Metadata Standards at Statistics Canada
Amie Lee and Tim DunstanStatistics Canada, Canada
In 1998, the Integrated Metadatabase Project was initiated to create a corporate-wide metadata registry, the Integrated Metadatabase (IMDB). The IMDB is a registry of information about surveys conducted and information about survey data disseminated by Statistics Canada. It serves as a source of information about Statistics Canada surveys that internal users, the public and researchers require to understand the survey process, methods applied and to evaluate and understand the content and quality of statistical data.
The metadata content collection activity is an on-going task in which content managers require knowledge of the registry contents to effectively reuse existing content and to manage coherent content creation. Knowledge of the registry content is also required by the persons who are responsible for preparation of the data and metadata for dissemination by the agency, for data warehousing, CANSIM, the Data Liberation Initiative, and for Statistics Canada’s international reporting requirements. The collection and dissemination activities brings into use Statistics Canada specific taxonomies, ISO 11179 standard, SDMX standard and the DDI standard.
An overview of the implementation of:
- these terminologies/standards used;
- a search and discovery mechanism of the IMDB content using these terminologies/standards;
- a contextual display of the IMDB content using these terminologies/standards; and dissemination of content using these terminologies/standards