OMG issues request for proposals for statistical metadata interoperability

Object Management Group (OMG) has issued the Statistical Metadata Interoperability request for proposal (RFP) to develop a specification for documenting statistical datasets using machine-readable metadata.

Many organizations worldwide (in government and public policy, healthcare, finance, and other domains) consume, produce, or publish enormous amounts of valuable statistical data. Several commonly used specifications for documenting datasets are used, but not specifically for those with a strong statistical aspect.

"Many institutions produce statistical datasets, but, because of their different sources, conventions, levels of description and styles, it is hard to discover what datasets exist and to understand their suitability for a given task," said Dan Gillman, US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

"The vision of this RFP is to create a robust, international standard that enables the greater ease-of-use of statistics by government policymakers and program administrators, private sector decision-makers, university and nonprofit researchers, journalism and the media, and the public."

The requirements address the primary aspects of discovery, cataloging, and finding datasets regardless of their location; understanding, making sure users can understand the datasets; transparency, the provision of sufficient metadata and other documentation; and interoperability, the ability to use the data based on the metadata.