Interested EPA program staff, partner organizations, and the public can use the EDR to obtain information about new data standards initiatives, including copies of draft standards documents, candidate standard data elements, and current standard status. Members of Data Standard Action Teams can link to a related site to enter a discussion forum on data standards proposals. Any EPA Web site visitor can access the EDR to obtain information on EPA's information resources. The EDR helps environmental information users understand the meaning of EPA application system data. The EDR documents EPA applications by showing their table structure, the data elements within each table, permissible values associated with each data element, and the office responsible for the data.
Public users can find contact or source information for the data in which they are interested.
EPA information system professionals can use the EDR to inventory information managed across the Agency, to identify redundant data collection and storage, and to identify ways to streamline data collection and integrate information stores. The EDR will continue to expand and add data elements and application metadata from existing information systems. The information on candidate data standards will be updated to support the efforts of Action Teams developing data standards by providing a location for recording data elements and tracking their progress through the standardization process. The EDR will preserve the historical meaning of Agency data over time by maintaining legacy system information. As the collection of application metadata in the EDR continues to grow, the EDR will be an important tool that can be used to improve the effectiveness of environmental data usage.