Experiences with discovery metadata. (11th November 2009) - Johns, Janet F.
The Department of Defense (DoD) Data Strategy, DoD 8320.2-G, 'Guidance for Implementing Net-Centric Data Sharing', defines a vision for data sharing where all data will be made visible, accessible and understandable as it is created. This vision caused a paradigm shift to 'post before processing' allowing authorised users and applications to discover data without waiting for the traditional 'process, exploit and disseminate' activities to complete. Discovery metadata is used to define the key concepts needed for targeted discovery activities. Discovery metadata enables users and applications to quickly identify the existence of needed data, gain access to data and understand the meaning of data. Discovery catalogues store and organise discovery metadata for use by discovery services and search engines used in the discovery process. This paper describes the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) experiences in the pursuit of discovery metadata.