V1, 7/18/05 24 The SEACOOS IM strategy recognizes the importance of data standards. A clear and largely successful effort has been made to investigate the existing, relevant data standards and to utilize them.  In some (most) cases the existing standards have fallen short of meeting SEACOOS needs in significant details.  In order to remedy those deficiencies SEACOOS has independently drafted new documents and proposed them as standards (e.g. “Data Dictionary” and “SEACOOS CDL”). Although the standards drafted are of high quality, SEACOOS must engage in community-wide efforts to define data standards. The marine science community suffers from a lack of well-defined community processes (policies or traditions) for defining data standards.  This absence has lead to a proliferation of overlapping but incompatible standards – a state of affairs that creates serious barriers to data interoperability.  To achieve the international scope of data interoperability that IOOS requires the community must move towards fewer standards that are more broadly conceived and more widely utilized.  In preference to creating new standards the Committee recommends that SEACOOS become an active participant in the standards bodies that are responsible for emerging community standards.   Specifically, SEACOOS can 1) engage in the (informal) standards processes for netCDF conventions (“CF” and “OTS” and 2) pursue connections with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) directly or through proxies to promote standardization of marine data structures for time series, profiles, etc.   With editorial changes the high quality documents that SEACOOS has drafted can morph into guidance documents for regional data providers on the proper use of the broader standards. The SEACOOS Strategic Plan states “the ultimate utility of the regional information system is to enable the creation of products that address scientific and societal issues …”    The regional IM should, indeed, enable the creation of these products, but should not necessarily be the authoritative creator of the products. In a mature RCOOS this role will be shared by various entities, including private sector information providers that target the needs of specific classes of users. It needs to distinguish between the roles of the value-added information provider vs. regional data provider. In the current developmental stage of IOOS regional observing systems it is necessary for a regional IM system to be both the definitive regional distributor of data and the definitive regional provider of value-added information products for end users.  It is important to recognize these two functions as distinct.   The SEACOOS IM system currently emphasizes the production of GIS visualizations (information products for end users) – a task at which it has succeeded admirably.  The Committee recommends that in its next phase of development the SEACOOS address its more limited successes as a distributor of (“raw”) data.    There is a need to expand data access strategies to embrace a 4-dimensional view of data. In addition to “maps” (lat-long views of data), ocean observations and model outputs should be made available in the structures that are natural for the data types: time series,