Call for Participation

Currently at http://xxxxxxx

This is to announce a workshop on development, operation and use of metadata registries.

The purpose of the workshop is to:

• provide a forum for information exchange between persons implementing or intending to implement metadata registries and
• encourage collaboration in the exchange of metadata content between registries
• encourage collaboration in the development of metadata registries

The workshop will focus on metadata registries that are based on international and national standards including ISO/IEC 11179, Specification and Standardization of Data Elements and ANSI DpANS X3.285, Metamodel for the Management of Sharable Data. The registries may be World Wide Web (WWW) accessible, using standards such as HTML, XML and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for both human and machine interfaces.

Dates and Location

• April 15th through 17th, 1998, Wednesday through Friday
• U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
  Conference Center, Conference Rooms 7 & 8
  2 Massachusetts Ave NE
  Washington, D.C.
  This is across the street from Union Station

Sponsors

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

U.S. Census Bureau

• U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
• U.S. Department of Transportation
• (Who in Healthcare? --BEB)
• L8 Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) National Committee for Information Technical Standards (NCITS) L8, Data Representation

What Are Metadata Registries and What Issues Will We Address?

For the past several years, a growing number of individuals and organizations have become increasingly concerned with metadata. Metadata can facilitate access, use, understanding, and sharing of data across time and space by systematically describing the content, structure, and semantics of data residing in information systems, databases, or files. Metadata specifications are increasingly important for a growing number of national and international standards as well as for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Metadata registries are facilities with associated procedures for storing and registering detailed metadata from multiple sources and diverse organizations in a common structured form. The following is a list of topic issues that we expect to address:

• Implementations. What experiences do participants have to share that will assist us to develop metadata registries?

• Interoperability: How can we develop interoperable metadata registries, so that we can collaborate to standardize metadata?

• Design. How can a metadata registry be used to improve the design of data? What is necessary to IT enable data standards from international, national, government and private sources?
• Assemble-to-order data specifications. How can the "interchangeable data parts"--as registered in the metadata registry--be assembled into a variety of products: database designs, reports, EDI transaction sets, EDIFACT message sets, information collection requests, regulations, legislation, etc.?
• Interchange. How can metadata registries facilitate all types of electronic data communication including: EDI, web enabled forms, HTML/XML documents, etc.
• Integration. What metadata are necessary to combine related data from different sources, which may require transformation between different physical representations, measurement units, and granularity (e.g., for data warehouses, multidimensional processing, or ad hoc data integration)?
• Understanding. How can a metadata registry help make specialized knowledge available to others who want to use the data? If someone from a different organization wants to use certain data ten years from now, what metadata will he/she need to make meaningful use of it?
• Terminology/classification. How can a metadata registry assist in development and maintenance of terminology and classification systems useful for uniform data design/collection, search engine topic trees and thesauri, etc.?
• Discovery. What structure and kinds of metadata are necessary to help humans and software find data they need from a search request -- maximizing both recall (the fraction of relevant data retrieved by a query), and precision (the ratio of relevant to total data retrieved by a query)?
• Access. What detailed metadata on database schemas and data elements are necessary to access (query) data in relational databases and non-standard data repositories?
• Analysis. What metadata are necessary to support analytic operations such as
• summarizing of (micro)data - e.g., grouping and aggregation?
• discriminating between categorical, ordered, and metric data for statistical analysis and display?
• relating among similar but different data element concepts

Metadata registries are a relatively new concept; registries may be established and operated by individual organizations (such as corporations or government agencies), or by larger aggregations such as trade associations and standards organizations. For more information on registries and registry standards, see the ANSI X3L8 materials.

The central goal of this workshop will be information exchange: sharing of implementation experiences and discussion of requirements for metadata registries based upon related international and American metadata registry standards. This workshop will examine emerging techniques and standards for registering metadata and see what others have done and are doing in their implementation efforts. This will allow experiences to be shared among those who have implementations, those who are beginning to implement, and those who are considering metadata registries.

A second goal is to facilitate the development of collaborative efforts to share metadata between registries. It is highly desirable to share the cost and effort of developing and maintaining standard metadata. Where mutual interests are identified, it is desirable for one organization to take the lead on standardizing particular data elements with other organizations drawing the standard metadata from the lead organization. For example, EPA may take the lead in standardizing data required for environmental reporting of HAZMAT data, with DOT drawing the standard data from the EPA environmental data registry.

Workshop participants will be encouraged to illustrate points in their presentations using a selected set of prototype databases, metadata registries, and metadata representations available over the World Wide Web. We hope that this common frame of reference and concrete examples will expedite discussion and encourage more specific understanding than might otherwise be the case. Example databases, registries, and representations included:

• EPA Environmental Data Registry; including
• data elements from selected international, national, and federal coding standards (e.g., state codes from Federal Information Processing Standard [FIPS 55])
• data elements from international, national, and federal metamodel standards (e.g., ISO 11179, GILS)
• data elements from selected organizational databases where there is an interest in sharing such data (e.g., EDI message/transaction sets).
• EPA Envirofacts Databases;
• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) National Health Information Knowledgebase
• U.S. Health Care Financing Administration registration of metadata (supporting the Healthcare Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 )
• Basic Semantic Repository (BSR) (prototype registry for data description across various industry sectors for electronic data communication, including commerce-related EDI).

Requests for registration can be made to xxxxxxxxx

A final roster of participants will be available.

• Bruce Bargmeyer , U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NCITS L8
• Daniel Gillman - U.S. Census Bureau and NCITS L8
• Xxxxxx - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Burton Parker/Andy Shoka U.S. Department of Transportation
  (the use of the organization name needs to be checked)
• Douglas Mann, Health Affairs
  (the use of the organization name needs to be checked)
• Phong Ngo, NCITS
  (the use of the organization name needs to be checked)