Open Access to Digital Information: Opportunities and Challenges Identified During the Electronic Geophysical Year

The vision of the Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) is that we can achieve a major step forward in geoscience capability, knowledge, and usage throughout the world for the benefit of humanity by accelerating the adoption of modern and visionary practices such as virtual observatories for managing and sharing data and information. eGY has found that the biggest challenges to implementing the vision are educating program mangers and senior scientists on the need for modern data management techniques and providing incentives for practitioners of the new field of geoinformatics.