Metadata Technology North America has been selected by The Australian Bureau of Statistics to provide expert assistance in the re-engineering of its IT infrastructure for statistical production.

According to a statement, the ABS is embarking on a business transformation program, which involves re-engineered business processes, technology application, and infrastructure to support the production and management of statistical data and metadata.

“The envisioned transformation will provide the basis for enhanced management and reuse within the statistical production process, allowing for greater speed, efficiency, and utilisation of data and metadata assets.

“The end result of these improvements will be a more flexible, responsive, efficient and effective statistical system for policy makers, researchers, journalists, students and the community at large within Australia.”

One of the initiatives of the infrastructure program is to develop a registry-based system of repositories, coordinated through a process-management system. At the heart of this system is a Metadata Registry and Repository (MRR), allowing all statistical information assets to be located and leveraged across the organization.

This system will effectively be an organisation-wide catalogue of all assets, allowing for discovery and use of any data or metadata within the ABS. The design of this system will be highly extensible, acting as a backbone for the management of all corporate statistical information resources.

“Metadata Technology North America Inc. will assist with the design of the MRR, development, and integration. ABS selected Metadata Technology North America Inc. for its expertise in the design and implementation of these systems, based on open standards such as the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX).

“Metadata Technology will also help build capacity within the organisation around the open standards being used.”

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an XML specification for the documentation and management of microdata, particularly in socio-economic sciences and the health sector. It is maintained by the DDI Alliance.

The Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange Standard (SDMX / ISO ) is a standard designed to describe statistical data and to normalise their exchange, in particular time series and aggregated statistics. SDMX is an ISO approved standard and is sponsored by international organizations. SDMX focuses on reuse and sharing of common data structures and consistent data transfer.

Together, DDI and SDMX form a comprehensive management model for the production, preservation, dissemination, and analysis of social, behavioral, economic, and health data.