John McCarthy of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has been involved in a number of bioinformatics and metadata projects. He has served in a number standard bodies, and is one of the creators of XML schema.

Mc Carthy has completed an independent, technical review of the current and planned GBIF network architecture. He provided valuable feedback, and concluded that "GBIF appears to be well on its way toward becoming one of the premier examples of a successful federated database network. Furthermore, they have done so on a remarkably modest budget. ... Continued success may depend on growth of resources to cope with demands."