Over the last 15 years, the global biodiversity informatics infrastructures underwent a significant technological shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA) ranging from services-driven information management platforms and portals to sophisticated workflow environments such as Taverna (http://www.taverna.org.uk/) and Kepler (https://kepler-project.org/). Experiences with the implementation of systems aiming to integrate distributed biodiversity-related web-services show that the lack of technical standardisation and standardised documentation is still a major obstacle for developers, who are often unaware of available services, their functions, behaviour, and limitations.

The symposium will build on the success of the symposia on workflows and services convened by Anton Güntsch in 2013 and James Macklin in 2014. We will explore robust service implementations, mechanisms for harmonised service documentations and registrations, and integration of services in workflows and general service oriented architectures. In addition, we will present the charter of a proposed TDWG "Workflows and Services Interest Group" and seek participants. Being part of a standardisation effort, this symposium addresses the theme of the conference as well as the core mission of TDWG.