May 21, 2008 — The Alliance for the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is pleased to announce the official release of Version 3.0 of the DDI XML specification for documenting social science data. This long awaited version of the DDI represents a major advance by fully incorporating XML Schemas and moving to a data life cycle approach. We thank all the members of the DDI working groups as well as DDI users who have volunteered their time and efforts over the past years to make this specification a reality.

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is a project to create an international standard in XML for metadata describing social science data. The DDI Alliance is a self-sustaining membership organization whose members guide the development of the DDI specification.

For further information, visit http://www.ddialliance.org/ddi3/ or contact ddi@ddialliance.org.

At the occasion of its 39th session, the United Nations Statistical Council recognized SDMX as the preferred standard for the exchange and sharing of data and metadata (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/doc08/DraftReport-English.pdf).

The recommendation was put forward by the Committee for for Coordination of Social Statistics (CCSA) in the conclusions of its ninth and tenth
sessions (http://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/2008-26-ccsa-e.pdf) and based on its technical report on common open standards for the exchange and sharing of data and metadata (http://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/2008-13-sdmx-e.pdf).

The United Nations Statistical Commission, established in 1947, is the apex entity of the global statistical system. It brings together the Chief Statisticians from member states from around the world. It is the highest decision making body for international statistical activities especially the setting of statistical standards, the development of concepts and methods and their implementation at the national and international level.

The objectives of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA), established in September 2002,1 are to promote coordination among the statistical programmes of international organizations, to provide coordinated outputs for the treatment of statistical issues in intergovernmental meetings, including the United Nations Statistical Commission, to foster good practices in the structuring and programming of statistical activities in international organizations and, ultimately to achthrough the coordination of activities.

For further information, see:
http://sdmx.org/?p=106
http://sdmx.org
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/commission.htm
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/workpartner_ccsa.htm

Candidate Release Version 3 (CR3) is now available from the DDI Alliance Web site at: http://www.ddialliance.org/ddi3/index.html. The “Latest Release” link will take you to SourceForge for the actual download.

We are getting very close to having a final version of DDI 3.0 to vote on in April. The timetable for publication is:
Final version available: April 3
Review period: April 4-20
Alliance vote: April 21-27
Official publication of DDI 3.0: April 28

Between now and April 3, the Technical Implementation Committee (TIC) is continuing to make corrections to the schema on a weekly basis. Developers who need to work with the most current copy should check SourceForge regularly. All of the subsequent revisions to CR3 will be labeled as CR3 but with different dates. The version log in SourceForge will indicate the changes made since the last update so that developers can check to see if any changes have taken place that might affect their work. Specific questions about updates can be directed to the TIC at ddi-srg@icpsr.umich.edu.

The Open Data Foundation is pleased to announce that an ODaF Europe 2008 meeting will take place at the UK Data Archive on April 14-15. This regional event is open to all members as well as individuals and agencies interested to learn more about ODaF or to share ideas. For further information and registration, see
http://www.opendatafoundation.org/events/odaf_europe_2008.php

Looking into the future, we currently anticipate holding a US regional meeting on Oct 2-3 at the Sun Microsystems headquarters in Manhattan, NY and our Annual Meeting in Washington DC in December. The Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Germany and the Open Data Foundation (ODaF) are also happy to announce that ODaF Europe 2009 will be hosted on the IZA campus in Bonn next spring (details to be announced in time).

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had.

The DDI Foundation Tools Program (DDI-FTP) is pleased to announce the availability of a new web site dedicated to DDI Tools at http://tools.ddialliance.org

The site is intended for DDI users and developers and provides access to applications, software components, documentation, example files and XSL transformations that support the DDI-XML specification. It is also the home for the DDI Foundation Tools Program, an initiative aiming to provide application developers with a set of reusable components, operating in a harmonized environment based on open source technologies, to manage DDI metadata and their related data and resources (http://tools.ddialliance.org/?lvl1=ftp).

The launch of the site coincides with the initial release of the DDI-FTP Road Map (http://tools.ddialliance.org/?lvl1=ftp&lvl2=roadmap), a document that describes and prioritizes the different components of the toolkit, to be used by contributors to focus and coordinate their development efforts.

As always, we wish for the web site and the tools program to be community driven and your comments and suggestions are most welcomed. Agencies or individuals interested in contributing to the DDI-FTP are also encouraged to read more about the initiative or contact us for further information.

All the best,

The DDI-FTP team
tools@ddialliance.org

DDI, the Data Documentation Initiative, is the “codebook standard” for quantitative social datasets. This new briefing paper from the DataShare project explains the DDI as a form of metadata, how version 3 embraces a life-cycle approach to data management, and how the DDI could be exploited by OAI-compliant data repositories.

DDI and Institutional Repositories, by Luis Martinez, released 1 February, 2008.

See also http://www.disc-uk.org/deliverables.html for other project deliverables.

The UKDA Data Exchange Tools (DExT) in collaboration with the Open Data Foundation has just released a new version of a Java package for reading SPSS data files and export metadata in DDI 2.0 and DDI 3.0 CR 2 formats. The library allows allows for the export of the data in varous ASCII formats. The package can be retrieved at:
http://forge.opendatafoundation.org/gf/project/ukda_dext/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=1
It is a sub-component of a DExT application that preservation and dissemination of data and metadata in standard formats.

The first issue of the DDI newsletter called DDI Directions is now available for download as a PDF file. The quarterly newsletter provides information and updates on DDI activities throughout the year, and suggestions for content can be sent to Mary Vardigan, DDI Alliance Director, at vardigan@umich.edu.
DDI Directions, December 2007/Winter 2008

The 2007 Annual Meeting of the Open Data Foundation will take place at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) office in Washington, DC on Wednesday December 19th from 9am-5pm. We would like to thank Dr. Julia Lane for her assistance in providing once more the facility to host our annual get-together.

An outline of the agenda is enclosed below, and a more detailed version will be made available prior to the event. Please let us know if you expect to attend in person or are interested to participate via conference call. For further information, see: http://www.opendatafoundation.org/events/odaf_annual_meetings_2007.php

Draft Agenda for the ODaF Annual Meeting 2007
___________________________________

I. Business Report
A. Personnel Changes
B. Financial Report
II. Report on Ongoing Projects
III. Status of Resolutions from 2006
IV. Marketing Activities
A. Website
B. Position Papers
C. Newletters and Blog
D. Conferences
V. Face-to-Face Meetings
A. Report on St. Helena Meeting
B. Discussion of Next Meeting
VI. New Projects and Ideas
VII. Resolutions