The importance of understanding the quality of data used in any GIS operation has increased significantly as a result of the advent of Free and Open Source (FOSS) tools and Open Data, which in turn have encouraged non-specialists to make use of GIS. Metadata (data about data) traditionally provides a description of this quality information and permits data curation, but it is frequently deemed as complex to create and maintain. Additionally, it is generally stored separately from the data, leading to issues where updates to the data are not reflected in the metadata and to users not being aware that metadata exists. This paper describes an approach to address these issues in an academic context - tightly coupling data and metadata and automating elements of standards-based metadata creation. We describe research into the potential of the FOSS packages Quantum GIS and PostGIS to support this form of metadata generation and maintenance.