Biodata Management Guide

Greetings, All,

My thanks to all those who provided feedback on the last draft of the
"Biodata Management Framework"
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/5eBDhav8AUtozv1y2ZoBO0> that I
posted. I have tried to incorporate that feedback into a new draft.

The discussion that ensued from my last post led me to realise that
"Framework" is too broad a term and can be interpreted to mean many
things. I am now calling the document I am working on a "Biodata
Management Guide" (almost its original title of "Biodata Management
Guides" <http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/79O0PiKtlviEkL5TV0bYQO>

Below is a link to the current draft of the Biodata Management Guide for
your review. This is still an early work-in-progress draft posted to let
you know what I am working on, and invite input.

In particular, I request two kinds of input:

1 Feedback on the overall structure of the Guide. The content of
the Guide is all up for review. I hope that the structure of the
Guide provides a good container for its content and will accomodate
changes to it. Please try and break it. If you like it, I hope it
inspires you to offer the second kind of feedback:

2 Input into the content.

I do not want to waste your time reviewing the parts of that I know are
incomplete. For that reason, here is a description of what I think is
done, and what is yet to do.

Structure. The Guide consists of the following six "tool", listed here
with the task each is designed to support:

1 About this Guide: determine whether the Guide is useful to the user.

2 Data Life-Cycle Maturity Summary: determine overall system maturity
at each of four data life-cycle stages, and to set a consistent
target maturity level across all stages.

3 Maturity Factors Summary: determine overall system maturity (in
a little more detail) with respect to six maturity factors, and to
set a target maturity profile across the factors.

4 System Assessment Form: document assessments made using the
Summary tools.

5 Data Life-Cycle Maturity in Detail: validate the assessments made
with the Summary tools or make a more detailed assessment of and
plan to improve a system to a consistent maturity level across the
data life-cycle, taking into account the target maturity profile
across the maturity factors set using the Maturity Factors Summary

6 Maturity Factors in Detail: validate the assessments made above,
understand the maturity factors in details, and make a detailed plan
to improve a biodata system with respect to specific maturity factors.

My To Do List contains at least the following.

- Review Life-Cycle Stages: Find a place to put Discovery: it is
prepared for during Ingest, needed for Analyse and part of Share.
Find a place to put storage, persistent sharing and archiving.
(I am using "Analyse" to describe the tasks Steve describes
as "Synthesise").

- Review Maturity Factors: Governance needs to be addressed. Get the
Factors to be about the same size with respect to (importance?
difficulty?). (I have revised the example of an "initial reliability
value" to correct the ambiguity Brent pointed out).

- Elicit more real world input into the Guide.

- Set detailed criteria for all the Life-Cycle Stages and Maturity
Factors.

- Aggregate up those criteria up to summary criteria for all the
Life-Cycle Stages and Maturity Factors.

- Make the Guide more specific to biological data. Add many examples.
(To my mind, not being that specific to biodata is a *good* thing.
Let's only make this an exception where it has to be.)

- Review a bunch of literature and other tools.

- Engage an Advisory Group (if you are keen, let me know).

- Engage with several test users and help them to test the Guide (if you
are keen, let me know).

with thanks and regards to all,

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Biodata Management Guide 130220.pdf 175.12kb

Hi All,

Here is a new draft of the Guide I am working on.

In this draft:

- the Maturity levels have names and improved definitions.

- Life-cycle stages are replaced by Activities. Activities should still
make up the whole life-cycle but there is no need to emphasise a sequence.

- A new activity Store encompasses what happens while data is sitting in
its primary repository. The Store activity should be managed as well as
any other.

- Even tho the cycle is not emphasised, it is implied by the left-right
arrangement of Activities. I moved Share to the left of Analyse. Data
has to be shared before you can Analyse it. Once you are done Analysing,
best that you Ingest the output of that before it is Shared.

- Maturity and other concepts used in the Guide are now defined in the
Introduction, creating better flow at the start of the Guide.

- The Activity Maturity Summary fits on one page and more useful
maturity criteria. Please try using it for a quick assessment of a system.

- The Maturity Factor Platform is now called Technology.

- The Activities and Factors in Detail are progressively taking shape.
They have better definitions, descriptions, maturity criteria and useful
resources. As these take shape, I am testing the overall structure and
using it to create a flow up from the detail to the summary tools.

- Some References are listed at the end of the Guide.

The new draft is at the link below.

Before printing the Guide, please open it in a PDF viewer with tree
navigation enabled so that you can view the structure of the Guide. You
will also find lots of clickable links for navigation within the Guide.

I am seeking more expert input into the Guide, and embarking on testing
it in real world situations. If you would like to be involved in either
of these, please let me know.

And please comment in public by replying to this email.

cheers,

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Biodata Management Guide 130422.pdf 214.13kb

Dan,

In terms of your request for feedback to Review Life-Cycle Stages - here is a
first impression.

The life-cycle idea is a good one and one that non-data management specialists
can easily relate too - I too ended up incorporating a 'data life-cycle' into
the Auckland Council "Biodiversity Data Toolbox" that I developed to improve
the way we deal with data.

Two stages that I feel should be added are:
- Project design - put this as the first stage; and
- Review and evaluate - put this as the last stage.

In my experience all too often ecologists and community groups are keen to
collect data right away. That is a good thing - I don't want to dampen
anyone's enthusiasm. But a little planning and proper project design at the
beginning instead of rushing out to collect data can save a lot of headache
later on.

Also, all too often projects are not evaluated afterwards. So there is little
opportunity to learn from the research exercise, improve in the future. So for
years a project might continue to collect data in the same way and when we
finally get around to analysing it we realise that if we had done a few small
tweeks after the first few years the data would have been much more
powerful/useful, etc.

I guess I am coming from this perspective because as a data analyst if the data
is messy it is my job to make it un-messy and in the process I am the one who
gets a 'data headache' - not the original data collectors.

Another thing I found useful when preparing the Auckland Council "Biodiversity
Data Toolbox" was to break down and list the roles and responsibilities for
each stage in the lifecycle by job titles. That way the ecologist, manager,
data analyst, GIS specalist, IT guru, PR guru each know where they fit into
things and what specifically they themselves need to do to improve biodata
management.

Many thanks for your feedback, Stacey,

For a first impression, you raise some interesting points.

First, I should mention that I have backed away a little from the
Life-Cycle idea in favour of five biodata management Activities.

Capture
Ingest
Store
Share
Analyse

The life-cycle may loop through these activities. For example, a single
person may data, share it with herself or himself, carry out some
analysis and then ingest, and then store the output of that.

Store is a recent and reluctant addition to the list. As each Activity
has maturity criteria for five levels across six Maturity Factors,
simplicity declines sharply with additions to these lists.

> Two stages that I feel should be added are: - Project design - put
> this as the first stage; and - Review and evaluate - put this as the
> last stage.

I wonder if you are describing the design of data management or of the
survey? The approach I am taking is that survey design is out of scope.
Good survey or bad, good data or bad, the job here is not to let the
data get worse. The Guide should certainly help with the design of the
data management aspect of a project.

Thinking about roles in relation to data management of various
positions, is a good idea. I have noted that as a characteristic of
level three processes.

Rest of post

Hi All,

I have moved the Maturity Criteria out of the text document and into a
spreadsheet at
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtEQMHbJqkl6dEZtMnFsdVhkRHdXWFhUNTVVdXU0ZWc#gid=0>
This makes it easier to see how the criteria fit together.

You can filter the criteria shown to view particular sets of criteria.
(Please keep an eye out for other viewers -- they will see your filter
settings, and you will see theirs.)

Here are some views that I suggest you try.

Activity Maturity Summary (overall maturity criteria for the five
Activities):

- Set the Activity column filter to show all Activities
except '0 Overall'.

- Set the Maturity Factor column filter to show only '0
Overall'.

Maturity criteria across all Activities for the Factor Reliability:

- Set the Activity column filter to show all Activities
except '0 Overall'.

- Set the Maturity Factor column filter to show only '5
Reliability'.

Maturity Factors Summary (overall maturity criteria for the six Maturity
Factors):

- Set the Activity column filter to show only '0 Overall'.

- Set the Maturity Factor column filter to show all Maturity
Factors except '0 Overall'.

Maturity criteria across all Factors for the Activity Share.

- Set the Activity column filter to show only '4 Share'.

- Set the Maturity Factor column filter to show all Maturity
Factors except '0 Overall'.

I welcome your comments on this.

Rest of post

Here is a prototype Biodata System Assessment template
<https://drive.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AtEQMHbJqkl6dEd5aEtSSlRMVzlqemg2OWZLVnpxU2c&;mode=public>
(you will need to be logged in to Google to see this).

This template uses the Maturity Criteria I mentioned earlier
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/post/TzZotYjiH6OjdbhEboBYx>

The assessment template allows the user to describe the current state of
the system and score the system using the maturity criteria for each
activity and maturity factor. The user can then set a target maturity
level for the system. The tool then highlights where the current state
does not meet the target level. In those places, the user can note what
is required for the system to reach the target level. That list of items
constitutes a plan to improve the system.

I invite your comments :).

Rest of post

Hi All,

Here is a summary of the project to date.

I am building a Biodata Management Guide aimed at people who are looking after
datasets related to biodiversity or biosecurity. It addresses the problem that
looking after such data is important but difficult. There are many factors to
take into account. It is easy to get overwhelmed and not know where to start,
or what is worth trying to achieve.

The Guide aims to improve the return on effort invested in improving biodata
systems, by supporting the following tasks.

- Assess the current state of a biodata management
system (all aspects of the system, not just tech).

- Set an achievable target for improving all aspects
of the system to a consistent level.

- Identify the steps required to improve the system
to the target standard.

I suspect that the Guide is not specific to biodata, but is a generic data
management guide with criteria, user stories and useful resources that are
slanted towards biodata.

For that reason, I present my work-in-progress for your review, with the
question: what potential can you see in this as a generic data management
guide?

I am also interested in linking this work with similar projects.

The Guide is based on a set of maturity criteria for:

- Five maturity *levels*, across

- Five biodata management *activities*, with respect to

- Six maturity *factors*.

Here is a *prototype* of the Guide. It is made up of three tools.

- The Maturity Criteria
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtEQMHbJqkl6dEZtMnFsdVhkRHdXWFhUNTVVdXU0ZWc#gid=3>

- Explanations of the activities and factors, with useful
resources for good data management
<http://dataversity.org.nz/biodata_management_guide>

- A Biodata System Assessment Template that you can use to assess and plan
improvements to your own system
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtEQMHbJqkl6dHRvU2tXaTN5NHZqUXB6djRzU0IyREE#gid=1>

I welcome any questions or feedback. By all means get in touch if you'd like a
guided tour or a chat.

Rest of post

Here is a progress report on the Biodata Management Guide.

A new version of the Guide is available at
<http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/> It aims to be easy to use to make a
quick assessment.

Please take a look at this and tell me what you think of it.

If you have seen an earlier version of the Guide, you should notice
quite an improvement.

The Guide is now two tools:

- a System Assessment Form <http://bit.ly/16sboEL>, that refers to
- a Reference document <http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/reference>

I have restricted level of detail in the Guide. You can use the Guide to
assess the maturity of only 12 things:

Overall Maturity

Five Activities
- Capture
- Ingest
- Store
- Share
- Analyse

Six Maturity Factors
- Processes
- Tools
- Formats
- Licensing
- Reliability
- Standards

The rest of the detail (Capture Processes, Capture Tools...) will be
revealed again later.

cheers,

Rest of post

Hi All,

To complement the comprehensive tool for assessing and planning improvements to
biodata systems[1], I have prepared a Biodata Management Mini-Guide
<http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/mini-guide.pdf> for your review.

You can use the Mini-Guide to make a quick overall assessment of the current
state of a biodata system, and a plan to improved the system to a target level
of maturity.

The Mini-Guide also presents the key concepts used in the Biodata Management
Guide:

- Maturity Levels,
- Data Management Activities, and
- Data Management Maturity Factors,

and shows how they relate to each other.

I would welcome your feedback.

with regards,

Rest of post

Hi All,

The Biodata Management Guide <http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/> is
complete and under review.

The Guide is intended to make it easy to assess and plan improvements to
any biodata management system.

I invite you to use the Guide and let me know your feedback.

If you are willing to participate in a brief formal review, please let
me know.

The Guide has three components.

- A Mini-Guide <http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/mini-guide.pdf> that you
can use for a quick data management assessment and improvement plan.

- A System Assessment Form
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtEQMHbJqkl6dDhSb1c0TWFRa1lGWGEzaHZDbU9JbGc#gid=1>
that you can use to make a comprehensive data management assessment and
improvement plan.

- A Reference document <http://dataversity.org.nz/guide/reference>
containing information and checklists for improving biodata management.

Next week I will be using the Guide to provide biodata management
training workshops in:

- Nelson on 9 December
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/6NiGQ9v77wYx6QzFZvAzXm>
- Christchurch on 11 December
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/3dVuSP2Tv8fuwT3x3dDSPR>
- Wellington on 12 December
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/Jri3Yb8KuvxJ57sLfvURx> and
- Auckland on 13 December
<http://dataversity.org.nz/r/topic/11Qd9Nmhjc5czLqPQILeCU>

Please register for one of these if you wish to attend.

cheers,

Rest of post

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