The Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) is an 'encoding scheme' for populating the e-GMS Subject element of metadata. It is fully compliant with ISO 2788 and BS 8723, the International and British Standards for monolingual thesauri. The vocabulary was developed with the backing of the ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) and the eGU (Cabinet Office e-Government Unit). Version 1.00 was released in April 2005; Version 2.00 supersedes it, as of 3 April 2006. Version 1 was developed by merging three earlier lists: the GCL (Government Category List), LGCL (Local Government Category List) and seamlessUK taxonomy. It had 2732 preferred terms and 4230 non-preferred. Version 2 is much bigger, with 3080 preferred terms and 4843 non-preferred. As a result, IPSV now covers internal-facing as well as public-oriented topics. You can still refer back to the superseded version if necessary. IPSV is just one of a family of lists you can obtain from the esd-standards site Two subsets of IPSV are now available: The Internal Vocabulary covers only the 'internal-facing' topics. It has 756 preferred terms and 1333 non-preferred. The Abridged version covers the whole scope of IPSV but is limited to the upper levels. It has 549 preferred terms and 1472 non-preferred. From October 2012 the Public Sector Information Domain - Metadata Standards Working Group has agreed to recommend this change to eGMS on the use of subject metadata: Where you identify value in using the subject element of metadata it should be populated from a controlled vocabulary that is used consistently across the sector to which the information relates. In preference, vocabularies should be published according to SKOS and publicly available for free re-use, which then enables tagged information to be further grouped, and associated, by an agent SKOS also encourages cross-references to be made across otherwise unconnected vocabularies. This change reflects advances in searching techniques since the introduction of eGMS, and modern approaches to cataloguing and cross-referencing information against evolving terminologies. IPSV is no longer directly referenced and mandated within eGMS, allowing the publisher to consider if subject tagging is valuable, and to use the vocabulary that best describes their business. Therefore, the mandate to use IPSV no longer applies, although IPSV remains an option. esd-toolkit continues to host IPSV and current URIs will remain valid. Organisations wishing to develop their own bespoke vocabularies based on IPSV are free to do so subject to license terms, including acknowledging the source. Organisations wishing IPSV to be updated whilst maintaining its current scope should contact standards@esd.org.uk who will co-ordinate any updates and seek approval from MWG. Participating organisations will need to fund any associated work themselves.