In April 2013, the European Commission launched a Working Group of metadata specialists involved in governmental data portals initiatives to build consensus on a DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe.
The DCAT Application profile is a joint initiative of DG CONNECT and DG DIGIT (ISA Programme) and the EU Publications Office and counts with a multi-stakeholder working group of 54 participants representing multiple types of organisations as shown below:
- EU Member States: 29 participants
- non EU Member States: 2 participants
- International Governmental Organisations: 1 participants
- 3rd party Organisations: 13 participants
- European Institutions: 6 participants
- Academia: 3 participants
On the basis of reuse of established controlled vocabularies (e.g. EuroVoc) and mappings to existing metadata vocabularies (e.g. SDMX, INSPIRE metadata, Dublin Core, etc), the Working Group will develop a common specification for describing public sector datasets and sharing these descriptions with data portals across Europe.
The working Group have already met in 2 online meetings in April to discuss, contribute to and review the specification of the proposed application profile. Other 2 online meeting will be held in May and June 2013. During the consultation process a number of interim drafts of the specification will be produced, before the final draft is released for public review. Each interim draft will be open to comments, input and feedback from the Working Group members.
Relevant links: