Beyond Metadata: towards User-centric Description of Data Quality

Data quality statements are now entrenched in metadata standards worldwide. I contrast the needs of the user with the production-control mechanisms of the producer, and argue that metadata standards are producer-centric. To the user, the ability of data sets to interoperate is of major concern, as is the experience of prior users, the accessibility of quality statements, and the ease with which quality information can be handled in local software. Many of the newer geospatial tools that are oriented to the general public provide no data quality statements whatever. I present a series of use cases of metadata, and use them to argue for a reexamination of metadata standards, and the beginnings of a second generation of standards development that addresses these issues.