Review of NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (2003) / Chapter Skim
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3. Improving the Effectiveness of NGDC
3. Improving the Effectiveness of NGDC
Pages 29-52
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From page 29... ...
Examination of the holdings shows that data collection is rarely comprehensive and is even spotty in some cases. Examples of "missing" data include bathymetry data collected by individual investigators, marine seismic data collected by organizations around the world, historical ocean-bottom photography data, and popular geomagnetic indexes.
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From page 30... ...
To be an effective national center NGDC need not have comprehensive holdings, but it should provide comprehensive access to geophysical data on its Web site by pointing to organizations that hold complementary data. Such organizations include the seismic reflection archive at the University of Texas; GLORIA sidescan sonar images and interpretive geographic information system layers at the U.S.
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From page 31... ...
core repository, the LDEO/RIDGE multibeam database, and the ODP Janus database would be more easily found and useful if they were moved to the appropriate section of the NGDC Web site and accompanied by adequate data descriptions.
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From page 32... ...
Adverse conditions in the space environment can disrupt satellite operations, interrupt various communication channels, degrade navigation capabilities, lead to the rerouting of transpolar flights, and cause the shutdown of electric power distribution grids. Research in this area is coordinated by the National Space Weather Program and is sponsored by a number of federal agencies, including NSF, NOAA, U.S.
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From page 33... ...
Before the advent of the Internet the normal procedure for obtaining 4 Department of Commerce Excellence in Customer Service Award, National Geophysical Data Center, 1997. 5 The membership of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)
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From page 34... ...
NGDC staff no longer know who most of their users are, what they need, or if they are satisfied with the data products. Online users are categorized by domain name, but such categories are misleading, as NGDC recognizes.
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From page 36... ...
NOAA's Chief Information Office acknowledges that conducting statistically valid surveys is nontrivial and that OMB approves very few surveys proposed by NOAA. OMB has recently approved a one-time survey of customers who have used data from any of the NESDIS data centers in the past year, although it will only be valid if a 75 percent response rate is achieved.9 The committee feels strongly that user surveys are essential for data centers to gauge user satisfaction with existing products and services and to determine which new products and services are needed.
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From page 37... ...
can provide input by which NGDC can judge customer satisfaction. Recommendation: NGDC should take steps to obtain effective feedback from its users by establishing an independent external advisory group, conducting statistically valid user surveys, and making better use of its Web site to characterize users and to define their interests and level of expertise.
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From page 38... ...
However, NGDC's effort in education and outreach is not substantial, especially compared with the resources devoted by other agencies.ll Education and outreach activities in some federal agencies are becoming more rigorous, and the ad hoc approach of NGDC has not kept up with the times. If NGDC is to meet its stated goal of serving the broader user community,l2 it will have to develop a formal education and outreach program, integrated through all the data and information of the center, and spanning the different education levels of the user community.
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From page 39... ...
154-155. 14 See, for example, National Research Council, 1984, Solar-Terrestrial Data Access, Distribution, and Archiving, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 31 pp.; National Research Council, 1993, 1992 Review of the World Data Center-A for Rockets and Satellites and the National Space Science Data Center, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 80 pp.; National Research Council, 1994, 1993 Review of the World Data Center-A for Meteorology and the National Climatic Data Center, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 29 pp.; National Research Council, 1998, Review of NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 233 pp.; National Research Council, 2001, Enhancing NASA's Contribution to Polar Science, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 124 pp.
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From page 40... ...
However, NGDC has no scientific advisory committee and although it has a number of visitors, it has no real visiting scientist program. NGDC's advisory committee recommended establishing a visiting scientist program in 1990, 1992, and 1993.16 Most of the visiting scientists on the NGDC roster are retired NGDC employees, who are contributing positively to the center.
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From page 41... ...
Implementing this recommendation would require a culture change and incentives for working with the data. Staff NGDC staff is aging and has been dwindling in number for several years, although the number of managers has remained the same.
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From page 42... ...
Examples of integrated science that rely in part on geophysical data are given in Box 3.3. Participating in these programs will require NGDC to manage its holdings and services within a broader context and take a more integrated view of its geophysical data and services.
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From page 43... ...
IMPRO VING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NGDC 43 able services and functions (e.g., database management, software development) serve all NGDC disciplines.
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18 Interviews with NGDC staff members, November 14, 2003. 19 For example, the Climate Database Modernization Program is currently providing funds for rescuing analog data.
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From page 45... ...
The committee found it easier to find the Web page of interest by using a Web search engine than by searching within the NGDC Web site. For instance, the Space Physics Interactive Data Resource (SPIDR)
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From page 46... ...
The center has made a significant investment in a modern tape robotic mass storage system that will simplify future data migration tasks. However, outside organizations (e.g., NCAR, NASA)
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From page 47... ...
Plans should be put into place to maintain an NGDC Web presence in the event of natural disasters, power outages, loss of Internet connectivity to the Boulder facility, or other eventualities. At a minimum the NOAA data centers could back up each other to ensure a continuous Web presence.
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From page 48... ...
Recommendation: NGDC should improve its data stewardship, guided by practices at other data centers, to accelerate its data migration schedule and its rate of archive transcription and should also address the center and backup site disaster vulnerability. PERFORMANCE MEASURES As part of NESDIS oversight of the center NGDC must write a management contract with performance measures each year.25 At the time of the review NGDC had two sets of performance measures: one developed by NESDIS and applied to NGDC and one developed by NGDC (Appendix E)
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From page 49... ...
IMPRO VING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NGDC TABLE 3.1 Proposed Additional Performance Measures and Milestones for FY 2003 49 Performance Measure Milestone Build authoritative long-term archives Acquire valuable emerging data streams Contribute to significant scientific research Establish a data quality committee to review and document the information quality of NGDC products and services Expand use of metadata records to include more data quality information in our directory systems; populate these fields Establish a preliminary operational mirror site for the National Geodetic Survey's Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) data .
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From page 50... ...
NGDC need not archive all data related to its mission, but it should have prominent links to related archives on its Web site to guide users to data of interest. How effectively does NGDC measure customer satisfaction?
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From page 51... ...
A strong scientific connection either by having scientific expertise among the center staff members, by collaborating with outside scientists, or by encouraging visits from outside scientists to work with the data is needed to ensure the quality of the data and metadata. NGDC's base funding is insufficient to cover all of its activities.
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