Metadata relates to data inventory, data transfer and data management. The complexity of the problem of how to reach consensus is related to the characteristics of metadata. Metadata can be implied on different levels (discovery, inventory, exploitation) and can vary in levels of complexity and detail and will be taken care of differently according to the nature of the organization and local or national cultural differences. Both at the data producer and data user site, the lack of awareness on how to implement and use metadata became obvious.

One of the major objectives of ETeMII is to build industry consensus on the way to meet main user's needs and to remove barriers to geographical data access. Metadata is a crucial issue in this process.

To reach a consensus across a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds is a non-trivial achievement, particularly given the range of different approaches that have characterised the field to date.

Metadata is more than just a technical issue, as it is people and organisations that need to invest time and resources to create the metadata, and it is people and organisations that use metadata to search, assess, and retrieve information resources. Hence, it is important to take a broad perspective of metadata and situate it within an organisational, as well as a technical, perspective.