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20250218 Scientific Board Meeting minutes

20250218 Scientific Board Meeting minutes

Owned by Hilde Orten
Mar 11, 2025
4 min read

Attendees

Dan S., Dan G.(part of the time), Darren, Flavio, Hilde, Ingo, Wendy, Wolfgang

Apologies

Jared, Simon

Agenda

1. Admin

a) CDI is out and announced! Congratulations!

We are very happy that DDI-CDI is published, and very proud of this new standard product of the DDI Alliance. Warm thanks to everybody who contributed to the development and publication of this new standard. A congratulation note from the Scientific Board to the CDI WG and the TC is included in the DDI Alliance Winter Newsletter of February 2025. 

b) Website update - status

The update and transfer from ICPSR to HubSpot is now close to complete. A few issues remain. Thank you very much to Darren, Wendy and the TC for this big job. The TC will now follow up regarding a review and further development of the website.  Jared will be convening an advisory group for the website and Wendy will be our contact person for this.

c) Modern Stats update (SDMX-DDI) (Flavio) (SWP goal 1.8)?

Flavio reported from the Modern Stats work, where mapping between SDMX and DDI is ongoing. Flavio and Dan G. are already involved in this work. Wendy is interested and was invited by Flavio to join the team onward.

d) ISO certification (Dan G 15 minutes)

Dan G. and Arofan have been working on a draft of an ISO standard for DDI. Dan gave a presentation of the current draft, to which Flavio additionally suggested that code/category lists should be added. The proposal standard is currently focusing on three key areas:

  • Data Lifecycle

  • Variables and Variable Cascade

  • Basing standards on platform-independent (UML) models and generating syntax representations from them.

The SB members present at the meeting agreed to review the current draft over the next few weeks and get back to Dan G. with comments. He will then update the current draft and send the new version to the SB. Dan G. suggested it might be needed for the proposal to become a product of the DDI Alliance in order to become approved by ISO. The SB will look into possibilities for that.

e) Qualitative WG under the SB

There is a need to cover non-quantitative data beyond DDI-CDI. The SB agreed on the intent for a related group to be established. Darren and Hilde to draft a proposal to scope the work etc.

2.Engagement (Goal 1.1 in Scientific Work Plan ‘Develop recommendations for better signposting and marketing of products…

See point 1b above.

For the SB to develop recommendations from our side.

3.How can we help the Working Groups?

Hilde proposed the following points regarding how the SB can help the working groups:

  • Help with planning and alignment of tasks with the SWP.

  • Discuss hindrance to progress and propose ways forward with the work.

  • Identify possible candidates (people) for recruitment to specific groups or for collaboration on specific tasks.

  • Initiate collaborations between WGs.

There was a general agreement around these points and Hilde will draft little texts around each.

Flavio pointed out the importance of feedback to the SB about what is going on in the working groups, as well as coordination among the new content working groups that are being established. We have three mechanisms for that currently: The Scientific Board WG contacts, the biennial WG plans and half-yearly reporting. We will follow up regarding specific topics for collaboration between the SB and working groups, as well as between groups regarding common issues like modeling etc.

4.Community meetings

a)Virtual annual meeting May 22

The annual meeting will be held virtually. As usual this will be organised in a reporting section and a discussions section.

b) Physical community meeting in connection with IASSIST

Ideas for topics, presenters and discussion topics

We are exploring possibilities to organise a physical community meeting in connection with IASSIST, focusing on a set of topics and discussion. Below are some ideas for topics with focus on what is new:

  • DDI-CDI 

  • RDF resources (CVs; DDI-L 4.0, future strategy) 

  • ISO certification 

  • The website

  • Other

We would need a set of available presenters. Dan S. proposed we could write to the users list to retrieve feedback from the users about topics and possible presenters, as well as to check if this is of interest to the community.

Wolfgang will draft the email. 

Hilde and Darren to follow up this.

5.SB members election

We have four members whose term ends by the fiscal year of which some are willing to serve as candidates for (re) election.

Hilde will contact Jared to ask him to send an email to the users list to ask the community for recommendations for candidates for election. 

We would like the election to take place in time for the new board to constitute itself and start their activity by the beginning of the fiscal year 2025/2026.

 

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