The OECD’s corporate metadata management system MetaStore and the corporate data warehouse OECD.Stat are designed to improve the efficiency of data and metadata preparation, storage, access, management and dissemination for statistical products produced across the Organisation. Improvements in these areas will enhance both the transparency and accessibility of OECD statistics. Metadata have traditionally been located in a number of production databases and text files maintained by different OECD Directorates, the result being some duplication of effort in metadata preparation, gaps in the metadata available, particularly metadata explaining differences between similar or related series residing in different databases, and in a small number of instances, inconsistent metadata.
This document outlines basic metadata principles and management principles relating to statistical metadata management in the OECD. The document also contains a set of common metadata items providing a common structure. It comprises seven Sections: