The following considerations aim to support the adoption, implementation and maintenance of the standard. These considerations are derived from the standardization practice, adopted by international standardization organizations such as ISO, regional standardization organizations such as CEN (European Committee for Standardization), and NSOs (National Standardization Organizations).

In the current context, the ICGLR acts in a role similar to a Regional Standardization Organization, developing and maintaining a standard that should be implemented by all member states. In this role, ICGLR needs to ensure that it manages the standard in its entire life cycle.

8.1. Development and Formal Adoption of the Standard #

ICGLR is responsible with the development of the standard, ensuring that it respects the requirements for data collection, processing, reporting and sharing, including with prominence the RCM Manual and the Data Sharing Policy. While the development of the standard can be supported by contracted specialised consultants, the responsibility for the standard is ultimately of ICGLR, therefore the participation of the ICGLR Secretariat team is essential.

The development of the standard is a consultative process, which requires participation, awareness and consensus of all the ICGLR member states. The documents describing the standard needs to be formally validated by the ICGLR member states in a managed consultatory approach.

The Standard should be governed by a Standard Governance Committee, established formally by ICGLR, with designated members, that review and agree upon the standard, confirm its publication and distribution and facilitate the dialogue with all stakeholders that are interested or affected by the development and implementation of the standard.

The Standard Governance Committee should establish a structure including the following roles:

• Chairperson — Responsible for the facilitation of the discussions and calling of the meetings
• Secretary — Responsible for the documentation of the Committee’s activities and conclusions
• Publishing Officer — Responsible for the publishing and distribution of the standard to the relevant stakeholders
• Technical Officer — Responsible for the support of the technical implementation of the standard
• Audit Officer — Responsible for the verification of the adoption and correct implementation of the standard by all member states and other relevant stakeholders

The responsibilities of the Committee are summarized as follows:

• Development and formal adoption of the standard
• Review and update the standard whenever required and inform all stakeholders that are or might be affected by the changes, or that might benefit of the updates/additions/extensions/restrictions. Communicate the changes to the member states, including a transition term for the conformity with the updated form of the standard.
• Establish the access policy for the standard and its components
• Establish a publishing policy and maintain a published, up-to-date documentation related to the standard; ensure that the publishing mechanism is up to date, is available and accessible; ensure that designated content editors can update the content, know how to edit the published content and are maintaining the publishing version in strict synchronization with the current version of the standard.
• Supporting the member states to adopt the standard
• Check and validate the correct implementation of the standard, including the correct definition and implementation of national usage specifications, to ensure the maintenance of interoperability within the ICGLR
• Development and maintaining of validation artifacts, generally in form of technical tools that allow the testing of standardized data structures as used in practice, to confirm their conformity. This is an optional activity, which remains very useful for the case when ICGLR operates a technical system for data exchange based on the standards and demands technical conformity from the member states.

The Committee should meet periodically, in order to evaluate the need or the opportunity to enhance the standard. Periodical meetings should be conducted at least once every 6 months; ad-hoc extraordinary meetings can be organized any time there is a specific requirement.

Specifically, ICGLR should:

• Adopt the Core Data Model as the baseline reference for regional mining-data interoperability and reporting
• Mandate the use of the standard for technical reporting of information
• Formally encourage the member states to adopt the standard at national level as national standard for the support of all processes related to the mining data lifecycle

ICGLR should emphasize formally the benefits of the adoption of the standard by the member states, having primarily two elements in scope:

• The effectiveness of data reporting, in accordance to their obligations under the RCM
• The long-term strategic national benefit of assuring interoperability, control, traceability and auditability of all mining data operations and information systems in the country

8.2. Publication and Dissemination of the Standard #

The standard is designed to be used primarily by the ICGLR secretariat and by the member states, in order to ensure the implementation of the Regional Minerals Database, the national capacity for reporting in conformity with the RCM and the technical interoperability of the systems and processes that collect, process and report information that adheres to the RCM manual.

The ICGLR Standard Governance Committee should formally transmit the standard to:

• The ICGLR member states, through the formal state representatives
• The technical service providers responsible with the implementation and maintenance of IT systems such as the Regional Minerals Database

Each time the standard is updated, the Committee should announce and formally transmit the modified standard to the same stakeholders, including an explicit and comprehensive Change Log.

The Committee can decide the confidentiality regime of the standard and the intellectual property restrictions of the standard. Thus, the standard can be, at the formal decision of the Committee:

1. Completely open and free for all, under an open license, such as the Creative Commons (CC), with explicit requirements of Attribution (BY), NonCommercial (NC), ShareAlike (SA), and NoDerivatives (ND)
2. Free but restricted, available at no cost to the stakeholders that need to implement the standard for the common benefit of ICGLR and themselves, such as the ICGLR member states, the ICGLR and member states technical service providers and consultants, and other explicitly designated stakeholders, but with explicit limits in preventing unauthorized distribution or derivation.
3. Restricted, available for a fee, to all or some stakeholders. This policy is employed by ISO, CEN and other standardization bodies, for most of the standardization artifacts.

The components of the standard, including the semantic data model in textual form, the technical representation, technical query examples, and technical validators should be shared fully with the member states. Certain components, such as the textual form of the semantic data model, can be published online on a special section of the ICGLR website. The Committee should decide if the section is freely available or is protected by an authentication layer.

8.3. Adoption of the Standard by Member States #

Each member state needs to adopt the standard in order to comply with the ICGLR RCM data reporting requirements. Optionally, but highly encouraged, the member states should also adopt the standard for their internal data workflows, to ensure systems interoperability, data consistency, traceability and auditability.

The adoption of the standard by the member states needs to be formalized, through a governmental decision.

It is highly recommended that each member state should appoint a National Technical Committee (NTC), in charge with the adoption and updating of the standard, as part of the national obligations in relation with the ICGLR, and with an extended mandate to support the extension of the standard by the development of a National Standard Usage Specification, in textual and technical format.

It is highly recommended that the NTC is formed by representatives of the central institutions in charge with the mining and minerals, as well as the National Standardization Organization (NSO), which should provide methodological guidelines and support.

The adoption of the standard at national level implies the following stages, each of them required:

1. Formal adoption of the ICGLR standard (“Core Standard”) as obligation for data reporting to ICGLR
2. Evaluation of the specific requirements for the extension of the standard and for the establishment of more restrictive rules, as required by the national regulations, national practice and national technical considerations
3. Based on the evaluation, development of the National Standard Usage Specification, the textual description, technical additions and usage instructions
4. Support the institutions in charge with the operation of the mechanism of data reporting to ICGLR to implement the standard in the National Minerals Database or as mapper to the National Minerals Database

The National Standard Usage Specification includes the following elements, based on extensive analysis conducted by the national committee:

1. Extensions of the standard: New data entities or new attributes for data entities defined by the ICGLR standard. These could be, for example: additional identifiers of the entities that perform operations in the CoC, additional information related to mine sites, etc. Each such addition should include a description, a data type, and validation rules if required.
2. Restrictions of data formats and data sizes/lengths of the entity attributes. These restrictions can support the assurance that certain selections are done strictly in the national context (for example, the subnational divisions are only allowed from a specific array of options), restrictions that ensure the correctness of the format of certain identifiers (for example, the identifiers of national business operators have a certain pattern, etc.), the size of the files that can be uploaded (for example, for Inspection Report should be limited to maximum 3MB).
3. Validation rules that enforce specific restrictions (for example, the country for the mine sites should always be the respective member state, attributes that are optional in the core ICGLR standard should be compulsory in the national standard, etc.)

The National Committee is responsible to transpose all the rules from the National Standard Usage Specification into the technical artefacts of the standard model, queries and validator. The standard and the technical artefacts need to be made available on a need-to-know basis to all organizations that should implement or inspect the implementation of the standard.

Whenever ICGLR updates the Core Model, the National Committee of the member state should:

• Run a gap assessment against the national profile
• Decide whether to adopt the update immediately or on a defined schedule
• Update the validator rules and publish migration notes for system owners