CODATA and the GEO Data Sharing Working Group | CODATA Blog

"Representatives of more than 80 governments and 100 participating organizations are gathering in Geneva this week to renew their commitment to GEO, the Group on Earth Observations, a voluntary intergovernmental initiative launched in 2005, and to agree on plans for the next decade. A key aspect of GEO has been to widen the consensus on the need for open sharing of Earth Observation and related spatial data and to implement data sharing mechanisms within GEOSS, the Global Earth Observing System of Systems.  CODATA has played a leadership role in GEO’s data sharing efforts since 2006. TheGEOSS 10-year implementation plan adopted in 2005 had outlined a set ofData Sharing Principles (DSPs) for data sharing across the GEO community, but translating these principles into practice required agreement on terminology, consensus on processes and procedures, and inputs from experts on legal and intellectual property issues. As an interdisciplinary committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU), which was and still is a GEO Participating Organization, CODATA volunteered to lead the initial data sharing task and organized an expert meeting at its 2006 CODATA Conference in Beijing. In 2007, CODATA led development of a white paper that reviewed past experience with data sharing principles and policies and drafted specific guidelines for implementing the DSPs. Based in part on these efforts, the 2007 Ministerial Summit in Cape Town affirmed the need to reach a consensus on the implementation of the DSPs by the next Ministerial in 2010 ..."