Data Sharing - Good Public Policy

Information about the Nation’s living marine resources is often difficult to find, difficult to use when it is found and difficult to interpret because of insufficient documentation.  Beginning in 2009, NOAA Fisheries initiated a cultural shift to make information about the Nation’s living marine resources broadly available.  The Enterprise Data Management initiative’s goals are to complete an inventory of the Agency’s data assets, make these assets discoverable and understandable to users and provide access to these national assets that the Agency holds in stewardship for the nation.  Presentations in this session cover the full range of this effort from a broad policy perspective, discovery of information, collection of and access to data and to the end story - examples of what can be done when data are broadly shared with all stewards of our living marine resources.