The final draft of the Data Catalogue Vocabulary Application Profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) is open for public review until 10 June 2013.

DCAT-AP is a specification based on 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.



You can find the draft and leave your comments (register and log-in) on the following page: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/66194. All issues will be discussed by the DCAT Application Profile Working Group, in the Virtual Meeting which will take place on 12 June 2013.

Background: Difficulties in finding and re-using public sector information

The document is prepared in the context of Action 1.1 – Improving semantic interoperability in European eGovernment systems of the European Commission’s Interoperability for European Public Administrations (ISA) programme.

Studies conducted on behalf of the European Commission show that businesses and citizens still face difficulties in finding and re-using public sector information. In its communication on Open Data of 12 December 2011, the European Commission states that the availability of the information in a machine-readable format as well as a thin layer of commonly agreed metadata could facilitate data cross-reference and interoperability and therefore considerably enhance its value for reuse.

Much of the public sector information that would benefit from interoperability is published as datasets in data portals. Therefore, an agreement on a common format for data exchange would support the sharing, discovery and res-use of these data.