The Government of Canada and organizations such as the UN recognize the critical role of standards in geographic information and geomatics to support stewardship and interoperability of information, ensuring that organizations access, use and share geospatial data efficiently and effectively to support program and service delivery to Citizens. The data inventory/catalogue and the supporting standards are foundational components of any national geospatial information framework. As such, well-developed metadata contains information key to the data lifecycle from creation through sharing, use, and disposal using supervised and un-supervised practices.

In addition, organizations such as the International Standards Organization (ISO) provide leadership in the development of metadata related content standards. Commercial vendors and open source projects have developed tools based on those standards. Organizations at various levels have implemented tools and metadata stewardship as part of their business to enable the effective discovery, evaluation, access, and use of their data and information resources.

This presentation discusses the value of standards, with a focus on geographic metadata.