Geoscience Australia (GA) is improving its stewardship and sharing of data and information products that are discoverable, freely accessible, interoperable, standardised, authoritative and able to be used by diverse stakeholders. The factors that impact on GA's ability to share its wealth of data and information assets are complex and interdependent but fall into three main areas of strategic focus; ICT, data custodianship and governance. GA has already begun to achieve some important building blocks towards data management including an Information Management Framework and the establishment of Architecture Committees and Scientific Communities of Practice to strengthen the governance of data and information. International, national and community standards are being applied by data custodians to facilitate discovery and access to our data, and to improve the interworkability of the content. New ICT tools and systems are being developed to provide internal and external users with a single entry point to discover, visualise and deliver GA data and products. The long term goal is to implement fully operational channels for the management, discovery and delivery of all GA data including 'BIG' data and 'the long tail of science'. This will entail a long term commitment to culture change, education and data management support.
