My work this summer is to help the Open Data Program at the City of Seattle apply civic metadata standards to the datasets included on data.seattle.gov. There are numerous standards that are currently available, but the way they are applied varies. Data about some areas of civic life, such as bus transit times, corresponds well to existing metadata standards. But for others, such the data generated by cutting-edge Internet of Things devices, standards barely exist. How can the City of Seattle reconcile these differing metadata standards and apply them to the city’s datasets?
