Press Room

Standard to support the effective use of statistical datasets

BOSTON, MA – MAY 15, 2024  – Today, Object Management Group® (OMG®) issued the Statistical Metadata Interoperability Request for Proposal (RFP) to develop a specification for documenting statistical datasets using machine-readable metadata.

Many organizations worldwide (in government and public policy, healthcare, finance, and other domains) consume, produce, or publish enormous amounts of valuable statistical data. Several commonly used specifications for documenting datasets are used, but not specifically for those with a strong statistical aspect.

“Many institutions produce statistical datasets, but because of their different sources, conventions, levels of description and styles, it is hard to discover what datasets exist and to understand their suitability for a given task,” said Dan Gillman, US Bureau of Labor Statistics “The vision of this RFP is to create a robust, international standard that enables the greater ease-of-use of statistics by government policymakers and program administrators, private sector decision-makers, university and nonprofit researchers, journalism and the media, and the public.”

The requirements address the primary aspects of discovery, cataloging, and finding datasets regardless of their location; understanding, making sure users can understand the datasets; transparency, the provision of sufficient metadata and other documentation; and interoperability, the ability to use the data based on the metadata.

You can download the Statistical Metadata Interoperability RFP from the OMG website. The Letter of Intent deadline is October 14, 2024. The Initial Submission deadline is November 11, 2024. Companies must be Domain or Contributing members of OMG by the initial submission deadline to submit their proposal.

About OMG
When tech organizations, governments, and academia must solve discrete pieces of a technology puzzle or discuss matters of common interest, they often seek to join or form a consortium. Since 1989, Object Management Group® (OMG®) has created and nurtured a productive community with common technology interests and problems to resolve. OMG communities include Augmented Reality Enterprise Alliance (AREA), BPM+ Health, Consortium for Information and Software Quality™ (CISQ™), Digital Twin Consortium® (DTC), OMG Standards Development Organization (SDO®), and Responsible Computing (RC™). OMG is global, not-for-profit, and vendor-neutral. Visitwww.omg.org for more information.

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