DMWG Policy on Data from Federal Grants (1997)

August 20, 1997

Dr. Robert Corell, Chair
Subcommittee on Global Change Research
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd., Suite 705
Arlington, Va. 22230

Dear Dr. Corell:

The government invests millions of dollars each year in research grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements. In many of these assistance and acquisition agreements the recipient develops data and data products that could be of use for other research and commercial or educational purposes. These data and products may come from various researcher activities including primary data collection, the synthesis or analysis of existing data products, and from calculations and model outputs.

At the present, the agencies generally make no requirement on recipients that such data products be made openly available. With the very constrained agency budgets, it is becoming increasingly important that such data and products not be lost but, instead, be used to the greatest extent possible. It is in the interest of good science, as well as in the interest of the public, who fund our science activities, that data and information produced at the public expense, be made available for secondary use in the shortest time period possible. The requirement for making data and information documented and openly available must find its way into the language of our assistance agreements and contracts. The need for such an action has been recommended by the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council*

To help in this process, we have constructed the attached paragraph which could be included in participating agency assistance or acquisition agreement requirements in the request for proposals or modified slightly and used in the special conditions of an assistance agreement or in contract language. We view this language as target language which can be modified, as necessary, to implement a general policy of data documentation, sharing, and secondary use which is consistent with OMB Circular A-130 and the Global Change Data Policies. We recognize that there will be implementation issues that will require careful application of this language by Grant Officials, Project Officers, and Contracting Officers who will have to exercise judgement, depending on the particular circumstances of implementation.

Among these special circumstances are data and information which are explicitly protected or excluded from release by statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act, by international treaties, or by copyright, trade secret, or sui generis protection. Agency Data Centers also need to be able to decide what they will retain and distribute, based on their own budgets and policies. However, our primary concern is to maximize sharing for the bulk of data and information that are produced with public funds.

We would like to enlist your support in making this suggested language as widely used as possible. Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Dr. Thomas H. Mace, Chair
Data Management Working Group

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* A Review of a Federal Plan for Managing Global Change Data and Information, p5, NAS/NRC, 1992

Suggested Data Product Requirement for Grants, Cooperative Agreements, and Contracts

Describe the plan to make available the data products produced, whether from observations or analyses, that contribute significantly to the <grant's> results. The data products will be made available to the <grant official/contracting officer> without restriction and be accompanied by comprehensive metadata documentation adequate for specialists and non-specialists alike to be able to not only understand both how and where the data products were obtained but adequate for them to be used with confidence for generations. The data products and their metadata will be provided in a <standard> exchange format no later than the <grant's> final report or the publication of the data product's associated results, whichever comes first.