[DDI-users] DDI Directions Volume XIV, Number 4, December 2016

mcianna at umich.edu mcianna at umich.edu
Wed Dec 7 13:49:22 EST 2016


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*From the Director*

In this issue, we highlight recent conferences and workshops, including the
European DDI User Conference and two Dagstuhl DDI workshops. We also note
the open comment period for the Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI 4.

Jared Lyle, Director, DDI Alliance, lyle at umich.edu


*In This Issue*

   - European DDI Users Conference on Dec. 6-7. 2016 <#a01>
   - Dagstuhl Workshops <#a02>
   - Celebrating 10 Years of DDI Workshops at Dagstuhl <#a03>
   - New Members <#a04>
   - DDI at the 17th International Blaise Users Conference <#a05>
   - DDI Scientific Board Chair presented at Sixth Session of OIC
   Statistical Commission <#a06>
   - Review of DDI 4 Q2 Development Draft In Progress <#a07>

Volume XIV, Number 4, December 2016
European DDI Users Conference on Dec. 6-7. 2016

The 8th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI)
<http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/ocs/index.php/eddi/eddi16/>, jointly
organized by GESIS <http://www.gesis.org/en/home/> - Leibniz Institute for
the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA <http://idsc.iza.org/> - International
Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor, is being held
in Cologne, Germany, Dec. 6-7, 2016.

Conference presentations cover a wide range of topics relating to DDI:

   - Case studies
   - Mature implementations
   - Early implementations
   - Interplay of DDI with other standards or technologies
   - Projects in early phases in which DDI is under consideration
   - Critiques of DDI

Dagstuhl Workshops

Two weeks of DDI metadata workshops were held in October at Schloss
Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics.
[image: DDI metadata workshops week 1 group photo]

Twenty-one participants attended the first week
<https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=31260690>,
which was devoted to collaboration and insuring interoperability between
DDI and other metadata standards. Representatives came from the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) and RDF community, Statistical Data and Metadata
eXchange (SDMX), Research Data Alliance (RDA), Generic Statistical
Information Model (GSIM), health standards, DDI, and other related
standards. Goals of the workshop included:

   - A shared understanding of the metadata standards for research data in
   terms of their commonalties and successful practices
   - Clarification of points of interaction between standards both in their
   current forms and in their future development
   - Improved communication across disciplines
   - Identification of any possible options for the collaborative work

[image: DDI metadata workshops week 2 group photo]

The second week
<https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=39911463>
brought together twenty-four members of the DDI community to review the
next version under development, DDI 4, a model-based specification
<http://www.ddialliance.org/ddi-moving-forward-process-summary> that will
enable documentation of a broader spectrum of data. Work was focused in the
following areas:

   - *Re-usable Structured Documentation:* Work concentrated on developing
   both high-level and field-level documentation to assist archives,
   libraries, and statistical agencies, migrating from an older version of DDI
   to DDI 4.
   - *Integration of Data Capture:* The integration of data capture into
   the full DDI Views model using real world examples for documentation.
   - *Validation of Data Description:* Validation and quality assessment of
   the data description model using a range of real world examples.
   - *Controlled Vocabularies:* A closer working relationship with the
   Controlled Vocabularies Group since Controlled Vocabularies are used
   throughout the model.
   - *Funding Opportunities:* Exploring opportunities and creation of
   re-usable documentation for potential funding proposals, scope is local,
   national and international.
   - *Long-term Metadata Infrastructure:* A long term plan for how the DDI
   Alliance fits into the larger social science research community.

Celebrating 10 Years of DDI Workshops at Dagstuhl [image: Celebrating 10
Years of DDI Workshops at Dagstuhl]

This year marked the 10th anniversary of DDI workshops held at Schloss
Dagstuhl <http://www.dagstuhl.de/> - Leibniz Center for Informatics, an
internationally renowned informatics center in Wadern, Germany.
Participants at the second week
<https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=39911463>
workshop (described above) celebrated the occasion with drinks and a
presentation by Joachim Wackerow highlighting past workshop topics,
accomplishments, and attendees.

Dagstuhl provides a unique forum for DDI training and expert workshops,
supporting the process of building a community of qualified DDI users and
specification developers. Special thanks to Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz
Center for Informatics for past and continued support of GESIS and DDI
Alliance workshops on DDI and metadata. A special issue celebrating DDI's
10th Anniversary in Dagstuhl is forthcoming.
New Members [image: Blaise logo]

The DDI Alliance welcomes Blaise - Statistics Netherlands as a Full Member!
Harry J.A. Wijnhoven, Deputy CIO of Statistics Netherlands/CBS and CEO
Blaise, is the Member Representative and Lon Hofman is the Scientific
Representative.
DDI at the 17th International Blaise Users Conference

Blaise is a powerful and flexible software package developed by Statistics
Netherlands (CBS), and used for data collection and scientific research
worldwide. The International Blaise Users Conference (IBUC) is a conference
for users of Blaise software which takes place roughly every 18 months. The
conference is mainly targeted at developers, system staff, survey
methodologists, survey operations personnel and their managers.
[image: DDI at the 17th International Blaise Users Conference]

This year at IBUC, Dan Smith and Jeremy Iverson of Colectica presented
their new tools, the Blaise Colectica Visual Survey Designer and the Blaise
Colectica DDI Connector, both developed in partnership with CBS.
[image: DDI banner]

DDI also had a marketing presence at the conference. Read more information
on Blaise <http://www.blaise.com/products/general-information>.
DDI Scientific Board Chair presented at Sixth Session of OIC Statistical
Commission [image: Sixth Session of OIC Statistical Commission]

Joachim Wackerow, Chair of the DDI Scientific Board, presented at the Sixth
Session <http://www.oicstatcom.org/event-detail.php?id=1517> of the
Statistical Commission of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC-StatCom), a supra-national organization of fifty-seven Islamic
countries. The conference was held 5-6 November 2016 in Konya, Turkey.
Representatives of the National Statistical Institutes of 35 Islamic
countries and of 12 international organizations participated. The
conference had altogether 65 participants. Wackerow's presentation, titled "DDI
and Its Role on Modernizing Official Statistics"
<http://www.oicstatcom.org/imgs/news/1517_PRESENTATION_OICSTATCOM6_S4_ARCHITECTURAL_DDI%20ALLIANCE.pdf>,
was included in the session on "Modernisation of National Statistical
Systems through Architectural Models and Skill Set Expansion of Human
Resources."
[image: >Joachim Wackerow presents at Sixth Session of OIC Statistical
Commission] Review of DDI 4 Q2 Development Draft In Progress

The DDI Technical Committee opened the comment period for the Q2 2016
Development Draft of DDI 4 in October 2016. Comments will be accepted
through December 31st. Information on the review process is available from
the DDI4 - Comment and Review page
<https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DDI4/DDI+4+-+Comment+and+Review>,
which contains a link to comment instructions and to the release package
itself (see the box labeled Current Review in the middle of the page). This
release is one of several iterative releases, each of which builds on
previous releases. The Q2 Draft includes the class descriptions and
diagrams for several of the basic parts of the model, XML Bindings, and
high level documentation. We are currently working out issues with the
RDF/OWL implementation. The Technical Committee is eager to obtain feedback
from the DDI community and they look forward to hearing from you!

Background: DDI is transitioning to a model-driven specification to support
new content and domains, to provide needed flexibility in rendering and
packaging, and to ensure a sustainable development process for DDI going
forward. The model will enable use-case driven "functional views" of the
full model so that prospective DDI users can receive only the subset of DDI
classes they need for a specific task or function (e.g., create a simple
codebook). The transition also includes moving to a fully automated
production framework to create the specification, bindings, and
documentation. More information about the DDI work products
<http://www.ddialliance.org/about/work-products-of-ddi-alliance> and how
they all fit together is available.
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