Create or adopt data standards

Standards are an important element of a strong data infrastructure and allow organisations to curate and improve access to data assets. A data standard is a reusable agreement, which helps us to steward data in a more consistent way.

Data standards can create a number of benefits if widely adopted. They can help people to adopt the same vocabulary and language using common models, attributes and definitions. Data standards can enable a better exchange of data within and between organisations using common formats and shared rules. Standards can also provide guidance and recommendations for sharing better quality data and understanding processes and the flow of information.

In 'Play four: Assess the existing data infrastructure’ we take a deeper dive into helping you adopt or build open standards for data.

Some examples of data access initiatives developing data standards include: OpenActive – UK activity providers such as gyms publish live data feeds for opportunities to be physically active, such as spin classes, under an open licence, using a common data model and application programming interface (API) standard Open Contracting Partnership – governments around the world publish openly licensed datasets describing public procurement tenders and contracts to the same data standard Femicide Data Standardization – the Latin American Initiative for Open Data (ILDA) created this regional femicide standard to support governments in collecting and publishing quality and standardised data on femicides to inform better public policies