules, curate the records, and coordinate discovery and access to archived records.
- Access - Ensure the discoverability and availability and use of data by providing internal and public access to the data and metadata as appropriate in a timely manner.
- Disposition - Re-appraisal of data based on community needs and records retention schedule to evaluate ongoing data management needs, including the option of destruction and deletion.
Where can I learn more about NOAA data management?
You can learn more about NOAA data management through the policy on Management of NOAA Data and Information here and in the NOAA Data Management Handbook which is available here.