Data collection and maintenance are an essential part of activities required in the lifetime management of spent fuel. Key data on spent fuel are required from the earliest phase of any project. To allow informed decisions for spent fuel management to be made, the data need to be maintained throughout the lifetime management of spent fuel including storage, transport, reprocessing or disposal. This publication is intended to provide a state of the art review of spent fuel data management, including what data need to be gathered for the relevant activities in spent fuel management and how to maintain them by the responsible bodies at various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle.