This paper will be suited to all GIS stakeholders. It will discuss the importance of metadata at different stages of GIS development including planning, design, implementation, and operational phases. This paper will look at the importance of metadata in several forms. It will review geographic metadata, data dictionaries, source document inventories and metadata, process documentation, and work flow documentation. This paper will look at why each of these documentation documents is important to an organization, the kinds of questions these documents can answer, how this data as group can ensure the quality of the GIS, and how these documents can support the strategic planning process.