Through the NESDIS Cloud Archive Project (NCAP), NESDIS is building on previous cloud pilot efforts and making significant progress on delivering an end-to-end cloud archive prototype in late 2021 and operational cloud archive capability in 2022. Critical to the overall design is a clear mapping between the features being designed and the functional requirements driven by National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Open Archival Information System Reference Model (OAIS-RM), and the NESDIS vision for a consolidated cloud archive workflow. The mapping between these drivers and the features being developed using Agile methodologies will be reviewed, and a technical summary of NESDIS’ plans to implement data archiving using commercial cloud services will be provided.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) hosts and provides access to one of the most significant archives on Earth, with comprehensive oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data. From the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun and from million-year-old ice core records to near-real-time satellite images, NCEI is the Nation’s leading authority for environmental information. These data are impressively heterogeneous in terms of platforms, instruments, formats, and user communities. As a federal agency, NCEI must follow laws, mandates, guidance, best practices, and national and international standards. This presentation will showcase the policies that support the framework of NCEI’s data preservation and stewardship mission with a look toward current gaps and future needs for data policies.

In the two years since the Fall 2019 meeting, NOAA/NESDIS completed two significant projects whose goal was to prototype an enterprise data management system in the cloud. The two pilot efforts, run by the NESDIS Cloud Integrated Project Team, were completed in March of 2020 and March of 2021. A significant portion of those pilot efforts has been operationalized into what is known as the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF). The NCCF is now up and running and capable of securely ingesting data and generating operational products. Another effort, the NESDIS Cloud Archive Project, picked up the unfinished work of the NESDIS cloud pilots and is focused on delivering an end-to-end cloud archive prototype in late 2021, with the goal of operationalizing that cloud archive capability into the NCCF in 2022. The current status of these efforts will be presented, including a technical focus on how NESDIS plans to archive data using commercial cloud services.