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voluminous flow of contemporary data from foreign sources into the 
U.S. NODC data banks. Most data collected by international cooper- 
ative programs and experiments, such as, for example, programs under 
the Integrated Global Ocean Station System (LGOSS), International 
Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE), Global Atmospheric Research 
Project Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE), et cetera, and data ac- 
quired by international organizations such as the International Council 
for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES), are automatically deposited in 
the World Data Center system. In addition, much data are voluntarily 
deposited in the World Data Centers by International Oceanographic 
Commission (IOC) member nations under the ‘declared national 
program” concept. 
NODC is further augmenting the flow of data provided to World 
Data Center A, through bilateral data exchange arrangements with 
national oceanographic data centers and oceanographic activities in 
over 25 countries. 
The IOC Working Committee on International Data Exchange 
seeks to modernize, broaden, and expand international data exchange 
arrangements and to promote wider access to, and accelerate the 
flow of, data and information from data-collecting programs to data 
centers serving the international data user community. Through 
U.S. efforts in the working committee, the World Data Centers and 
the U.S. NODC will be able to acquire a greater variety of ocean- 
ographic data in more cost-effective formats as well as gain timely 
information on marine data holdings throughout the world. 
