Panel : Managing Metadata in the Public Sector

The Government of Canada (GC) represents a complex legislative, policy and operational environment in which common information and data management-related policies apply but allow for departments and agencies to exercise discretion and make implementation decisions individually in practice. While GC requirements for managing information and data have been integrated with those for managing information technology, cyber security, and service delivery since 2020, interoperability challenges have persisted that pose risks to the GC’s digital transformation. Adding to the complexity of the current state is the fact that metadata applied today to support present-day government functions and recordkeeping activities may vary from the metadata needed downstream to manage government information throughout its life cycle and preserve archival records over the long term.
To improve federated search across GC information holdings and repositories, increase the GC’s capacity to design services digitally from end-to-end, and reduce barriers to discovering, accessing, exchanging, and reusing GC information and data now and into the future, renewed attention had to be placed on the fact that the open and strategic management of information and data inherently requires that metadata also be managed. Representing Canadian federal public servants with experience in developing and implementing metadata policy requirements across the GC, panelists will explore the merits of focusing the GC’s new Standard for Managing Metadata more holistically on how the Canadian federal government manages the metadata describing its information and data assets across individual departments and agencies and capturing the overall importance of using prescribed metadata standards as a single requirement in this policy context. This panel will also explore the role of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and related technologies for the automatic processing, summarization, and validation of metadata. Additionally, it will include a discussion of the conceptual approach given to archival metadata as set out in Library and Archives Canada’s Operational Standard for Digital Archival Records’ Metadata.
Ultimately, the panel will engage in a focused exchange on the challenges associated with the GC’s policy approach to metadata, and the range of supplementary guidance instruments and governance processes that are needed and have been developed to support its successful deployment across the GC enterprise. Each panel member will take opportunities to discuss their experiences developing or implementing metadata across the GC, as well as the challenges they encountered and opportunities they seized related to that development or implementation process. Time will also be allocated for session attendees to ask questions of panelists.