20240910 Scientific Board Meeting Minutes

Owned by Hilde Orten
Nov 14, 2024
3 min read

Attendees: Hilde Orten, Sikt; Darren Bell, UKDA; Jared Lyle, DDI Alliance; Dan Smith, Colectica; Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen, GESIS; Simon Hodson, CODATA; Flavio Rizzolo, Stats Can; Wendy Thomas, TC; Ingo Barkow Fhgr.

  1. Admin

    1. TC workshop update (new draft DDI website and http://docs.ddialliance.org . Wendy’s report from the meeting).

      1. See report.

      2. Primary purpose of the F2F meeting was to move the DDI website from the ICPSR site to a HubSpot site on DDI AW (the ICPSR Drupal site needs to be taken down by December 31, 2024). Bringing the website under TC management will better support integration with http://docs.ddialliance.org site, RDF resolution services, and product development pipelines.

      3. Important to liaise with the marketing group. Need to make sure the WGs know what is needed of them.

    2. RDF URI Resolution (DDI CV and CDI ontology platform)

      1. All basically done for the DDI CV.  All CVs delivered as HTML and RDF content.  One final approval waiting for Sanda before doing final redirection. Live as a soft launch.  DDI-CDI resolution now working.   What we’re talking about is persistent identifiers for concepts (in Codebook, Lifecycle, and CDI).

      2. Darren happy to do a webinar about this.  Action: Jared to liaise with Darren to arrange the webinar.

    3. Publicizing final plans (Strategic Plan and Scientific Work Plan). Jared has drafted a letter for distribution to the user’s list.

      1. Action: Darren to review the letter today. Try and clarify the distinction and relationship between the two documents.  Done

    4. Modern stats meeting Geneva

      1. Workshop on use of modern stats standards and interoperability issues, 21-22 Oct.  Includes CDI. Directions for statistical production. Discussions at the end of each day.

      2. Second meeting on Weds 23 Oct, is more oriented at DDI, CDI and SDMX. How these standards interact with each other, and with other standards (including DCAT and XKOS). A focus on data integration.

      3. Request for post workshop report from Flavio (workshop) and Arofan (side meeting).

  2. Procedures and tools for WG planning and reporting ideas.

    1. Better to have a version online, form based, rather than in a document.

    2. How frequently should the group report?  For most groups, a bi-annual report will be sufficient.  Important for the plan to be available and be easy to reference and for the WG to report against.

    3. Hilde will write to the WGs to say that the SB will be in touch regarding the realisation of their plans Done.

    4. Next steps: SB to work on a form for reporting. Important to minimise excessive reporting, use the form to make the process as efficient as possible.

    5. Action: Hilde, Darren and Wolfgang to prepare a text to go to the WGs. Done

  3. ISO Certification (see email from Dan G. of 20240814 Presentation email of 20240909).

    1. Proposal prepared by Dan and Arofan. ISO TC46, SC4 technical interoperability chaired by Sam Oh; has expressed interest in taking the work. Alliance is a category A liaison so can submit proposal for standardization. Is also eligible to make PAS submissions. If the proposal is well drafted can go directly to DPAS vote. 

    2. Template for creating ISO documents. 

    3. Approach? Pick principles that DDI standards follow: data lifecycle, variables, variable cascade, model driven design.

    4. Sam Oh will give a keynote at EDDI.  

    5. Dan G. will be the editor, Arofan will assist with technical content. Will need a formal review group.

    6. Distinction between standard and a technical specification? In practical terms will not matter for a lot of people. After a number of years, a technical specification can become a standard.

    7. Proposal is to provide a higher level, more general description in the ISO submission, and refer to DDI standard for those that need more detail. This was the approach taken by SDMX.

    8. Identify the most stable, consistent areas of DDI.

    9. Vote to approve the approach. Carried. Request to update the proposal, recruit the review group and keep the SB informed.

  4. Ideas for the future of the DDI Registry. This topic was not addressed.

  5. EDDI 2024 contributions

    1. Actions: Jared will submit an abstract for a poster for the SB and EB. Collaborate with Wolfgang on the content. Jared, Darren and Hilde to follow up offline regarding ideas for a session EB, SB and Jared together like last year, or alternatively ‘Office hour’. Done: Abstract submissions for a poster and a birds of a feather have been accepted.

  6. Physical SB meeting Chur, timing

    1. Remark from the EDDI PC: Please send in a side meeting request in time (Sept 12th)

    2. Need to fix the day for the SB meeting. Agreed to hold the SB meeting on Mon 2 Dec. Action: Ingo to prepare the proposal for the side meeting request. Done

  7. Planning next SB meeting. This topic was not addressed.