Metadata management is a foundational requirement for effective data management and refers to the maintenance of information about enterprise data such as its description, lineage, usage, relationships and ownership. Effective data governance requires a way to capture, manage and publish metadata information. This means controlling the creation of metadata by setting clear enterprise-wide standards, policies and procedures for metadata management and ensuring they are enforced.
Metadata plays an important role in ensuring users can discover whether a data set is available, who the data custodian is, what the data means, and how accurate and reliable it is. Robust metadata management practices are required to ensure that data can be located, understood and used not only within agencies, but across government more broadly.
What good looks like
- Valued: the intrinsic value of having managed metadata, and its role in improving data quality, is recognised across the organisation
- Standardised: metadata conforms to relevant industry standards to enable data exchanges
- Access: metadata is recorded and maintained in an accessible repository and is freely available at no additional cost with the provision of the dataset
- Quality: the quality of metadata is assured, measured, monitored and improved
- Agreed: changes to metadata are agreed and authorised with due consideration of impacts to other data management functions and business processes.
How to achieve good practice
- Define a minimum metadata standard for your agency – this can be done through the application of industry standards, data dictionaries, naming standards, code values, and metadata entry tools etc. The following resources can be used for this purpose:
- National Archives of Australia Minimum Metadata Set.
- Metadata Online Registry (METeOR) – Australia’s repository for national metadata standards for health, housing and community services statistics and information.
- ANZLIC Metadata Profile Guidelines – ANZLIC – these guidelines provide practical information to better understand and implement the ANZLIC Metadata Profile. The ANZLIC Metadata Profile defines the appropriate content of metadata for geographic information or spatial resources.
- ISO/IEC 11179 – provides a standardised metadata format to describe and represent data to make it easier to understand the meaning and content of data.
- AS/NZS ISO 19115:2015 – provides a standardised metadata format for describing geographic information and services. Note: An update to AS/NZS ISO 19115 is expected in 2020/21 to reflect time-dependent coordination of spatial information. In the interim, refer also to the ANZLIC Metadata advisory ‘Preparing metadata for GDA2020 and the AGRS’
- AS/NZS ISO 15836:2016 – establishes a standard for cross-domain description and defines the elements typically used in the context of an application profile.
- Measure current metadata effectiveness – this can be done by assessing your organisation’s metadata to see if it meets the standards for a specific process.
- Establish or improve metadata policies, rules, practices and roles – this can be done by implementing a metadata adoption plan and implementation process across the organisation.
- Educate staff on the value of metadata, as well as on access and use of metadata – this may include education of data custodians, stewards and specialists on their respective metadata management responsibilities.
- Establish and manage metadata repositories – this can be done by bringing individual repositories (also referred to as registries) together to develop a central electronic database that is used to store and manage metadata.
- Create feedback mechanisms – to ensure that data users can provide input on the effectiveness of metadata and incorrect or out-of-date metadata.
Additional resources
National Archives of Australia Metadata for Interoperability Guide – this guide provides information on how to develop an organisational Metadata strategy, information on metadata harvesting tools and protocols, tips for building a metadata repository and links to relevant resources and standards.
Last updated 12 Nov 2020