Implementing DCAT in the Open Data Support project of the European Commission

Dear all, 

we are proud to announce that the Open Data Support project  is using an 
application profile of DCAT (DCAT-AP) as the common standard for 
homogenising description metadata of datasets published on government data 
portals. 

What is Open Data Support? 

Open Data Support is a 36 month project that PwC is running on behalf of 
DG CONNECT. Open Data Support aims to improve the visibility and 
facilitate the access to datasets published on local and national 
government data portals in order to increase their reuse within and across 
borders. It is a pan-European initiative targeting both those data 
publishers that are well underway but also the ones that are just 
starting. 
To find out more about the project, visit us at opendatasupport.eu or take 
a look at the description of our services at 
www.slideshare.net/OpenDataSupport/open-data-support-service-description

What is the DCAT Application Profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP)?

The DCAT-AP is a specification based on DCAT for describing public sector 
datasets in Europe. It  was a common initiative of the ISA Programme of 
the European Commission, the Publications Office and DG CONNECT involving 
an international working group of experts, aiming. 

The DCAT-AP identifies the essential elements and attributes of DCAT in 
the European context; and identifies the controlled vocabularies to be 
used in the European context. 
More information about it can be found at: 
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/description 

How is Open Data Support using DCAT(-AP)?

In order to facilitate the access to datasets available on disparate 
government data portals, Open Data Support is putting in place a central 
metadata infrastructure (ODIP). 
The metadata of datasets is harvested from government data portals and, 
before stored on ODIP and published as Linked Data, it is homogenised 
using the DCAT-AP. 

The harmonisation is carried out by creating mappings both at the schema 
and at the value level. 
The creation of the mappings is done using a set of software plugins for 
ODIP (which is based on the Linked Open Data Management Suite developed in 
the LOD2 project). 
The mappings are encoded in the form of SPARQL queries. 

Currently, the DCAT-AP description metadata of more than 31000 datasets 
from 8 national catalogs are available for reuse through our public SPARQL 
endpoint at data.opendatasupport.eu

It is also worth mentioning that in the context of our training services, 
delivered to the public administrations of all EU Member States and to EU 
Institutions, Open Data Support is promoting the DCAT-AP (and consequently 
DCAT) as the standard for describing datasets and catalogs in Europe. 
Our training curriculum is available at training.opendatasupport.eu

Should you be interested in finding out more about our work, please do not 
hesitate to contact us. 

Kind regards, 
Nikos

Nikolaos Loutas
PwC | Manager
Direct: +32 2 7104619 | Mobile: +32 491 965851 | Fax: +32 2 7104069
Email: nikolaos.loutas@pwc.be
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