(meta)data for decision

Metadata is boring to talk about and often overlooked when it exists. However, when it is insufficient, its gaps are
impossible to ignore. My own recent experiences trying to use open data for developing official statistics in Dublin
have highlighted a variety of metadata deficiencies that come with a philosophy of openness. Even an infrastructure
with the maturity of Ireland's for making open data available for download and through APIs can facilitate an opening
of data without the same attention paid to what data represents, how it used, and patterns it can reveal.

I've received an Early Career Research seed grant from the Maynooth University Social Sciences Insitute (MUSSI) to
ask the emundane questions about metadata to professionals who use and manage urban data professionally. I seek to assess:

To answer these questions, I am interview data users, managers, and creators in Philadelphia and Dublin. I am seeking
to request interviews with individuals who interact regularly with data and metadata, either by designing it, editing it,
or facilitating its usefulness within city government. Generally, these are individuals who are happy to talk about the
benefits of metadata, and I agree with them. But we are also trying to identify where it can be improved, and it takes
some creative consideration of what metadata is, who gets the msot value from it, and whether pushing it do more to
address data problems is a reasonable expectation. Both in the roles that my interviewees occupy and thinking about the
professional responsibilities that others have in the chain of data management.

The title of the project is (Meta)data for Decision. Anyone familiar with the history of Geographic Information Systems
will recognize that this plays off of the famous Data for Decision informational video created by Roger Tomlinson and the
Canada Land Inventory in 1967, describing the very first computer programs for managing spatial layers; what would
eventually become the first GIS.