Our consulting staff combines a comprehensive knowledge of the DDI and SDMX standards with many years’ experience helping organizations to manage all aspects of an IT implementation based on them. Our expertise includes a strong emphasis on services-oriented architecture, web services, and process management tools, the necessary complements to the implementation of the metadata standards.
We work with all types of research centers, archives, data libraries, and statistical agencies, and understand the unique issues they face in implementing good data and metadata management solutions. Our philosophy is that the best consultants become partners with their clients, working as part of the implementation team to guarantee success.
Our consultants are both participants in and contributors to many of the important activities, projects, and conferences involving the SDMX and DDI standards. We have the most in-depth and current knowledge of everything from the further development of the standards to the current state of tools developments.
Consultancy services we can provide for you
We can assist your organisation to:
- analyse your data structures in order to develop DSDs
- analyse your reference metadata structures in order to develop MSDs
- map your internal metadata models to the SDMX Information Model
- develop a systems architecture to take advantage of SDMX for both existing and new systems
Consultancy services we have provided
Over the years, we have been providing support in the adoption of SDMX technologies in the international community. Here is a short introduction to the kinds of services we have already delivered.
DSD and MSD Development
We have helped organisations such as UNESCO and the IEA develop data structure definitions (DSD) in the education and energy statistics domains. We have provided valuable input to the development of the DSD for the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) used throughout the UN family of organisations. We have also worked closely with organisations in the labour, agriculture and fisheries, and central banking and finance communities to assist in the development of DSDs.
We have developed metadata structure definitions to support the reporting and dissemination of quality framework metadata such as that collected and published by the IMF.
Systems Architecture
We have given advice and guidance on how SDMX can be used to extend the functionality of existing systems and how users of such systems can benefit from systems integration with SDMX.
Standards Development
We have been a part of the team providing technical and standards-making expertise to the SDMX secretariat for many years. As a result we are ackowledged experts in all of the versions and syntaxes of SDMX and in the Information Model.
Mapping internal metadata models to the SDMX Information Model
We have helped both National Statistical Organisations and organisations in the Central Banking Community to map their internal metdata models to the SDMX Information Model in order to determine how best to represent their metadata systems in SDMX.
With leading experts in the standard, Metadata Technology North America is the foremost company to handle your organization’s DDI concerns. Our staff is recognized internationally as being made up of the leaders in both DDI 2 (Codebook) and DDI 3 (Life Cycle) implementation.
Systems Integration: Our goal is to ease organization’s implementation of standards by making new tools and functionality fit well with existing systems. We can help with legacy integration, metadata migration, version migration from DDI – Codebook to DDI – Lifecycle, and in the version-proofing of systems to ease future migration.
Standards Development: Being a member of the DDI Alliance, we have a crucial role in developing DDI and other related standards. We see our clients as key players in the future development of these standards, keeping in mind their concerns and feedbacks.
Integrating SDMX: With experience in both DDI and SDMX, we understand the complementary relationship these two standards have. Metadata Technology North America helps organization like yours to integrate DDI and SDMX for projects involving both of these standards.