Metadata Standards

Reference Guide on Metadata Standards for Development Data
Version 1.0.0 - 2026-02-20

A guide by the Office of the World Bank Group Chief Statistician and Chief Data and Technology Officer

Data Quality Compliance

Guide in HTML

A searchable version of the guide.

Guide in PDF

A downloadable version of the guide.

Guide in Markdown

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This Reference Guide is part of the technical guidance related to the World Bank Group’s Development Data Quality Policy. An open-source Metadata Editor software application was developed to generate and manage metadata compliant with the standards described in the Guide. The technical documentation of the standards is available at https://worldbank.github.io/metadata-schemas/.