2 October 2002
2002 CODATA Conference
Institutional Data Issues
•Improving the coordination of existing institutions and projects is a key concern.
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•The CSE might consider viewing its role as a clearinghouse for a national and regional spatial data infrastructure. 
§         Improving the coordination of existing institutions and projects is a key concern.  For example, the OMVS and the CSE activities are not adequately linked.  A network of all other relevant data-holding institutions, in the SRB region as well as internationally, could be formed to share their data and information in an integrated manner.
§         The CSE might consider viewing its role as a clearinghouse for a national and regional spatial data infrastructure.  A clearinghouse is not centralized, but designed as a distributed data center connected through the Internet.  There is no physical transfer of actual data holdings—the distributed data are made available through separate servers containing structured data and metadata.  This would go a long way toward linking and integrating the data holdings of all the separate institutions and individual researchers.