The SPDS history includes recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences
Committee on Data Management, Archiving, and Computing (CODMAC) and
the Congressional General Accounting Office and a succession of SPDS Planning
and Steering
Committees which culminated in a concept document [1.] and a workshop.
The workshop took the concept document as a starting point and
focussed community attention on the issues brought up there. The
workshop produced a report [2.] which, among other things, recommended
a management structure, which was implemented as described below.
By the time of the first management meetings, the WWW had emerged as the
obvious technology of choice for implementing and coordinating the SPDS.