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Public Review of XKOS

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2017-01-03 16:05

The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce the Public Review of XKOS, an RDF Vocabulary which extends the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) for the needs of statistical classifications. It does so in two main directions. First, it defines a number of terms that enable the representation of statistical classifications with their structure and textual properties, as well as the relations between classifications. Second, it refines SKOS semantic properties to allow the use of more specific relations between concepts. Those specific relations can be used for the representation of classifications or for any other case where SKOS is employed. XKOS adds the extensions that are desirable to meet the requirements of the statistical community.

Links to the specification and instructions for comment are found at http://www.ddialliance.org/Specification/RDF/XKOS. We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI and RDF communities on this vocabulary. The comment period is open until February 15, 2017, and we hope to hear from you.

Review of Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI 4 - Extended Review Period

Submitted by lyle on Thu, 2016-12-22 11:30

After discussing the review of the DDI-Views Q2 Development Review with attendees at EDDI 2016, the Technical Committee has decided to extend the review period to 15 January 2017. Please note that the PDF version of the documentation is now available. The Comment and Review Page is found at

https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DDI4/DDI+4+-+Comment+and+Review and provides general information on the purpose of these reviews. The link to the specific page for the Q2 2016 review is found in the red box in the upper right corner of the page. If you have questions or need additional time to complete your review, please contact Wendy Thomas, Chair of the Technical Committee.

EDDI Conference Held in Cologne

Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2016-12-14 17:05

EDDI16, the 8th Annual European DDI User Conference, took place December 6-7, 2016, in Cologne, Germany. The conference was hosted by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and organized jointly by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

There were 91 participants from 50 organizations in 17 countries in attendance. The conference program included 37 presentations and 6 posters, 3 tutorials, and 7 side meetings. Keynote addresses were given by Keith Jeffery ("Metadata: Foundation, Philosopher’s and Rosetta Stones"), and Stefan Winkler-Nees ("Funding, Policies, Community Building - Data Sharing from a Funders Perspective").

Save the date for the next EDDI!

EDDI2017 will be hosted by FORS - Swiss Center of Expertise in the Social Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 5-6, 2017.

Chair of the DDI Scientific Board presented at the Sixth Session of OIC Statistical Commission

Submitted by lyle on Fri, 2016-11-11 01:33

Joachim Wackerow, Chair of the DDI Scientific Board, presented at the Sixth Session of the Statistical Commission of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC-StatCom), which was held 5-6 November 2016 in Konya, Turkey. Wackerow's presentation was titled "DDI and Its Role on Modernizing Official Statistics."

Review of Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI 4

Submitted by lyle on Mon, 2016-10-17 08:08

The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce the Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI Views, sometimes called DDI4. The comment period for the Q2 Draft is now open. Information on the review process is available from the DDI4 - Comment and Review page, which contains a link to comment instructions and to the release package itself (see the box labeled Current Review in the middle of the page).

DDI is transitioning to a model-driven specification to support new content and domains, to provide needed flexibility in rendering and packaging, and to ensure a sustainable development process for DDI going forward. The model will enable use-case driven "functional views" of the full model so that prospective DDI users can receive only the subset of DDI classes they need for a specific task or function (e.g., create a simple codebook). The transition also includes moving to a fully automated production framework to create the specification, bindings, and documentation. More information about the DDI work products and how they all fit together is available.

This release is one of several iterative releases, each of which builds on previous releases. The Q2 Draft includes the class descriptions and diagrams for several of the basic parts of the model, XML Bindings, and high level documentation. We are currently working out issues with the RDF/OWL implementation.

We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI community in order to improve what we have and to validate our approach. The comment period is open until December 31, 2016, and we hope to hear from you.

Welcome New Member: Blaise - Statistics Netherlands

Submitted by lyle on Sun, 2016-10-02 23:50

The DDI Alliance welcomes Blaise - Statistics Netherlands as a Full Member! Harry J.A. Wijnhoven, Deputy CIO of Statistics Netherlands/CBS and CEO Blaise, is the Member Representative and Lon Hofman is the Scientific Representative.

Call for Nominations : DDI Executive Board

Submitted by Kelly Chatain on Fri, 2016-09-30 15:11

For all DDI Alliance member representatives:

We have an opening on the Executive Board and are looking for nominations for candidates to fill this elected position through June 2017, when a new round of elections for four-year terms will take place.

This is a good opportunity for members who are interested in participating on the Executive Board, but without the long-term commitment. We are especially looking for representatives from Europe to fill this opening.

If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague to this position, please contact Jared Lyle, DDI Alliance Director, by October 7th. Email or phone: lyle@umich.edu or (734) 763-6075.

Two Workshops to be Held at Schloss-Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics

Submitted by Kelly Chatain on Tue, 2016-09-27 11:46

Two weeks of workshops will begin on October 17th, to be held at Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics.

The first week (Oct. 17-21) will focus on interoperability between DDI and other metadata standards. The workshop will bring together representatives from the following metadata standards: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and RDF community, Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX), Research Data Alliance (RDA), Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), health standards, DDI, and other related standards. The meeting will focus on the review of the current DDI work, discuss how best to work collaboratively, how to be aware of each standard’s developments, and to investigate opportunities for developing joint projects. To read more about the first workshop, please follow this link.

The second week (Oct. 24-28) continues the development work of the model-based specification of DDI (DDI Version 4). The focus of this ‘sprint’ is spread across four main areas: Documentation, expansion of data capture and description, controlled vocabularies, and funding opportunities. To read more about the second workshop, please follow this link.

DDI has a strong relationship to the internationally renowned informatics center in Germany, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Institute for Informatics, Wadern. Since 2007, seventeen DDI development and training workshops have been held in this extraordinary venue.

EDDI16: Draft Program Available and Registration Open

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2016-09-27 00:37

The 8th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI16) will take place December 6-7, 2016 in Cologne, Germany. EDDI16 is organized jointly by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

The meeting will bring together DDI users and professionals from all over Europe and the world. The program offers 2 keynotes, 28 presentations, 3 discussion sessions, and 6 posters. Three tutorials and 6 side meetings will take place before and after the conference. This year, the conference organizers are encouraging papers which focus on re-use of software and re-use of administered software. Examples of this could be question banks, re-use of software components and provision of services which foster re-use. Also encouraged are papers which discuss barriers to the creation and uptake and maintenance of such re-use. Anyone interested in developing, applying, or using DDI is invited to attend and present.

Registration is now open. More information is available on the Conference web page.

DDI Directions newsletter published

Submitted by lyle on Thu, 2016-09-22 00:01

The latest issue of DDI Directions was published on September 22nd. It includes reports on the NADDI 2016 conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the Annual DDI meetings held in Bergen, Norway. The newsletter also highlights the contributions of DDI members engaged in working groups or committees, including the Marketing and Partnerships Group, the Training Group, the Technical Committee, and the Moving Forward project. Also in this issue is a new column, "ReadWrite-Execute (RWX)", written by Knut Wenzig (DIW Berlin), that will highlight both existing and new DDI and metadata-related publications produced by the DDI Community.