4.7.1: Climate Change
Enhancing Information Management Capabilities in Support of Climate Change Other Information:
Climate change is an issue of great importance to American citizens. The Federal Government produces vast stores of data and
information surrounding the topic but finding, understanding, and using this information can be challenging for Federal workers,
researchers, and the general public. Enhancing access to this information can improve understanding of the issues involved
and substantially improve decision making by Government Agencies. DOI manages nearly 500 million acres – 1/5 of the land mass
in the United States. The impact of climate change can have a substantial effect on DOI’s mission. DOI’s flagship initiative
will be in the area of improving access to climate change information. This initiative will provide transparency into the
information associated with climate change that is used to support resource management plans. DOI will seek the involvement
of partner Agencies to identify solutions that work, not only for DOI’s climate change interests, but those across the Federal
space. The approaches used in identifying information and establishing standards may be leveraged for other cross-Governmental
initiatives in the future. Public participation will be sought and prizes and challenges will be pursued to draw on the creativity
and talent of the public in use of climate change information. DOI’s flagship initiative will identify, organize, publish,
and promote the use of hard science and data associated with natural resources management. DOI will lead the development of
a metadata standard for climate change data to improve the utility of climate change information. DOI will apply information
discovery practices to help inventory and catalog the data sources to facilitate discovery, enhance understanding and promote
use. In order to achieve these goals, DOI’s climate change information management enhancement initiative will address the
following primary objectives: Development of a cross-government metadata standard for climate change data to facilitate identification,
understanding and usage (collaboration); Identification and inventory of existing DOI sources of climate change data, information,
and expertise (collaboration)’ Collection of key dataset metadata into the federal government’s, government wide catalog (data.gov);
Development of sub-catalog to leverage climate specific metadata elements; and Development of visualization elements to promote
understanding of climate change related data. Implementation Plan DOI is a committed leader in the area of climate change.
The Secretary of the Interior has chartered a number of activities in support of climate change. The climate change flagship
initiative will begin in early April 2010 and continue through December. Notional Timeline of Events April/May: Dataset/Information
Proof of Concept; April/May: Core Metadata Standard with extensible capabilities; May/June: Dataset/Information evaluation;
May/June: Facilitate Metadata extensible elements version 1.0; May/June: Prizes Challenge Proposals for Climate Change Data;
June/September: Dataset cataloging; and April/Aug: Prizes and challenges to highlight innovative uses of climate change data.
Indicator(s):
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