[DDI-users] DDI Alliance Accomplishments in 2020 + Best Wishes for 2021

[Jared Lyle]

Dear DDI community,

As we enter 2021, we want to acknowledge the many DDI accomplishments in
2020 made possible by our passionate community volunteers and our 40+
member organizations.  Achievements include:

*DDI-Lifecycle 3.3 public release.* The result of six years of work
addressing new requirements filed by the DDI community, DDI-Lifecycle 3.3
<https://ddialliance.org/Specification/DDI-Lifecycle/3.3/> offers better
coverage for research and data management including non-survey data
collection, sampling, and classification management.

*New DDI product: SDTL.* The Alliance membership approved an addition to
the DDI product suite called Structured Data Transformation Language (SDTL)
<https://ddialliance.org/products/sdtl/1.0>. Designed as another tool to
facilitate a DDI-based workflow through the research data lifecycle, SDTL
provides machine-actionable descriptions of variable-level data
transformation histories derived from any data transformation language (SPSS,
SAS, Stata, R, etc.).  The same scripts that are used to transform and
manage variables and data files can be used to update metadata files,
thereby increasing efficiency in the research process and reducing
information loss.

*DDI-CDI public review.* The Alliance announced the public review of a new
specification called DDI – Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI)
<https://ddialliance.org/products/developing-products-of-the-alliance#cdi>.
DDI-CDI is a model-driven specification that is designed to provide support
for integrating data across domain and disciplinary boundaries, describing
disparate data sources, and documenting their provenance. DDI-CDI is
technology-agnostic and adaptable to any platform or representation,
designed to meet emerging needs for the integration of old and new forms of
research data. The development of DDI-CDI also spurred new partnerships
with open science organizations like CODATA <https://codata.org/>.

*International standards. *The DDI Alliance is now a category A liaison
<https://www.iso.org/organization/6171147.html> to ISO/TC46/SC 4
<https://www.iso.org/committee/48798.html>, This moves DDI-Codebook and DDI-
Lifecycle closer to being recognized as official International Standards
Organizations (ISO) standards. DDI work products are now also catalogued in
FAIRsharing <https://fairsharing.org/>, a curated resource on data and
metadata standards dedicated to making research data Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable and Reproducible.

*Organizational updates. *The Alliance Bylaws were updated
<https://ddialliance.org/announcement/ddi-bylaws-amendments-approved> to
reorganize the Scientific Board and a new Scientific Board was elected
<https://ddialliance.org/announcement/ddi-scientific-board-election-results>.
These changes will improve the management and direction of the Alliance’s
scientific and technical work activities.   The Training Group
<https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DDI4/pages/7864375/Training+Group>
was refreshed with new co-chairs and many new members.  Finally, the Alliance
website <http://www.ddialliance.org/> was reorganized to improve navigation
and increase its usefulness for novices and experts alike, assigning
responsibility for content to specific working groups.

As we start a new year, we look forward to building on these
accomplishments and connecting with many of you on Alliance activities and
at meetings in the coming year.


Jared Lyle
Executive Director, DDI Alliance <https://ddialliance.org/>
ICPSR <https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/>, University of Michigan
lyle at umich.edu

*Follow the DDI Alliance on Twitter <https://www.twitter.com/ddialliance>*
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