The Data Center of the 21 st Century John Bates NOAA National Climatic Data Center

The Data Center of the 21 st Century Primary Functions – The 4As Acquire Archive Access Assess

A Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Within a Data Center Producer – provides the information to be preserved Management – sets overall policy as one component within a broader policy domain Consumer – interacts with the archive system to find and acquire information; a designated community is the primary set of consumers for a specific discipline

Data Center - External Interactions Human to human interactions are the essence of a data center Negotiations are required to achieve submission agreements with data producers and use case scenarios with consumers Technology then enables the implementation of the agreements and scenarios

Data Center – Management Interactions Provides the primary source of funding and provides guidelines for resource utilization Conducts regular performance reviews Determines pricing and distribution policies Participates in conflict resolution involving producers, consumers and internal administration

NOAA Observing System Council Data Stewardship Committee CLASS Data Centers & Related Offices Archive Requirements Working Group Information Exchange Current NOAA Management Model

Data Center – Data Provider Interactions Currently No Data Submission Agreements Data Providers produce products and give them to the archive without complete metadata or a clear purpose (no designated communities). Archives end up with many products that they do not understand and can not provide quality service or science stewardship for. The problems increase with time as the number of products increases and they age. Data Providers Products Archive Requirements Science Requirements No Effective Partnerships Between Data Providers and Archives

NOAA’s New Submission Agreement Process Data Providers produce products supported by validated science requirements and request that those products be archived and made available to a designated community by the archive. Submission agreements are negotiated for each product. Those submission agreements lead to allocated requirements for archive development. Hopefully, those requirements overlap, so that the development effort for each new product decreases with time. Data Providers Products Archive Requirements Submission Agreements Science Requirements

Data Center Functional Entities

Lack of Metadata is the Achilles Heel of Long-Term Archives Representation information is required to transform digital bits into information Rich representation information can only be provided by the data producer and is required Currently producers are not supplying this, leading to a loss of how to interpret data objects

Required Metadata for Information Objects

Data Center – Consumer Interactions Consumer expectations are rapidly changing Consumers want to solve problems across a wide range of disciplines Consumers want, and expect, easy data discovery, 24x7 access, and metadata The IT revolution will continue to shape consumers expectations

Consumer Interest Areas

Consumer Use Case Scenarios

Conclusions Data Centers now have a common Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model Data Center personnel provide the information broker function between data producers and consumers Data Producers must provide rich representation information or digital data object information will be lost forever Data Centers must respond to increasing consumer demands for more information