Respectful Use of Data

From EITLC Wiki

Contents 1 Rating of this issue is closed 2 Issue Overview 3 Issue Components/Considerations 4 Potential Next Steps or Solutions for EITLC Consideration Rating of this issue is closed Thank you for providing your ratings on this issue as a potential focus for an EITLC Priority Action Team. Results of voting and top issues will be announced shortly.

Issue Overview

No formal rules yet exist for the environmental information community around expected use and access of published data. As such, several issues remain to be addressed including data currency, misuse, attribution, and authorization.

Issue Components/Considerations

• Error correction: If neither data users nor providers are responsible for updating their data, users may draw information from incorrect or outdated datasets.
• Misinterpretation: Suppliers remain concerned that data users will misinterpret or misuse the information made available
• Attribution: Data used on intermediary Web sites is not always attributed to the supplier of that data
• Authorization: Data providers should agree to data being made public prior to publishing of said data
• Excessive Resource Use: Public access has the capability to consume resources and bandwidth if public users, unaware of their request, query for a huge data file which might take hours to download.

Potential Next Steps or Solutions for EITLC Consideration

• Ensure availability of updated data to data users
• Provide metadata and other interpretations of data so that uses do not guess
• Identify language to be posted on web sites noting the data source
• Consider standardization of the process of authorization for data suppliers
• Browsers should filter out unreasonable queries on behalf of the user