# Resource Data Federation: let's discuss

**URL:** <https://forum.openreferral.org/t/resource-data-federation-lets-discuss/601>\
**Category:** Data Management\
**Created:** [January 17, 2025, 8:42pm UTC](https://forum.openreferral.org/t/resource-data-federation-lets-discuss/601 "2025-01-17T20:42:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 13

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**Author:** ![bloom](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.openreferral.org/bloom/32/103_2.png) [@bloom](https://forum.openreferral.org/u/bloom)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2025, 7:32pm UTC](https://forum.openreferral.org/t/resource-data-federation-lets-discuss/601/13 "2025-05-14T19:32:33Z")

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Thanks again to those who joined. I went through the notes and tried to pull out a set of takeaways, [itemized at the top of the notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SYmsSa_U8uQKZW0zhEq8H6CNttNeWPqP7BAV0HDJa2o/edit?tab=t.blv4nr28fynh#heading=h.czrrkpv9c6ih) and pasted below.

Next week many of us will be at the Inform USA conference, in which these converastions can continue informally.

Is there interest in re-starting the conversation in June? Say June 3rd or 10th at 11aEastern? If so, what should the agenda be?

see below and chime in – thanks!

# 

Takeaways:

Roles:

- Utility: responsible for aggregate, publish, and quality control. May have specific front-line stewardship responsibilities in addition to bottom-line / umbrella responsibilities; may also play role of curator and auditor for other stewards.
- Steward: responsible for a specified level of data management of a given set of resources.
- Auditor: responsible for assessing the quality of data managed by a given set of stewards, to ensure compliance with standards. (performed by Utility
- Curator: responsible for ensuring consistency in subjective elements of resource records, especially category/taxonomy

There should be designated stewardship responsibilities for the ‘core’ part of the record. That said, taxonomies might benefit from being managed (curated) centrally.

For aggregated vs unbundled service information – i.e. Programs that might involve multiple subsidiary services – Perhaps bundled program record is shared broadly, and discrete service records are kept locally and/or provided for a fee.

^ Question: Can modern transformer tools help accommodate a both/and balance between loose and strict? So that systems can have it both ways with tooling to automate bundling/unbundling.

Style guide : data standard :: style template : exchange profile

> in order to get alignment on complex orgs, develop a ‘template’ for certain kinds of organizations (like gov agencies) to specify how information about them should be structure.

> In order to get alignment on specific data point to share for specific purposes/users, develop an exchange profile – “Export profile” or “import profile” – that specifies particular fields for particular purposes, and sets up the crosswalking to be automatable.

Who should get paid for what?

- Locals / domain experts / stewards should get paid for managing records –
  - on a per-record basis?

- Regional/state-level utility should get paid for aggregating comprehensive data, quality assurance, etc.
- Producing “opinionated” data sets for specific consumers
- Participation in cooperative processes i.e. governance activities
- Some local work (non-standard contributions, unstructured input) can be contributed by community partners who might not get paid but can benefit in nonmonetary ways (training, support)
- CBOs should get paid for providing services! This is important overall; but it may or may not be relevant to data management strategy.

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