ET-IM-11(2021-Oct-28) Meeting notes

1 Review of past minutes and actions

David Berry

The Team review the task list (Meeting notes - ET-IM - Confluence (atlassian.net)) and minutes from the last meeting.

David Berry noted that there had been in change in the resolution number of the new WMO Data Policy, from Resolution 42 to Resolution 1 (List of Resolutions approved at Cg-2021)

William J Wright (Unlicensed) reported that he is still working on the lifecycle section together with Rachid Sebbari, noting that he would hopefully share the current draft with Rachid by the 5th November. This would then be more widely circulated a week later.

2 Update from Secretariat

David Berry

David Berry gave a brief update from the Secretariat noting the result of internal discussions.

• Target for IM guide:

  • The target for the “Guide on Information Management” would be as a standalone document, either as a volume within the Guide to the WMO Information System or as a WIS Guide to Information Management.

• Proposed timeline:

  • It was proposed that the first milestone for the guide would be to have a good draft ready for circulation and review by the end of January 2022.

  • Following this, two more drafts and reviews would be planned at three monthly intervals, with a final draft ready by mid summer 2022.

• Following discussion of the timeline, the Team discussed the scope, noting the need to reference existing materials rather than duplicate them. It was also noted that having concrete examples would help the reader.

• HADDOUCH Hassan noted that for this version we only need to develop the high level elements and that if we need more detail we should link to existing sources and references providing those details. It was also noted that having rich visuals and diagrams would also be helpful, e.g. illustration of the data lifecycle.

• HADDOUCH Hassan reported that he would follow up with Rachid Sebbari on the lifecycle and other sections.

3 Report(s) from related Expert Teams and Task Teams

Ge Peng (Unlicensed)

Ge Peng (Unlicensed) reported that she attended the recent SC-IMT chairs meeting and updated the Committee on activity of the Team. The meeting details can be found at:

https://community.wmo.int/meetings/sc-imt-chairs-telecon-2021-oct-25

Ge Peng (Unlicensed) reported that the activity of the Team was flagged to be timely by the Chair (Rémy Giraud) of the SC-IMT, and the importance of information management noted. The Chair advised the Team to consider how to integrate the guide to information management with the wider body of the WMO and WIS regulatory material (i.e. WMO guides and manuals). William J Wright (Unlicensed) noted that he is currently reviewing the Manual on the WMO Information System (Manual on the WMO Information System | E-Library) as part of another activity and could potentially help with identifying relevant material.

Ge Peng (Unlicensed) noted that the work of the Team may also leverage that of other expert teams, for example on information security, data standards etc. It was agreed that Ge Peng (Unlicensed), with the help of the Secretariat (David Berry), would reach out to those other teams where relevant to identify overlap between the teams and complementary activities on information management.

3 Report(s) from related Expert Teams and Task Teams

Ge Peng (Unlicensed)

Ge Peng (Unlicensed) and William J Wright (Unlicensed) also reported on the recent meeting of the Expert Team - Data Requirements for Climate (ET-DRC), noting that Axel.Andersson (Unlicensed) and Rachid Sebbari were also members of the Team. During the meeting at the start of October revision of the WMO Manual on High Quality Data Management Framework for Climate (WMO 1238) was discussed, together with a wider review of WMO publications relevant to the management of climate data (for example Manuals on WIS, GDPFS etc). It was noted that the revision of WMO 1238 would include information from those other publications where appropriate, with a target date of completing the revision by the end of November. William J Wright (Unlicensed) also noted that the manual was being extended to include information on the governance process for making changes to the manual (e.g. fast track etc) and a summary of guidelines relevant to climate data management. It was suggested that this Team might consider something similar.

William J Wright (Unlicensed) reported that in addition to WMO 1238 the ET-DRC also discussed activities related to: decadal climate summaries; recognition of centennial length climate observing stations, including expanding to other networks; the collection and collation of new WMO Climate Normals, covering the period 1991 - 2020; the OpenCDMS project, main contact with ET-DRC is Denis Stuber; and collaboration with the Expert Team on Data Standards (ET-Data) on a new BUFR sequence for daily climate reporting. It was noted that David Berry would be helping lead the activity within the OpenCDMS project on data standards and data models for climate data, building on past experience from a Copernicus C3S project / service providing climate observations through the climate data store. David Berry also noted that the new BUFR sequence for DAYCLI message had been validated and that he would double check the status and report back. (post meeting note by David Berry: the DAYCLI sequence is undergoing further testing and evaluation within the community).

Finally, it was noted at the ET-DRC meeting that the WMO CDMS specification (WMO 1131) is in need of an update, with a lot of new material and technological changes published and developed since it was written.

4 Review and discuss the draft document version 0.1

Ge Peng (Unlicensed)

Discussion of the current draft focused on two sections:

• Information management and technologies

• Information management and security

noting that leads for the two sections were required. The Team also noted that leads for the annexes on “special processes” were required, particularly oceans and climate.

HADDOUCH Hassan agreed to provide some content for the two main sections noted above and William J Wright (Unlicensed) flagged that there was very good guidance from the working group on emerging data issues. As part of the discussion, the scope of the sections was queried and whether the document and Team only include WMO areas or whether it should also cover the cloud and cloud technologies. Hassan suggested that a few paragraphs should be enough, keeping them fairly generic and covering 4 main components.

1. Information management is about people, not just those involved in the information management but also the users and creators of information.

2. Policies, processes and business rules

3. Technology, i.e. the “physical” items such as computers, databases, software etc.

4. Data and information, noting that this may be different to record management

William J Wright (Unlicensed) noted that so far the discussion of policies within the guide are minimal and questioned whether the guide should be more explicit and enumerate example policies in the annexes. William Wright also suggested providing an example of a good policy template as part of the guide might be helpful. Enrico Fucile responded that policies can be a very sensitive subject and that we need to be careful when talking about policies, noting the recent Congress and the amount of effort involved in getting policies, such as the data policy, approved. When talking about WMO policies it would be best to only briefly mention them in the guide. Enrico Fucile also queried how much detail was needed on technology, with the case that most guides are out of date the moment they are published. Ge Peng (Unlicensed) suggested that only a short note emphasizing the need to keep up to date with technologies and best practices was all that was required. An example policy document might include the policy that best practices need to be regularly reviewed rather than specifying what those best practices should be.

The discussion moved onto to the use of cloud technologies, with tim.boyer (Unlicensed) and William J Wright (Unlicensed) noting that this was an area where examples of policies may help. For example, there may be issues around data provenance, data security and data access with the move to the cloud. Providing examples of the benefits and pitfalls with cloud technology and what to watch for were highlighted as examples that may be useful for the reader. Peng Wang questioned whether there was a need to specify cloud providers, noting that NHMSs had national policies that they were required to follow. William J Wright (Unlicensed) used an example from Australia, with multiple organizations contributing to the cost of running a national facility for cloud computing, HPC and data storage, to highlight that cloud covered both commercial providers and private clouds. Other examples include the UK JASMIN facility within the UK. Questions to consider included what would happen in the situation of a cloud provider ceasing to operate, what would happen to the data and how would data owners recover their data? What policies need to be in place when selecting or building a cloud based service? HADDOUCH Hassan noted that we need to focus more best practices at a higher level and highlight the need to consider the evolution of technology.

Following the discussion of cloud based technologies, Peng Wang reminded the Team that using services and data in the cloud does not work for everyone, particularly in those regions where the internet can be expensive, unreliable and / or lack the bandwidth required. The example of regional / local networks for dissemination of data was used, noting that under the current WIS this does not work very well. William J Wright (Unlicensed) provided an example where due to the remoteness of some of the Pacific islands the back up of climate data can be unreliable. All of these issues need to be addresses but it may be hard to cover all eventualities and HADDOUCH Hassan reiterated the need to keep the current version short without going into too much detail, instead focusing on the need to follow best practices and keeping up to date with those practices. In future versions it may be possible to include more detailed information.

The Team returned to discussing the scope of the guide and how much detail was required. tim.boyer (Unlicensed) commented that at the moment the current draft was disconnected in places and that it would be helpful to see the full collated draft to get a feel for its content and scope. Ge Peng (Unlicensed) responded that this was the plan, once William J Wright (Unlicensed) and Rachid Sebbari have finished the sections on a collated draft would be produced by the Secretariat and circulated prior to the next meeting. HADDOUCH Hassan also agreed to lead the drafting of the high level sections on Information Management and Technologies and on Information Management and Security, noting that the section headings might need to be changed.

William Wright commented that the collated draft would help to identify any imbalance between the sections and that the Team should try to identify related documents in the Information Management space and reference existing documents in the guide rather than reinventing the wheel. Ge Peng agreed that this would be useful to keep in mind when reviewing the draft and that other communities, such as the ocean observing community, have best practices documents that can be cross referenced. David Berry noted that there is a best practices working group under the GOOS Observations Coordination Group (OCG) and that this group may be good as potential reviewers. William J Wright (Unlicensed) reported that they had also sought feedback from the ocean community on the Manual on High Quality global data Management Framework for Climate but with little response of feedback so far.

The meeting finished by discussing how to build a list of potential reviewers and David Berry agreed to put together a sperate document for use by the Team members to build that list. The Team also recognized and noted the importance of consulting widely (e.g. aviation, ocean/marine etc.) in order to make the document as useful as possible.

5

Date of next meeting:

Thursday December 2nd, 1200 UTC