This is the tenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Bonnie Carroll has served on the CODATA Executive Committee since 2012 and is seeking re-election. She is nominated by the US CODATA National Committee.

My first international CODATA meeting was the 1985 meeting in Jerusalem. Since then I have been involved with both International CODATA and the U.S. National Committee for CODATA. I’ve held positions within CODATA, including the program committee, symposium coordinator, speaker, U.S. National Representative and Co-Chair of the Data Citation Standards and Practices Task Group. In addition, it has been my honour to serve on the Executive Committee to International CODATA for the past two years.

Through all these years I have watched the importance of data as an asset grow in recognition and significance. Today in the fields of science we live in a data intensive world. For the last 40 years, CODATA has been an international resource and focal point for policy, standards, and practices in good data management. Now there are many organizations that have entered the field and deal with aspects of the data management lifecycle. I have been involved with several of these other organizations. In the US, I have been executive director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Interagency WG on Digital Data; am the long-standing executive director of the federal interagency CENDI group, which addresses federal information S&T policy issues and programs; have been the executive secretary for the US delegation to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; a member of the Board on Research Data and Information at the National Academy of Sciences; and many other US and international research data and information organisations and activities as the CEO of a private sector information management and consulting organisation, International Information Associates (IIa).

It is critical for CODATA to be both a leader of and a partner with these other organisations as we work to improve the stewardship of our data resources. We have only to look at the important example of our growing partnership with the ICSU World Data System and the establishment of the SciDataCon conference. As a member of the Executive Committee, I have been an active participant in both our strategic and operational deliberations. We need to continue to work on the Task Group structure and selection process to ensure that we are covering the important topics in data management. I believe that we should encourage more active involvement of the ICSU Scientific Unions. And we need to work hard to learn the lessons of the first SciDataCon, so that we make it the preeminent international data conference. If I am elected to serve another term, I will be committed to furthering CODATA as an effective and vital leader towards the future of data management.