CDA revised vision & Progress report (February 1998)

Common Data Access (CDA) the UK's nationaldata repository has re-defined itself and issued a revised statement of its new vision.

CDA's intent is to become the recognized UK body for Petrotechnical data management, providing "complete and comprehensive, quality-controlled and quality-assured data services to the industry through integrated, distributed data stores with centrally administered entitlements catalogues". This is to be achieved within a five year time frame. A definite encouragement for many UK operators is the fact that storage of data with CDA will fulfil a company's commitments to the UK government (DTI) with respect to technical data reporting and retention under the UKCS licensing and other regulations. CDA will extend it's scope beyond geotechnical data, to encompass production data, subsurface data and any petrotechnical data that is potentially shareable. Roles are clarified with CDA responsible for data security and participating companies responsible for the quality of the data they own. In a pointer to future "virtual" data stores, CDA does not intend to centralize all petrotechnical data physically, but rather to make maximum use of existing data repositories, linked through a common inventory and entitlements system. Additionally CDA plans to link to other national data repositories.