What is Metadata and Why is it Important?

Data that isn’t accompanied by context is useless. When most people are confronted with data, they ask a range of questions, such as: Where did it originate from? When was the last time it was updated? Who is in charge of keeping it up to date? These and other questions can be answered using metadata.

By providing this context, good metadata practices enable us to extract greater value from data. However, implementing metadata correctly may be a vast topic, and it can rapidly become quite complicated. Metadata is commonly referred to as “data about data.” In virtually all circumstances, metadata answers the basic questions of who, what, where, when, and why to present a summary picture of the data in question.

Metadata, at its most basic level, provides the context in which we can use data. This context allows data to be found, compared, and verified. Furthermore, metadata can provide a uniform format for interoperability, so improving data quality and encouraging wider data utilization. Metadata enables us to accomplish things with data that we want, such as reducing expenses, fostering collaboration, and improving our understanding of the issues we confront.

Metadata Components

A few key elements are needed for good metadata to provide context. These aspects are common in datasets, regardless of the data type or field you’re working in, and they answer the who, what, where, when, and why questions regarding the data.

The dataset title, publisher, last update, language, and keywords are all included. Implementing excellent metadata practices necessitates providing data context in a repeatable and methodical manner. Organizations must essentially specify and define metadata using standardized principles.

Detailed documentation is the foundation of good metadata. Maintaining consistent documentation will allow you to improve your metadata practices over time and learn from how your company uses metadata. Furthermore, metadata offers additional information to the document, allowing it to be filtered and found.

Metadata Benefits

Because today’s organizations deal with massive amounts of data, metadata is critical to their existence. Metadata allows you to categorize all of your organization’s documents, resulting in a lot of clarity and organization in your paperwork. Document management can quickly overwhelm and consume your firm if you don’t employ an electronic DMS that works with metadata.

The Relationship between DMS and Metadata

Metadata is necessary for categorizing, searching for, and retrieving materials, as previously stated. An administrator must predefine the information that will be used by the organization while setting up a DMS. This creates a centralized process in which employees/users must categorize their documents using the provided metadata and fill in the indexing fields. While it may appear to be a laborious task at first, it instils a certain level of document management discipline.

To some extent, metadata is used by every organization. Organizations that frequently produce a lot of digital documents add more structure and control to paper-intensive processes. A document management system analyzes the metadata and routes the files to the appropriate location automatically. Users can quickly find what they’re looking for thanks to document metadata. Inputting a single term into a document management system, for example, can help identify relevant records as easily and rapidly as a Google search. By collecting relevant documents and making them accessible to the right people, document metadata improves operational processes.

How KRIS DMS Uses Metadata

File size, author names, creation, and update dates are all basic document metadata components in a word processor and spreadsheet files. KRIS Document Management System (DMS) has more advanced features such as indexing fields for distinct document categories.

When users need to search for and retrieve a document later, they just have to filter documents based on their category and the data they entered into the indexing fields. This functionality allows users to retrieve documents more quickly. As a result, metadata can be used to save time, energy, and resources.

The ISO definition for Data Quality includes Metadata as a requirement. KRIS DMS is ISO 15489 compliant that supports the implementation of international standards for Information and Documentation with regard to Records management.