UI1: Contact information

The DCAT-AP specification is silent on which properties to use which puts a large burden on aggregators as they will have to recognise all of the possible properties defined in vCard, or make a best guess on what data publishers will provide.

In a related project, ADMS-AP for harvesting descriptions of interoperability assets by the Joinup platform, the following set of properties are specified:

One mandatory property, repeatable

• vcard:hasEmail: e-mail address where comments and questions can be sent

Four optional properties, repeatable

• vcard:has Address: full address of the contact
• vcard:fn: full name of the contact
• vcard:hasTelephone: telephone number of the contact
• vcard:hasURL: URL of a webpage of the contact

Would these properties be relevant for Datasets?

+1 for vcard:hasEmail

If I recall correctly, the vCard/RDF spec itself mandates the use of vcard:fn

You are right. The vCard specification says that fn is the only mandatory property (https://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf/#Identification_Properties) so this should be in the guidelines.

Proposed resolution:

• Provide as a minimum name (v:fn) and e-mail address (v:hasEmail), and optionally telephone number (v:hasTel) and URL (v:hasURL).
• Additional recommendations:
  • Stable contact point, i.e. an organisational email address (e.g. feedback@organisation.org), not the email of an individual.
  • Department that handles requests and feedback, if such a department exists, rather than for the organisation as a whole. For example, the URL should point to a contact page or contact form rather than to the homepage of the organisation.

Just to mention that GeoDCAT-AP, based on how this information is specified in ISO 19115 / INSPIRE metadata, uses the following properties for vcard:Kind:

• vcard:organization-name
• vcard:hasEmail
• vcard:hasURL

Likewise, for foaf:Agent, GeoDCAT-AP uses the following properties:

• foaf:name
• foaf:mbox
• foaf:workplaceHomepage

See also Uwe's comment on issue MI5.

vCard specifies that the property v:fn is mandatory for all Kinds. That's why the guideline here recommends that. It seems to me that if you provide v:organisation-name, you would also have to provide v:fn to satisfy this obligation in the W3C spec, correct?

vCard specifies that the property v:fn is mandatory for all Kinds. That's why the guideline here recommends that. It seems to me that if you provide v:organisation-name, you would also have to provide v:fn to satisfy this obligation in the W3C spec, correct?

Yes, Makx, you're right. In GeoDCAT-AP the focus was on the organisation name, since this is what is typically included in INSPIRE / ISO records. We can consider addressing this issue in the GeoDCAT-AP XSLT.

Said that, personally I think that the most relevant information for a dataset contact point is (1) an email address or (2) the Website URL. I don't need to know the name of an individual or organisation (and I don't need to know their postal address): the important thing is that I'm able to contact the relevant people / team / organisation.

We support the the suggestion  to provide as a minimum name (v:fn) and e-mail address (v:hasEmail), and optionally telephone number (v:hasTel) and URL (v:hasURL)

Jean on the behalf of OP/OpenDataPortal