NOAA Environmental Data Management

The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates over one hundred observing systems and numerical models providing information and forecasts about the planetary environment from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the Sun. Collected NOAA data constitute an irreplaceable resource that must be well-documented, discoverable, accessible, and preserved for future use. Good data management should therefore be part of NOAA's core business practices, and employees and leadership should be aware of their roles and responsibilities in this arena. NOAA has developed an Environmental Data Management (EDM) Framework document that discusses Principles, Governance, Resources, Standards, Architecture, Assessment, and the Data Lifecycle, and which also enumerates specific recommendations. The NOAA EDM Committee has issued Directives pertaining to data management planning, archiving, data access, metadata, and other topics. A Data Catalog has been established, and a project to assign persistent, citable identifiers to archival data is well underway. Numerous groups at NOAA are performing technical work related to data access, usability, and preservation.

The purpose of this article is to describe these documents and activities in order to share our experiences and to provide guidance and encouragement for improved data management practices and processes at other organizations.