Directions

The DLI External Advisory Committee has been promoting DDI as a standard for DLI data.

This appears in the DLI Strategic Plan following feedback in the mid-pilot evaluation and the input of EAC members.

Chuck Humphrey

Ontario DLI Training

April 7, 2004

Directions

In October 2003, the EAC allocated funds to seed the creation of DDI-compliant files and to give general direction.

Given these directions, how do we all work together to share in the opportunities created by its implementation?

Recent Developments

A new discussion group was begun in February 2004 called, CANDII or the Canadian DDI discussion group.

The purpose of this group is to create a dialogue among the stakeholders of DDI users and to explore means of collaboration.

CANDDI

A Yahoo Group was established in February 2004 and a network of contacts interested in participating was established.

The first in-person meeting was held in Montreal on March 9, 2004 during the DLI Train-the-Trainers workshop.

CANDDI

The group agreed in Montreal that an early task would be to review the DDI standard to identify the set of tags that would be considered a minimum set by which data documentation should be created in Canada.

This could be developed into a template to represent best practices.

CANDDI

This group is also identifying the challenges we face in creating data documentation using the DDI standard.

Examples:• How do we package documentation for

both master files and public use files using DDI?

CANDDI

Examples:• What guidelines should be used for

defining variable groupings?• What controlled vocabularies and

thesauri should be developed and endorsed?

• How should a Canadian-endorsed set of DDI tags be validated?

Time to Talk