Data dictionary newsletter July 2004
Released on 2004-07-29Preparation of the Eurowaternet data collection
ETC Water, in the persons of Ruth Cullingford, Andreas Scheidleder and Helga Lindinger, have made impressive progress during the last couple of months on setting up the data sets in Data Dictionary (DD).
Groundwater, Rivers, Lakes, Water Quantity and Transitional, Coastal and Marine Waters data sets are near to completion and will soon be released, in anticipation of the data collection for this year, which expects to start on August 28.
By using DD for the definition of the water data sets, the ETC aims to improve consistency and quality. Andreas Scheidleder comments: "The DD helps us avoiding duplications and redundancies, resulting in fewer discrepancies in the definitions. The DD will now be the only source for data definitions, ensuring that countries access the correct documents and it will motivate them to download the latest up-to-date templates". Ruth Cullingford adds: "DD allows us to use consistent names and definitions between data sets and makes the field-names used in on-line, published Waterbase and DD fully transparent".
The ETC Water has been the first to use DD this actively. Before EEA staff mainly carried out the updates, where after they were reviewed by ETCs. With the definition of the Water data sets the ETC Water has taken the initiative themselves after a short introductory training by EEA. Being the first is of course always leading through a path where unexpected obstacles in the application turn up. But together with the EEA team for DD and the supplier of the DD software (TietoEnator Estonia) any issues where quickly resolved. Andreas Scheidleder: "The training was rather brief but the DD is a self-explanatory application and we received good support from EEA and Tieto". Helga Lindinger did a more comprehensive training: "but that was last year with the old version of the DD. Now DD is much more clear and easier to work with and I could easily give Andreas the extra training he needed".
Using the application so extensively, has also provided some essential feedback that EEA can use now to further improve and mature the application in certain areas.
Ruth Cullingford: "It has been a lot of work up front and on a tight timescale. But now that we have set it up, it should be easy to maintain in the future. It will already be worth it as long as data providers are up to speed with what it is and how they should use it". Andreas Scheidleder: "The population was a considerable extra effort as the DD was sometimes rather slow. On the other hand the new structure is now much clearer and easier to work with. I also see real potential for DD to be used in other areas for national and international purposes".
Helpdesk
During this last week representatives of the EIONET helpdesk have received extensive training in the use and installation of DD. As of August 1, the support of DD has been handed over to the EIONET helpdesk. We are very confident that they will offer quality support to the users of DD. The helpdesk can be reached at helpdesk@eionet.eu.int.
Knowledge sharing: EIONET user group
For Data Managers (but also for other experts or stakeholders) to be able to exchange and share knowledge about the Data Dictionary with colleagues and the EEA content manager, a user group has been opened on the EIONET. The mail address is eionet-group-ug-dd@roles.eea.eionet.eu.int.
What is next?
The project team is working on the next release of the DD at this very moment. This new release (2.3) will focus on generating Excel templates and making the DD ready for the 2004 data collection. The new release is expected in the middle of August.
