Single Point of Truth (SPOT)

• Introduction
• Business case
• SPOT methodology
• Contacts

Introduction

Geoscience Australia produces geoscientific and geospatial data for the Australian Government and the community to assist with the development of public policy, promotion of Australia’s economy, environmental management and mitigation of natural hazards. Geoscience Australia’s customers need to be assured that data is produced to known standards using open and accountable processes and comes from a unique and reliable source. Single Point of Truth (SPOT) is Geoscience Australia’s standard for processes to produce data which is authentic, authoritative and accurate.

• Authentic
• Geoscience Australia’s best available data.
• Sustainable systems support and protect the data and its metadata.
• Authoritative
• Geoscience Australia has a legitimate role to provide and authorise the distribution of the data.
• Intellectual Property is verified and documented.
• Accurate
• The accuracy, precision and quality, lineage and fitness for purpose of the data is documented, accessible and traceable.

A SPOT data set:

• Is unique within Geoscience Australia;
• is managed in a corporate system;
• is maintained and up to date;
• has full and correct metadata published in a corporate metadata system;
• has a documented governance process which includes:
• A fully described and modelled data system;
• defined roles for data management; and
• qualified staff in those roles.
• meets defined quality standards;
• is discoverable, accessible and interoperable; and
• complies with relevant international, national and agency standards.

[back to top]

Business case

Geoscience Australia is a national leader in providing a diverse range of geoscience and geospatial data to an equally diverse range of customers within Australian and internationally. Geoscience Australia’s data and information form the organisation’s key business asset and is managed strategically.

Without a rigorous process for data management and delivery, information can become compartmentalised, fragmented and hidden. This leads to multiple copies of data, uncertainty about its origin and authenticity, higher project and operations costs and reduced confidence in data quality. Without easily discoverable authentic data sources, significant time is spent inefficiently attempting to discover and access data.

Geoscience Australia continually acquires new geoscientific and geospatial data, which compounds data management problems and increases the need for well described and accountable management and delivery processes.

With Geoscience Australia’s increasing profile, clients expect its outputs to show a degree of excellence which can be substantiated with transparent, documented processes. The SPOT methodology will apply a consistent discipline to Geoscience Australia’s data as well as preserve and enhance the organisation’s reputation as a source of high quality, accurate data and information management.

[back to top]

SPOT methodology

The SPOT methodology provides guidelines to evaluate the state of a dataset, develop it to the SPOT standard and aid in the transition of historic data to that standard.

Geoscience Australia has published this standard methodology in Record 2007/17 - "Single Point of Truth (SPOT) Methodology, S.Ross, N.Evans, H.Anderson, M.Jenkins, G.Lawford, D.Simon, F.Brassil, S.Lang and L.Wyborn", initially advertsied in AusGeoNews December 2007.

• GA Record 2007/17 Single Point of Truth (SPOT) Methodology [PDF 580K]

Contacts

The taskforce is sponsored by Glenn Ashe (CIO), and the SPOT taskforce co-ordinator Neal Evans reports to the CIO