Mandatory metadata retention needs to go ahead, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) told Senate Estimates recently, even though almost all of the collected data will never be accessed by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis said, “We will not, and never will, use the majority of this data, but unless the data set is complete, then it would be an incomplete exercise when we are going in on a lead.” ZDNet brought this sobering topic to our attention in their article, “95 percent of metadata retained will be of no use: ASIO.”
With all the concern over metadata gathered by government agencies, the irony that they won’t even use anywhere close to the majority of what they collect is sobering.
Managing metadata in a smart way can make the content you do have findable. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies with integrated indexing rule bases to make their information findable.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
