The Digital Nist: Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Transformation of Nist’s Calibration Services

Abstract

Early in 2022 NIST embarked on a pilot project to produce digital calibration reports and certificates of analysis for reference materials. The goal of the project was to produce a few examples of each for the purpose of assessing the scope and challenges of digital transformation for these measurement services. This presentation is focused on the digital calibration reports. Our aims for this portion of the pilot project are to generate a digital calibration report from calibration data, customer metadata, and other data and metadata as needed; to generate a human readable report from the digital calibration report; and to hold a workshop to gather stakeholder feedback. The digital calibration certificate (DCC), which developed as an outgrowth of the SmartCom 17IND02 project, is used as a starting point. However, challenges for NIST include the wealth of information presently contained in NIST reports, reports with complex data, and the secure nature of NIST calibration reports (NIST calibration reports, data, and metadata are not public). Other practical challenges include the wide variety of calibration services offered by NIST, as well as the needs of internal and external stakeholders. This publication reports on the progress of the NIST effort and discusses some of the challenges and potential solutions to producing digital calibration reports.