Re: Catralog vocab question: Indicating whether "government" dataset has "official" status

Hi John,

On 9 Sep 2011, at 20:17, John Erickson wrote:
> * A use case might be a harvester that is de-referencing catalog URIs
> (as if they existed...) and dataset URIs for the purposes of
> aggregation.

This use case doesn't require the feature you ask for – it doesn't even mention “official” or “non-official” catalogs. The use case above can already be addressed with dcat as it is, IMO.

A use case for distinguishing “official” from “non-official” catalogs would be something that cannot be done (or would be much harder) unless this new feature is added to the data catalog standard.

(David offered a use case, but one that requires more complexity than the simple boolean flag you asked for.)

Also, I'm still not sure what you actually mean by “official”. Without a sufficiently clear definition this would be far too subjective to be useful.

> You can get into nit-picking; for example, catalog and dataset
> metadata scraped (non-authoritative) from a government site
> (authoritative, official) because they don't provide the metadata...

Nitpicking is a key activity in standardization…

Best,
Richard


> 
> John
> 
> David notes:
>> Since the UN can publish drafts as well as certified datasets, it seems like this requires at least a classification of organizations that publish linked data and a classification of individual datasets, and perhaps a third being the classification of catalogs themselves although not sure how useful that is unless some aggregators are not trusted...
> 
> * So I think this sort of "certification" of at least
> publishers/providers would work for particular kinds of certification
> --- some office of the UN denoting a country's "official" provider.
> One could even imagine how delegation would work.
> * David's proposed system of "levels of approval" would work, esp. if
> the relying service checked where assertions came from
> * To be consistent with the Open World assumption, there does also
> need to be a way that status can be expressed in a de-centralized way.
> It's up to the policies governing the relying system how to use the
> assertions that it finds...
> 
> John
> 
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 6:33 AM, David Price <dprice@topquadrant.com> wrote:
>> Some organizations have more authority than others - so UK Home Office might
>> publish linked data, but so might ISO or the UN or TopQuadrant. Some
>> datasets have different levels of 'official-dom' - drafts vs. recommended
>> for certain uses vs. certified as accurate and complete. Since the UN can
>> publish drafts as well as certified datasets, it seems like this requires at
>> least a classification of organizations that publish linked data and a
>> classification of individual datasets, and perhaps a third being the
>> classification of catalogs themselves although not sure how useful that is
>> unless some aggregators are not trusted.
>> 
>> At least one use case I've seen is that in some large organizations, when
>> starting a new programme they select resources to use based on a preferred
>> sequence of authorities and levels of approval (i.e. ISO International
>> Standards, and if not available W3C Recommendations, and if not available
>> ISO Technical Specifications, and if not available UK government agencies,
>> and if not available ...). I know this use case is applicable to
>> organizations as diverse as ISO in deciding normative references when making
>> standards and in US DOD when approving resources for a new equipment or
>> research programme.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> David
>> 
>> On 9/8/2011 10:33 AM, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 6 Sep 2011, at 21:27, John Erickson wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Questions have arisen as to how to indicate the "official" status of a
>>>> catalog and/or individual dataset. For example, there are a large
>>>> number of datasets that are the only source of data for a country but
>>>> are "Non-government." No properties in DCAT [1] or our own prototype
>>>> [2] express this adequately. This is important because consumers of
>>>> catalog metadata must be able to determine whether a source has
>>>> official status or not...
>>> 
>>> You use scare quotes around the words “official” and “non-government”.
>>> 
>>> Can you give a better definition of the distinction you're drawing?
>>> 
>>> What's the use case for this?
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Richard
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Managing Director and Consultant
>> TopQuadrant Limited. Registered in England No. 05614307
>> UK +44 7788 561308
>> US +1 336-283-0606
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
> Dir, Web Science Ops, Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
> <http://tw.rpi.edu>
> olyerickson@gmail.com
> Twitter: @olyerickson
> Skype: @olyerickson
> 

Received on Saturday, 10 September 2011 14:30:18 UTC