Transaction interoperability protocol

To share or reuse data we need a way of describing it. A clearly-set- out range of taxonomies and classification systems will allow sensible data usage and data sharing through a set of metadata standards, agreed and implemented by all members of a Data Commons.

Metadata standards solve problems of interoperability: I will know that this piece of data is a genome, who it is associated with, when it was uploaded, what I am allowed to do with it, and other “meta” facts about the data I am sharing, integrating, reusing. These standards will be set at both level III (for a specific data-sharing community) and level I (for the entire Data Commons).

For example, the genomics community might agree on how genome data needs to be described so it can be shared within the community. Then this specific metadata needs to be joined with supra-community standards, to answer questions like how genome data can talk to social sector data, or how face recognition data can talk to identity data.