Someone from the Bank of Canada just sent me this URL bu email. This guide, from OECD, is "a single comprehensive reference set of international guidelines and recommendations for the reporting and presentation of statistical data and metadata." What's the significance? If you can get through the (to me, barely literate - I'll buy a definite article for $150, Alex) business English, it's this: "The second imperative driving the need for the development of data and metadata presentation and reporting standards refers to the requirement to minimise the reporting burden of national agencies in their provision of statistics and metadata to international organisations. Emphasis here is on the development of more efficient practices and processes for such reporting which are undertaken within the context of the range of processes and mechanisms described in Section 2.3.1 below such as bilateral exchange, data sharing, etc." What does that mean? In theory, this: if you put your organizational data into metadata format (ie., XML), then you only have to do it once; subsequent references need merely link to the original metadata. See especially the summary of recommendations, p. 19ff.
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