Retiring TDWG Standards and How Mapping Standards Could Support Agility

Abstract

Since its genesis in September 1985, TDWG (formerly Taxonomic Databases Working Group now Biodiversity Information Standards) has become the steward of standards for the biodiversity informatics community; however, there is not yet a process for retiring standards. This talk will educate the community members on TDWG Standard categories of "Current Standard", "Prior Standard", "2005 Standard", and the history and context of how these categories came to be. It will also report on the progress the TAG (Technical Architecture Group) has made on moving towards creating a process for retiring standards through auditing, community participation, and other methods. Mapping TDWG standards can provide an agility to address overlaps, gaps, contradictions, and/or inconsistencies between standards in a proactive manner. Mapping standards' relationships provides infrastructure to support decision-making, combat information overload, and give context to the community as it continues to progress at a rapid pace. More specifically for TDWG, it gives a clear picture how updating, ratifying, and/or retiring a singular standard impacts the greater TDWG information ecosystem and how to update adjacent standards to preserve clarity and consistency for the community as a whole.