Table 2-1.	Future Activities Related to Long-term Stewardship
Table 2-2.	Types of Data Needed to Support Future Stewardship Activities
Table 2-3.	Relationships Between Data Types and the Needs of Selected Future Users
Table 3-1.	Examples of Federal Metadata Standards
Table 4-1.	Overview of How Well Existing Requirements and Practices Address Generation, Preservation, and Accessibility of Stewardship Data
Table 5-1.	Gaps, Issues, and Potential Solutions
Table 5-2.	Data Fields Included in a Metadata Form that Meet FGDC Core Elements

ACRONYMS

ABSTRACTS

ABSTRACT

As U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites move beyond active environmental cleanup to long-term stewardship, changes in information needs must be addressed. This report is an initial effort to inform DOE policy makers, advisory boards, and stakeholders about the significance of this issue. Failure to provide for these changes can delay and/ or increase the costs of site closure and transfer, and compromise the ability to protect human health and the environment. A project team conducted a preliminary review and analysis to assess whether current requirements and practices clearly identify the data that must be retained to ensure effective long-term stewardship and whether they would remain accessible to future generations.

FINDINGS

Most types of information needed for long-term stewardship are already being generated for other purposes. Requirements do not specifically identify what constitutes stewardship data or how to define this discrete subset. Information management requirements and practices are not coordinated with property transfer requirments. Information that has stewardship value is being lost, destroyed, or maintained in formats that may not be useful to future stewards. Some data will not be preserved as long as necessary for stewardship purposes. Some data will be preserved adequately but may not be able to be located, or will not be accompanied by enough descriptive information to be usable. Most records of facilities and site infrastructure are required to be destroyed when facilities are demolished or infrastructure is declared obsolete. DOE has already begun to pay increased cleanup costs because critical data have been lost. Knowledge that archived information about DOE sites exists may be lost. Future users may not know where to search for all relevant information, causing delays in action or the potential for unnecessary risk. Even when such knowledge is preserved, and users know where information is located, it may take too long or be too expensive to gain access to stewardship data.

The findings and other conclusions contained in this report are based on the best professional judgment of the project team. The report has not been formally concurred upon by the U. S. Department ofEnergy and does not represent official DOE policy or guidance. The Office of Strategic Planning andAnalysis (EM-24) is forwarding this contractor's report as a working draft to serve as an information resource to federal employees and stakeholders who are examining stewardship and/ or information management issues.