The various agencies of the United States Department of Labor (DOL) have a vocabulary of technical terms with specific, legal meanings. Consequently, it can be difficult for people without intimate knowledge of these terms and vocabularies to efficiently discover the specific data they want. Therefore, a resource to help users understand these special terms and facilitate more direct data location methods is needed.
Therefore, ODG and DOL’s Data Board are leading the efforts to develop a standard, plain-language approach to describing data sets. These efforts have led to the creation of a simple and unified data description system, including taxonomy and controlled vocabularies that make DOL data more findable.
The taxonomy simplifies search. It offers a consistent and predictable set of categories in which keywords exist, such as reporting forms, laws associated with the collection, etc. Controlled vocabularies provide a complete set of searchable terms within a category. This empowers users to identify appropriate search terms and use them to identify DOL data sets with characteristics, format, or content they want.
In addition, integration of the taxonomy and controlled vocabulary with enterprise data inventory offers the public a framework to search for data sets and variables simply and efficiently. Besides, the public can more readily locate data and data stewardship that help advance their goals. By enhancing the comprehensibility and ease in finding data, the ability to integrate DOL data with internal and external data sources increases and potentially return the greatest value to the Department and its stakeholders.
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