What about standards

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What about standards?
EPHT Workshop

• Tanesha Johnson-Bey
• Maryland Dept. of the Environment
• July 13, 2004

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A standards definition

• 'a prescribed set of rules, conditions, or
  requirements concerning definitions of terms
  classification of components specification of
  materials, performance, or operations
  delineation of procedures or measurement of
  quantity and quality in describing materials,
  products, systems, services, or practices.'

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Types of Standards

• Environmental
• Enforcement/compliance, lat/long, water
  monitoring, EDSC
• Geographical
• Lat/long, contact information, geocode, FGDC,
  MSGIC
• Terminology
• LOINC, SNOMED, independent
• Message Format or Electronic Data Interchange
• HL7, XML
• Continued

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Types of Standards

• Data Content
• Product and Process
• Data Capture
• Privacy and Security
• HIPAA

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Standards are good if they..
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Meaningful Standards Development

• Within the Scope of Objectives
• Future Focused
• Structured
• Technology Independent
• Integrated
• Continued

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Meaningful Standards Development

• Supportable
• Publicly Available
• Standards need to be complete and consistent.

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The EDSC Perspective on the Process of Creating
or Revising Standards

• Primary Process (Six to Nine Months)
• Create an Action Team
• Share Draft with technical community
• Revise and request Public review
• Revise and adopt
• Modified Process (Two to Four Months)
• Adopt standard developed by others
• Revise an existing standard
• Continued

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Creating Action Teams

• Scoping Activities
• Background issues
• Existing standards
• Affected information systems
• Expertise
• Action Team Formation
• Charter/Mission statement preparation
• Co-chairs/Team Selection
• Continued

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Developing the Standard

• Develop Draft Standard (4 to 6 months)
• Identify, define and discuss data elements
• Assess Relationship to Other Standards
• Agree on draft for others to review
• Prepare supporting documents (FAQs and
  Transmittal Memo)
• Technical Community Review (30 to 90 days)
• Formal Review and Approval ( 60 to 75 days)
• Continued

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Formal Review Process

• EDSC Blessing
• Federal Register Notice (prepared by US EPA)
• Public Review and Comment ( 45 Days)
• Revise and Present to EDSC for Adoption
• EDSC assembles comments
• Team reviews, decides and implements changes or
  raises major to EDSC Co-chairs
• EDSC Adopts and Publishes on EDSC Website along
  with XML Tags

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Maryland EPHT Standards Efforts

• Metadata
• GIS
• County Data Sharing Initiative
• (Lead by MACHO Data Committee)
• National EPHT

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The Benefits of Standards

• Increase the efficiency of data sharing and
  reduce costs
• Standards improve data quality and utility
• Reduce data redundancy
• Increase collaboration and integration

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Additional Information
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
www.ansi.org International Standards
Organization(ISO) www.iso.org Federal
Geographic Data Committee(FGDC)
www.fgdc.gov Environmental Data Standards
Council (EDSC)- http///www.envdatastandards.net P
ublic Health Data Standards Consortium
www.phdsc.org Public Health Informatics
Institute www.phii.org
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For More Information

• Tanesha Johnson-Bey
• tjohnson-bey_at_mde.state.md.us
• 410-537-3606