Scientific Information Management at the
U.S. Geological Survey: Issues, Challenges,
and a Collaborative Approach to Identifying
and Applying Solutions
David L. Govoni and Thomas M. Gunther
USGS Geospatial Information Office
Geoinformatics 2006
May 12, 2006
U.S. Department of the Interior
U.S. Geological Survey

Geospatial Information Office (GIO)
Science Information and Education Office
Responsibilities:
- Publishing policy and coordination
- Libraries and Information Centers
- Web infrastructure and content policy
- Product Warehouse and distribution
- Education and outreach
- Knowledge management services
- Scientific information management

Geospatial Information Office (GIO)
Science Information and Education Office
Accomplished in partnership with USGS science and
administrative programs through a combination of:
- Governance
- Consultation
- Facilitation
- Collaborative development
Goal is to enable and support an “Integrated
Information Environment” for the USGS

Integrated Information Environment (IIE)

Problems, problems … everywhere
Common issues identified from discussions with
scientists and others across USGS disciplines:
- Search and discovery (especially by place and topic)
- Database access and integration
- Interoperability of tools and processes
- Advanced visualization, modeling, other tools
- Archive and preservation
Compliance with mandates:
- Security, science quality, publishing, records
management, accessibility, …

The solution? Good news … bad news
Lots of talent, innovation, and motivation, but:
Widely scattered geographically and organizationally
Many local efforts unknown to others in USGS
Duplicative or overlapping in purpose, capabilities
Built on multiple platforms in multiple languages
Some good, some not so good
Some potentially scalable, some not
“Costly” to organization as a whole

So how do we …
Increase awareness?
Identify “best of breed”?
Accelerate diffusion?
Provide support?
Institutionalize?
One approach: Communities of Practice (CoPs)

What is a “Community of Practice”?
Communities of Practice are groups of people who
share a concern or a passion for something they do
and learn how to do it better through the process of
collective learning as they interact regularly. CoPs
are:
- Problem driven
- Self-organizing, voluntary, and motivated
- Not constrained by position in formal organizations
- Not formally chartered or accountable through
management chains as for teams Modified after
Etienne Wenger
(www.ewenger.com)

USGS Scientific Information Management
(SIM) Workshop
Three day Scientific Information Management
Workshop, March 2006
150+ people representing all USGS regions and both
science and administrative programs
Other DOI bureaus, other public and private-sector
organizations also participated
Explicit focus on intersection of SIM and CoPs

SIM Workshop
Three parts:
- Overviews of problems and approaches to SIM both
inside and outside of the USGS
- Introduction to “Community of Practice” concept as a
framework for collective learning and collaborative
problem solving
- Breakouts designed to simultaneously:
Identify key issues and needs
Explore and encourage the formation of CoPs to develop
solutions

Potential communities
Data/information management
- Field data for small research projects
- Large time series data sets
- Scientific data from monitoring programs
Classification and discovery
- Metadata
- Knowledge organization systems
Delivery
- Digital libraries
- Portals and frameworks

Potential communities
Interoperability and integration
- Database networks
Preservation and long-term access
- Archiving of scientific data and information
- Preservation of physical collections
Knowledge management
- Knowledge capture
- Emerging workforce

Outcomes
At least 9 of 12 potential communities agreed to
continue on as “formal” CoPs
Other potential communities proposed, e.g.,
- Open access
- Open source software
- Search
- Program management
Management commitment to support creation of
bureau-wide infrastructure to enable current and
future CoPs

USGS Communities Network
Common gateway to all known USGS CoPs
Framework of shared collaborative services and tools
available to support interested communities:
- Discussion forums
- Document management
- Digital library and bibliography management
- News and Events calendar
- Wikis and annotation
- RSS feeds
- …
Initially USGS-only but eventually available to external
collaborators and partners

Workshop evaluation
Reviews positive:
- Met or exceeded expectations: 89%
- Change practices as result: 33%
- Participate in communities: 72%
- Learned new tools or approaches: 50%
- Make valuable new contacts: 90%
Suggests broad interest and appeal of communities
approach
(based on ~50% survey response)

What was learned
Those “in the trenches” know best:
- Cannot implement top-down SIM
solutions
- Solutions can come from (and be
managed from) anywhere
One size won’t always fit all, but …
- Many issues are common to all USGS disciplines
- Local approaches may be broadly applicable, scalable,
and cost-effective for the USGS as a whole

Perspectives on SIM … a digression
SIM needs to be considered from two distinct, but
intimately related perspectives:
- “Information life-cycle” or Producer perspective
Course of data and information from initial acquisition to final
disposition
- Consumer perspective
How data and information is used to accomplish tasks

Producer perspective
refers to refers to refers to refers to
Fieldwork Preparation &
Analysis, synthesis Preservation &
(in situ, in vitro, distribution
& interpretation archiving
in silico) (via any medium)
includes includes includes includes
Direct & remote Laboratory Records
Publications, data,
observation, experiments, management,
talks, seminars,
monitoring & modeling, data rescue, physical
models, libraries
recording visualization sample preservation

Consumer perspective

“Metainformation” is critical to both
Broadly defined here to encompass both “classic
metadata” and “contextual information” (rules,
assumptions, ontologies, schema, documentation,
etc.) that impart deeper understanding or facilitate
use
Metainformation:
- Critical to our ability to conduct integrated studies
- Critical to maintaining long-term access
- Should be, but very often is not, formally captured and
preserved all along the information life-cycle

Perspectives on SIM
End of digression

What was learned … SIM is not easy
Despite advances in technology, many tasks:
- Remain time-consuming
- Require significant involvement by scientists (sometimes
at the expense of their science)
- Lack incentives to “do the right thing”
Volume outpacing resources
Legacy data may already be beyond saving

SIM is not an option
Good stewardship of data, information, physical
artifacts, and associated metainformation is an
obligation of the research community:
- As a matter of self interest (e.g., as precondition for
being viewed as a “trusted source”)
- Data and information is of little value if it cannot be found
or delivered in a timely or usable condition
- Reproducibility of results – a hallmark of the scientific
method – may impaired or impossible without it

Meeting the challenges … There is hope!
Communities of practice, if encouraged and
supported, offer several benefits:
- Strength in numbers:
Multiple perspectives and insights
are brought to bear on problems
Yield better solutions, faster
- Organizational adaptability:
Can coalesce rapidly around issues
driven by changing technologies,
research needs, or other challenges
without time-consuming organizational
realignments

There is hope!
- Cost-effectiveness:
Fewer development “stovepipes”
Less likely to “reinvent the wheel”
Useful knowledge, tools, and techniques are rapidly
distributed throughout the organization
Standardization, interoperability more likely
- Collective learning:
Participation increases knowledge and skills of all participants
Overall organizational competence is enhanced
Knowledge is more likely to be preserved for the next
generation

Thank you. … Questions?
Dave Govoni
(dgovoni@usgs.gov)
Tom Gunther
(tgunther@usgs.gov)