Inventory Re‐design

inventory.data.gov re-design

The inventory application managed by data.gov helps agency/bureau/department data managers inventory and catalog data assets through metadata entry. This application has the following features/attributes:

• Agency/organization silos for metadata management and managed teams of users
• Metadata entry based on the DCAT-US1.1 metadata standard, created by OMB for open data
• DCAT-US1.1 and 3.0 export by organization (along with error reporting)
• Data storage by file (and API access if compatible file type such as CSV), and made publicly available

Current weaknesses or pain points

The current setup utilizes a modified CKAN implementation to remove SOLR dependency. This implementation has the following weaknesses:

• UI revamp/rewrite required to be 508 compliant
• Forked code requires custom management of libraries and updates, no expectation this will ever merge with CKAN upstream
• No public testing or usage available, either gov user with PIV card and confirmed with agency/organization or no access to the tool will be granted.
• Custom React app data entry form based on 1.1 and will need complete re-write for 3.0

Suggested implementation

Given that the CKAN metadata model is not very compatible with the nested object classifications of DCAT-US3.0, we are recommending moving away from CKAN to a custom solution. This solution will remove the need for login and users, and will have an import/export system to start from a current data.json (or DCAT-US3.0 catalog or any DCAT-US3.0 object). The objects will be stored in browser memory. The classes and objects will be able to be created/defined for re-use by metadata providers, and descriptions of the fields will be available from the definition of the schema file. This will keep agencies consistent within their catalogs, while allowing flexibility (within schema definitions) across different organizations.

The main workaround that will need to be implemented will be file storage. The plan would be to provide an ad-hoc S3 bucket (related to but not necessarily connected to the inventory application). There would be 2 options for uploading data to this S3 bucket:

• Public GitHub repository with pull requests, merge to main would automatically upload to S3.
• Setup with S3 connection key (requested via data.gov team) and direct file upload setup with agency team.