See minutes (40k PDF)

Northwest Environmental Data Network Meeting

February 2, 2006, 9:00 - 4:30

Large Conference Room
Northwest Power and Conservation Council
851 S.W. Sixth Avenue, Suite 1100
Portland, Oregon  503-238-0667

The conference call in number will be 877-848-1997, the pass code is 350

A. NED Agenda Items

1) Reports and discussion (about 15 minutes) for each of the NED Work Groups:

• Riparian, Upland and Aquatic Habitat Work Group (Tom O’Neil)
• Water Quality – (David Tetta)
• Subbasin Data (Phil Roger and Peter Paquet)
• Technology for Data Discovery and Sharing (Tom Pansky)
• Project Description & Performance/Temporal & Spatial (Joy Paulus)
• Salmonid Data (Stewart Toshach).

Each work group lead is asked to identify status/challenges/opportunities and cover the following:

• Overview of the Work Group Plan
• Next Steps
• Planned Deliverables/Deliverable Dates
• Work Group Membership (who is currently participating, who else do you need)
• Current Challenges and Solutions

The purpose is to understand what each of the groups is doing and identify where support or other input might be needed.

Note to Work Group Leads: Please plan on providing a brief written summary of your report for my later inclusion into meeting notes.

2) Regional Data Management Workshop Planning for May 24^th and 25^th

3) Bringing Participants to the Table: progress and updates

4) Other business

B) PNAMP data management agenda items

1) PNAMP Data Management Plan for 06. Review of progress.

2) PNAMP Inventory Task. Update from Bruce Schmidt.

C) Afternoon meeting 1:00 - 4:00

Development of Data Partnership Agreements

Background:

One of the tasks for NED in 2006 involves the development of a template or templates that would function as longer-term Data Partnership Agreements. The agreements would be for signature by various consortia of federal, state and tribal entities with a need to share data in other than ad-hoc ways.

Sub-components of interest to NED are agreements that would support consistent arrangements for: Project Level Information, Data Collection, Data Sharing, Data Reporting, Data Quality Assurance/Control, Metadata Reporting, Document Deliverables, Locational (Spatial) Data, Map-Coordinate Projection, Names/naming conventions (e.g. sampling stations) and Calendar/Date/time (temporal) data.

Some of these materials will best developed by other entities with have particular content expertise. For example, protocols for data collection for aquatic areas are being developed by PNAMP. Other pieces have already been developed in draft , e.g. the NED Best Practices for Spatial and Temporal Data Reporting.

Regardless of the origination of sub-components of a partnership agreement there is an overarching need to organize and present these various agreements to reduce the organizational and administrative burden of deployment. Wrapping the sub-components of a data partnership agreement into a single package has considerable merit. Why have separate agreements for each component when all are needed for a coherent end-to-end data network?

A reasonable way to begin the task of developing needed agreements is to first locate materials for use as a starting point. Two references, volunteered by Cy Smith, are provided here for your consideration. It is understood that while neither document covers exactly what is needed, they are good starting points.

1)  A model data distribution policy template (450k PDF) from www.opendataconsortium.org

and,

2) A Framework Data License Agreement (340k Word) that was developed for sharing of framework data between governmental entities in Oregon.
Also see data exchange agreement (30k PDF).

If you have other materials you would like to share for the discussion on February 2^nd please send them to me to distribute or e-mail directly to NED/PNAMP participants.

Stewart Toshach

NED Coordinator &
PNAMP Data Management Co-Lead