Enhancing the Vision for Managing California’s Environmental Information

SFEI's Tony Hale helped to lead a collaborative effort to advance California's management of its environmental data and derived information. This white paper is a synthesis of ideas explored during the Data Summit (June 2014) based on initiatives, current programs and the experiences of individuals from State and federal agencies, academia, private and non-governmental entities.

The authors of this paper represent this diversity of organizations and contributors to the Summit. It is the product of a broad, collective effort, representing California’s varied interests in the effective management of environmental data. This breadth of experience and interest has resulted in a comprehensive list of high-level recommendations for advancing California’s environmental data management.

Primary goals for this document include sustainable support and advancement of California’s existing data systems, ensuring alignment with national technology trends, and laying the foundation for more consistent and robust access to data and metadata across organizational boundaries.

With these concepts in hand, and backed by a collective concern among the State’s agencies, we intend to promote substantive and positive developments in California’s technology infrastructure and the capacity to put it to use.  With our agency partners, we plan to harness this opportunity and move forward by building on the momentum generated by multiple existing efforts in the Delta and statewide.