The DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) is a specification based on the Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. Its basic use case is to enable a cross-data portal search for data sets and make public sector data better searchable across borders and sectors. This can be achieved by the exchange of descriptions of data sets among data portals.

This final draft is open for public review until 15 July 2013 (extended deadline). Members of the public are invited to download the specification and post their comments directly on this page. To be able to do so you need to be registered and logged in.

All issues will be discussed by the DCAT Application Profile Working Group, in the Virtual Meeting of 18 July 2013.

The DCAT-AP will be used in the Open Data Support service that will shortly be initiated by the European Commission. This new service will play an important role towards realising the objectives of the pan-European Data Portal.