This is the thirteenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 15-16 November, 2021.  Steven McEachern is a candidate for the position of CODATA Treasurer. He was nominated by Australia. 

I am the Director of the Australian Data Archive at the Australian National University, where I am responsible for the operational, technical and strategic development of the data archive. I have been actively involved in development and application of survey research methodology and technologies over 15 years in the Australian university sector. Steve holds a PhD in industrial relations from Deakin University, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Management Information Systems from Deakin University, and a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours from Monash University. He has research interests in data management and archiving, community and social attitude surveys, organisational surveys, new data collection methods including web and mobile phone survey techniques, and reproducible research methods.

I have been involved in leadership roles in various professional associations in data archiving and data management over the last 10 years, including chair of the Executive Committee of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI – http://www.ddialliance.org). During this period, I lead the negotiations for the Memorandum of Understanding between CODATA and the DDI Alliance, and reciprocal membership between DDI and CODATA, and have served as the DDI Alliance representative for the Alliance for their CODATA associate membership since we joined.

I have also had an active participation in the activities of CODATA over the past three years, with direct involvement of several of the strategic activities of CODATA. Since 2018, I have co-convened the “Interoperability of Metadata Standards in Cross-Domain Science” Dagstuhl workshop series. This workshop is directly contributing to the CODATA Decadal Program, specifically Theme 1 on Enabling Technologies and Good Practice for Data-Intensive Science. I have also been working to expand CODATA’s collaborations in the social sciences. This has lead to the establishment of the IUSSP/CODATA Scientific Panel on FAIR Vocabularies, of which I am a co-chair. I am seeking election to the CODATA Executive Committee to continue my contribution to the various strategic activities of CODATA, to expand the contribution of social sciences in the CODATA community, and of CODATA within Australian science and social science more generally.