Quality is often defined in terms of being ‘fit for purpose' for the user and a key element of this involves providing the metadata to gain clarity and to capture the reality of the data. Our goal in the Central Statistics Office (CSO), is to move towards the systematic storage and production of survey information and away from multiple standalone approaches used by Statistical areas.

The CSO has recently begun a journey towards standardisation and using Colectica products to utilise the international DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) metadata standard to integrate the transfer of statistical metadata through its statistical production environment. This presentation will explain how we first began using the product as a Questionnaire Design tool to enable reusability, standardisation and to help improve the quality and processes across statistical outputs. This presentation will also address our current progress incorporating DDI and Colectica into our Statistical production processes, the benefits, lessons learnt along with some challenges from our own experiences and our future objectives for metadata management in the CSO.