RBU_JR_LIS_V23_2021-FULL_TEXT-E-Copy

Sainul: Information Management …
metadata standards taken up by different countries like
Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, etc.
that are used for describing e-governance information in
those countries. Abideen P, S. (2011) discussed major e-
governance metadata standardization efforts at the global
level.
Studies show that countries like Australia, Ireland, New
Zealand, United Kingdom, US, Canada, India, etc. have
realized the need for standardization of the e-Governance
information and services and began adopting national
standards for metadata in the e-governance domain.
Prominent among them include Australian Government
Locator Service (AGLS) in Australia (National Archives
of Australia, 2021), Irish Public Service Metadata
Standard (IPSMS) in Ireland (Government of Ireland,
2002), New Zealand Government Locator Service
(NZGLS) in New Zealand ("State Services Commission",
2002 & Barham, 2002) and e-Government Metadata
Standard (eGMS), (Cabinet Office, 2006) in the United
Kingdom. Apart from these standardization initiatives,
GILS in the US (GILS, 2021),TBITS 39:Treasury Board
Information Management Standard Government Online
Metadata Standard in Canada (Library and Archives
Canada., 2020), Finnish Dublin Core extension for
government publications, Minnesota Metadata Guideline
for Dublin Core Metadata (The Foundations Project,
2006)., etc. are also worth mentioning. Abideen P. S.,
(2011,2013) proposed a metadata framework model,
namely Indian e-Governance Metadata Set Model (I-GMS)
for standardization of e-governance information in the
Indian context. Milic et al. (2021) in their study presented
an overview and analysis of metadata models used in
contemporary e-government open data platforms and
proposed a metadata quality assessment model. Their
study also ‘examines how metadata structure is oriented
toward the provision of valuable information assets needed
for the utilization of open government data’.
2.1 e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS)
e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS) is the UK
government's e-governance metadata standard (Cabinet
Office, 2006). It is envisaged to enable the public domain
information of the UK government more findable,
manageable, and that can be shared across the UK e-
government systems. It illustrates how to describe the
public sector contents like e-government web sites and
services.
The e-GMS standard consists of formal definition of the
element, and obligations applied to each element, purpose,
notes on additional information, refinements for making
the meaning of an element narrower or more specific,
examples, HTML syntax, encoding schemes used to
regulate the value of elements, Dublin Core element, and
list of elements in other metadata schemes that are mapped
to e-GMS element (Cabinet Office, 2006).
e-GMS consists of mandatory fields (Creator, Date,
Subject, Title) mandatory if applicable (Accessibility,
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Identifier, Publisher) apart from 16 optional and three
recommended fields (Cabinet Office, 2006). The Data
Standards Authority (GOV.UK., 2020) is established to
improve how the public sector manages data by
establishing standards to make it easier and more effective
to share and use data among government’s stakeholders.
2.2 New Zealand Government Locator Service
(NZGLS)
The New Zealand government has come up with a crossdomain
resource description standard consisting of 19
elements called the New Zealand Government Locator
Service (NZGLS) in order to catalogue government
information and services using a common set of terms, or
'metadata elements'. The circular issued by the Department
of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, (2011) states that
NZGLS’s function is analogous to the function of a library
catalogue. The State Services Commission of New
Zealand has the responsibility of maintaining the NZGLS
and the National Library-Archives New Zealand acts as
custodian for the thesauri that are part of the Standard
(Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2011).
NZGLS is capable of describing both offline (people and
organization, information, objects, and services) and
online resources (Barham, 2002). Out of the 19 elements,
five elements such as creator, function, subject, title, type
(with category refinement) must be present in any NZGLS
record for any type of resource.
Three elements such as availability, identifier, and
publisher are mandatory for some types of resources.
Availability is mandatory for agency, service, or offline
documents. But it is optional for online documents.
Identifier is mandatory for online resources. Publisher is
mandatory for all documents and not used for service or
agency resources.
Five elements, such as audience, date, description,
language, and mandate are recommended. All other
elements are optional.
2.3 Irish Public Service Metadata Standard
The Government of Ireland, (2002), also has introduced an
e-governance metadata standard, namely Irish Public
Service Metadata Standard (IPSMS) that is also based on
the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. It contains three
types of elements, such as Mandatory, Conditional, and
Recommended. Mandatory elements such as title, creator,
subject, publisher, date, and identifier must be present for
a metadata record to be IPSMS compliant. But, the
conditional elements are mandatory only in certain
circumstances. The type element is a conditional element.
Recommended elements such as description, contributor,
format, source, language, relation, coverage, and rights
should be included when its use improves the