National Science and Technology Council

1. National Science and Technology Council Interagency Working Group on Digital Data Co-Chairs Cita Furlani, NIST Charles Romine, OSTP Chris Greer, NCO/NITRD

2. “What is at stake is nothing less than the ways in which astronomy will be done in the era of information abundance.” Science in the Digital Age Towards the National Virtual Observatory: A Report Prepared by the National Virtual Observatory Science Definition Team.

3. Hubble Space Telescope Replacement Wide Field Camera (WFC3) WFC3 provides a factor of 7 increase in field vs. the NIC3 camera, and a factor of >10 increase in J+H band survey efficiency, with finer angular resolution, photometric accuracy, and stability. Source: NASA

5. LSST “Suspended between its vast mirrors will be a three billion-pixel sensor array, which on a clear winter night will produce 30 terabytes of data. In less than a week this remarkable telescope will map the whole night sky …. And then the next week it will do the same again … building up a database of billions of objects and millions of billions of bytes.” Nature 440:383

6. Large Hadron Collidor Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding two beams [of hadrons] head-on at very high energy. Source: public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html

7. When LHC begins operations, it will produce roughly 15 Petabytes of data annually, which thousands of scientists around the world will access and analyse … The mission of the LHC Computing Project (LCG) is to build and maintain a data storage and analysis infrastructure for the entire high energy physics community that will use the LHC. Source: public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html

8. Interagency Working Group White House Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy National Science and Technology Council Committee on Science Interagency Working Group on Digital Data

9. •Department of Agriculture •Department of Commerce •Department of Defense •Department of Education •Department of Energy •Department of Health and Human Services •Department of Homeland Security •Department of the Interior •Department of Labor •Department of Justice •Department of State •Department of Transportation •Department of the Treasury •Department of Veterans Affairs •Central Intelligence Agency •Environmental Protection Agency Charter/Participating Agencies •Institute of Museum and Library Services •Library of Congress •National Aeronautics and Space Administration •National Archives and Records Administration •National Science Foundation •The Smithsonian Institution •US Army Corps of Engineers •Council on Environmental Quality •Domestic Policy Council •Homeland Security Council •National Economic Council •National Security Council •Office of Management and Budget •Office of Science and Technology Policy

10. Contributors Tim Erny AHRQ Tim Morris CDC Cita Furlani NIST William Turnbull NOAA/DoE Helen Wood NOAA R. Paul Ryan DoD George Seweryniak DoE Walter Warnick DoE Joseph Kielman DHS Bie Yie Ju Fox State Brenda Cuccherini VA Joe Francis VA Timothy O’Leary VA Randy Levin FDS Joyce Ray IMLS Babak Hamidzadeh LoC Joe Bredekamp NASA Martha Maiden NASA Robert Chadduck NARA Kenneth Thibodeau NARA Donald King NIH Sylvia Spengler NSF Robert Bohn NCO/NITRD Chris Greer NCO/NITRD Charles Romine OSTP Martin Elvis SI Giuseppina Fabbiano SI Paul Gibson USDA Ronnie Green USDA Kevin Hackett USDA Anne Frondorf USGS Bonnie Carroll Exec. Sec. Marta Cehelsky CoS Mayra Montrose Cos

11. To develop and promote the implementation of a strategic plan for the Federal government to cultivate an open interoperable framework to ensure reliable preservation and effective access to digital data for research, development, and education in science, technology, and engineering. Charge National Science and Technology Council 11

12. Digital Scientific Data: Any information that can be stored digitally and accessed electronically, with a focus specifically on scientific information used by the Federal government to address national needs or derived from research and development funded by the Federal government Scope

13. Vision A scientific digital data universe in which data creation, collection, documentation, analysis, preservation, and dissemination can be appropriately, reliably, and readily managed thereby enhancing the return on our nation’s research and development (R&D) investment by ensuring that digital data realize their full potential as catalysts for progress in our global information society.

14. Report “The widespread availability of digital content creates opportunities for new forms of research and scholarship that are qualitatively different from traditional ways of using academic publications and research data. We call this ‘cyberscholarship” The Future of Scholarly Communication: Building the Infrastructure for Cyberinfrastructure 2007 NSF/JISC Workshop National Science and Technology Council 14

15. Science is global and thrives in 5 dimensions Data are national and global assets Preservation is both a government and private sector responsibility and benefits society as a whole Communities of practice are an essential feature of the digital landscape Long-term preservation, access, and interoperability require full life cycle management Not all data need to be preserved and not all preserved data need to be kept indefinitely Dynamic strategies are required Guiding Principles

16. Strategy Create a comprehensive framework of transparent, evolvable, and extensible policies and management and organizational structures that provide reliable, effective access to the full spectrum of public digital scientific data

17. Recommendations We recommend that: (1) A National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee for digital scientific data preservation, access, and interoperability be created; Subcommittee responsibilities should include topics requiring broad coordination, such as extended national and international coordination; education and workforce development; interoperability; data systems implementation and deployment; and data assurance, quality, discovery, and dissemination National Science and Technology Council 17

18. Recommendations We recommend that: (2) appropriate departments and agencies lay the foundation for agency digital scientific data policy and make the policy publicly available In laying appropriate policy foundations, agencies should consider all components of a comprehensive agency data policy, such as preservation and access guidelines; assignment of responsibilities; information about specialized data policies; provisions for cooperation, coordination and partnerships; and means for updates and revisions. National Science and Technology Council 18

19. Recommendations We recommend that: (3) agencies promote a data management planning process for projects that generate preservation data. The components of data management plans should identify the types of data and their expected impact; specify relevant standards; and outline provisions for protection, access, and continuing preservation. National Science and Technology Council 19

20. “Ever since their inception, universities have been occupied with the fundamental elements of what we now call 'knowledge management', i.e. the creation, collection, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.” The Universities Andre Oesterlinck, Knowledge Management in Post-Secondary Education: Universities

21. “It is to the research library community that others will look for the preservation of … digital assets, as they have looked to us in the past for reliable, long-term access to the ‘traditional’ resources and products of research and scholarship.” The Academic Libraries Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Strategic Plan 2005-2009