INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD BY SUSAN LINACRE, Chair of the National Statistics Quality Assurance Programme Board (QAPB)

One of the cornerstones of the Modernising Government agenda is better use of Information and Communications Technology for electronic delivery of services and information, for the benefit of business, the citizen and government itself.

This guidance has been adapted from the booklet produced in September 2000 by the Intra-governmental Group on Geographic Information. I am confident that it will become a very valuable tool that will raise standards wherever applied.

Government is investing substantial resources in the development of ICT systems and networks. At the same time government policies are opening up government data for wider use. The technical barriers to electronic exchange of data have largely been overcome. However, the physical networks are only a means to an end, and the benefits of the new technology will only be realised if the information they carry is what users need.

Government departments and agencies hold huge amounts of information, much of which has been collected for specific policy or operational purposes. Much of the value of this data lies in the ability to bring different data sets together for joint analysis. For this to be effective the data have to conform to recognised standards and delivery formats that the user can handle and need to be accompanied by good documentation.

All of this adds up to a need for good data management.

Members of IGGI, whose aim is to improve the effective use of government Geographic Information, decided to pool their experiences and produce a self-help guide to good practice in data management. The resulting document has been edited by QAPB to remove specific reference to geographic data since most of the principles apply equally to other types of data and, consequently, it is anticipated that the guide will be of wider value.

The guide sets out general principles but does not provide detailed descriptions for specific data management activities. Nor can it provide a full description of relevant government policies and initiatives. Data custodians should refer to other guidance for such detail. References and links to other information will support the web version of this guide. Comments and suggestions for improvement will be welcome - contact details are on the web site.

Thanks to IGGI for producing the original guide and to Alan Oliver for bringing it to QAPB for wider dissemination. I hope that it can play a part in raising standards of data management in government.

Susan Linacre

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This page last revised: Friday, 21 September 2001