1.1 Promoting Semantic Interoperability amongst the European Union Member States
Formerly named "Methodologies for the development of semantic assets"
0.1.1 CONTEXT
0.1.1.1 Identification of the action
| Type of Action | Project |
| Type of Activity | Common services |
| Service in charge | DG DIGIT |
| Associated Services | EU Publications Office, DG MARE, DG COMP, DG COMM |
1.1.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this action is to promote semantic interoperability amongst the EU Member States (MSs) and the EU Institutions.
This is achieved by:
· Supporting alignments and agreements on common definitions and specifications at the semantic layer.
· Increasing the visibility of existing semantic standards.
· Promoting the use of the ISA Core Vocabularies, the ADMS and DCAT-AP specifications at the European, national and local level[1]. Other relevant metadata normalisation activities carried out by the EU Publications Office in cooperation with the other EU institutions and bodies of the EU could be promoted at the member states based on their relevance and endorsement by the ISA Committee or other working group where member states participate.
· Promoting open and linked data approaches and technologies for improving the interoperability of public administration systems.
· Promoting best practices, experiences and lessons-learnt in the area of semantic interoperability and raising awareness on the importance of semantic interoperability and appropriate metadata management policies.
· Organizing and running pilots as proof-of-concepts.
1.1.3 SCOPE
This action covers activities within the ISA programme in relation to semantic interoperability, which has been highlighted as one of the priority areas in the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS). These semantic interoperability activities cover both cross border and cross sector domains.
Relevant services are provided by the Joinup platform which makes available the necessary support infrastructure for the sharing and re-use of semantic assets and brings administrations together to collaborate.
The following activities are not considered within the scope of this Action, as they are covered by other ISA Actions:
· All technical development related to the Joinup platform including the implementation of the federation of interoperability solutions
· Generic community animation and communication activities
· The federation of semantics solutions in the Joinup platform
Consequently, there are links between this Action and the Action for the European Federated Interoperability Repository (action 4.2.4 EFIR) as EFIR develops and maintains the federation of semantic solutions available via the Joinup platform. Links also exist with Actions on communities building and communication activities. The Action provides also input to the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (action 2.1).
1.1.4 PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
The environment in which data exchange and service execution takes place amongst MSs is very complex contributing many barriers and challenges to the exchange of data during the execution of European Public Services. These barriers include divergent interpretations of the data, lack of commonly agreed and widely used data models, absence of universal reference data (e.g. code lists, taxonomies), the multilingual challenge, etc. Due to these pressures, semantic interoperability becomes an important element in many eGovernment and interoperability national agendas and interesting experience and lessons-learnt can already be shared at a European level.
The Action tries to overcome semantic interoperability problems by:
· documenting what is available in each MS with regards to metadata policies and the management of semantic interoperability assets;
· identifying opportunities for alignment;
· promoting share and reuse of semantic assets, experiences and tools and facilitating agreements in key areas;
· raising awareness on the importance of metadata management;
· identifying and promoting successful practices and tools for linking governmental data;
· developing and promoting common specifications.
Through this action, the ISA programme sets to achieve a better collaboration between European public administrations towards creating new and promoting existing agreements on the meaning of the exchanged information and on the common use of metadata. Joinup provides the necessary infrastructure for this collaboration while a broad network of stakeholders including several EU bodies like JRC, DG SANCO, DG MARKT, PO, DG TAXUD, DG MARE, DG CONNECT, DG COMP, DG COMM and DG JUST actively participate and/or follow the work.
The Action maintains communication links with relevant initiatives to promote semantic interoperability around the world (e.g. USA, Japan) to exchange views and share experiences.
1.1.5 EXPECTED BENEFICIARIES AND ANTICIPATED BENEFITS
| Beneficiaries | Anticipated benefits |
| Member States' Public Administrations | o Forum to identify opportunities for harmonization at European level o A virtual place to share best practices and experiences o Core Vocabularies, authority tables, XML schemas and thesauri (such as EuroVoc) ready to be used in public administration information systems development. o Linked data best practices o Reduced development costs, · due to reuse during the initial development phase · due to less interoperability conflicts while integrating systems or providing cross-agency/domain/country services |
| IT Services Industry | o Reduced development costs, as explained above. |
| European Commission Services | o A set of specifications in the form of Core Vocabularies and other relevant tools, such as authority tables, XML schemas and thesauri that can be reused by the EC services to facilitate interoperability among different applications and systems o Reduced development costs, as explained above. |
1.1.6 RELATED EU ACTIONS / POLICIES
| Action / Policy | Description of relation |
| Digital Agenda | o MSs are suggested in part 2.7.4 to “Make eGovernment services fully interoperable, overcoming organisational, technical, or semantic barriers …”. The Action tries to address the semantic barriers mentioned here. o The Action can contribute towards Key Action 14: Propose a recommendation defining a minimum common set of patient data for interoperability of patient records to be accessed or exchanged electronically across MSs by 2012. This effort could be based on the work in the Core Person specification. |
| eGovernment Action plan | o 2.2.3 of the Action Plan: "The Commission will conduct a study with the MSs, of the demand for cross-border services and assess the organisational, legal, technical and semantic barriers." The latest barriers lie at the core of the Action's goal. o 2.4.1 of the Action Plan semantic interoperability is mentioned “…as an essential precondition for open, flexible delivery of eGovernment services”. The Action contributes to this end. |
| Standardisation activities and organisations | The work foreseen in this Action, especially the part relevant to the identification of alignment opportunities relates to standardization activities. Although the main goal and scope of the Action is to influence the National Interoperability Frameworks and to recommend common specifications in the form of Core Vocabularies to the MSs, standardization organizations has already shown an interest of advancing the agreed specifications towards a formal standardization process. More generally, close links with standardization organizations guarantee that duplication of work is avoided, while existing standards are taken into account and promoted for reuse. As an indication of the relevance and importance of the conducted work, W3C has already taken ISA Core Vocabularies and ADMS into its standardization process. This will result in promoting the above-mentioned specification as international standards in EU and beyond. |
| Large Scale CIP Pilots, and EU-funded initiatives to create semantic assets | There are several ongoing and concluded EU-funded initiatives that have created and are creating important semantic assets. The Action intends to identify and promote these assets. Examples include the INSPIRE Directive, Eurovoc, the European Training Thesaurus, ESCO, and Large Scale CIP Pilots (e.g. SPOCS, STORK, PEPPOL, ePSOS and eSENS). |
| PSI and Open Data | In line with the the EC objectives in the area of the PSI Directive, the Action promotes policies towards Open Metadata by the MSs and the EU services as a support measure for the more general Open Data policy. One of the concrete measures developed to implement this policy entails the setting up of the EU Open data Portal which is operated by the Publications Office of the EU. Close collaboration and common activities with the Publications Office of the EU have already started in 2013 and continues to secure alignment of efforts and concrete results. The creation of the pan-European Open Data portal is also part European open data policy. The portal will start its operation in 2015, and the DCAT-AP specification has been chosen as the metadata standard for the description of the datasets. The Action closely collaborates with the relevant EC service (DG CONNECT/G3). |
| ISA Action 1.2 – Access to base registries | The core vocabularies developed by ISA Action 1.1 (Core Vocabularies, ADMS) can be used by registries in order to facilitate the exchange of data. |
| ISA Action 1.3 – Catalogue of Services | Semantic interoperability is one of the basic prerequisites for building public services and linking up service catalogues. The Core Public Service Vocabulary developed in the course of the ISA Action 1.1, on 11 February 2013, can therefore be used as an input by ISA Action 1.3 in order to develop a Catalogue of Services. |
| ISA Action 1.11 –Interoperable and Generic Notification Services | The GENIS Reference Data building block is one of the components used for the implementation of the pilot on reference data management which is coordinated by ISA Action 1.1. |
| ISA Action 1.13 – Legislation Editing software - LEOS | Reusable semantic interoperability assets in the area of legislation could be shared with other Public Administrations, at both EU and Member States level. |
| ISA Action 1.15 – Open Government Data | The ADMS (Asset Description Metadata Schema) developed by the ISA Action 1.1 has been reused by the Open Government Data portal. The DCAT-AP will be used by the new pan-European Open Data portal. |
| ISA Action 1.16 – Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) | The methodology defined by the ISA Action 1.1 for defining semantic assets is reused in the CISE project to define use cases, information services and the associated data formats and semantics. The approach of the CISE project is based on the governance, process and methodology proposed by ISA Action 1.1. |
| ISA Action 1.17 – Reusable INSPIRE Reference Platform | As part of the CESAR community, ISA Action 1.17 provided contributions to the work of ADMS through the description of semantic assets from INSPIRE Data Themes. In addition, JRC have also been heavily involved in the development and review of the Core Location Vocabulary, that is partly built on elements of INSPIRE. Action 1.1 will evaluate the tools developed by Action 1.17 to identify opportunities for reusability in other areas. |
| ISA Action 1.21 – European Legislation Identifier | ISA Action 1.1 will provide support in the course of the ISA Action 1.21, in particular regarding the specification of the semantic attributes. |
| ISA Action 2.13 – Development of a European Union Location Framework | EULF aims to review semantic interoperability case studies from a spatial perspective, help define cross-border examples and re-use case studies. |
| ISA Action 2.15 –Interoperability agreements on electronic document and electronic file | ISA Action 1.1 promotes semantic interoperability. The standardized document formats contribute to this direction. Action 2.15 provides also interesting opportunities for the use of the core vocabularies. |
| ISA Action 4.1.1 – Communication activity | ISA Action 4.1.1 will promote the benefits of semantic interoperability amongst the European Union Member States, using appropriate non-technical language, and different channels e.g. Communication of the results of the action through support of the annual SEMIC conference, promotion of the ADMS federation and the core vocabularies and provision of communication advice. |
| ISA Action 4.2.1 – ISA Integrated Collaboration Platform | Joinup acts as a platform to support the objectives of the ISA Action 1.1 e.g. the catalogue of semantic assets, ADMS and ADMS.SW open specifications, which are used to federated solution from national and international repositories, are available on Joinup.eu, the core vocabularies specfications are maintained in Joinup, etc.. |
| ISA Action 4.2.2 – Community building and effective use of the collaborative platforms | ISA Action 4.2.2 hosts and manages the SEMIC and CESAR communities of the ISA Action 1.1. |
| ISA Action 4.2.3 – National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO) | As semantic interoperability is one of the components of the National Interoperability Frameworks (NIFs), the two actions collaborate closely together to provide feedback to each other accordingly. |
| ISA Action 4.2.4 –European Federated Interoperability Repository (EFIR) | EFIR builds on the work conducted in the course of the ISA Action 1.1, as ADMS is used and extended to cover other types of interoperability assets from other EIF layers, e.g. legal, technical and organisational assets. |
| ISA Action 4.2.6 –Interoperable testbed | One artefact that is typically tested by ISA Action 4.2.6 is eDocuments, linking to the eDocument/eFiles work package of the ISA Action 1.1. |
| ISA Action 5.2 – EIS Governance support | ISA Action 1.1 represents one of the building blocks of the EIF and has a link with EIS. |
1.1.7 ORGANISATIONAL APPROACH
1.1.7.1 Expected stakeholders and their representatives
| Stakeholders | Representatives |
| Member States | o ISA Committee o ISA Coordination Group o Trusted Information Exchange ISA Working Group o Persons/units in charge of National Interoperability Frameworks and/or metadata standards catalogues/repositories, etc. o Persons/units in charge of governmental portals |
| Standardization bodies | o W3C o OASIS o GS1 o CEN o UN/CEFACT o Dublin Core Metadata Initiative o EU Interinstitutional Metadata Maintenance Committee (IMMC) |
| DIGIT | · DIGIT/B2, DIGIT/01 · Unit (s) responsible for promoting common specifications in new and existing systems |
| EU Publications Office | The unit responsible for metadata management The unit responsible for the EU Open Data portal |
| Other EC DGs | Representatives from the DGs who work as IT coordinators (IRMs). DG MARE, DG COMP and the Publications Office The EU Council, the European Parliament and DG COMM. |
1.1.7.2 Communication plan
The Action will create the necessary links with the Communication Action 4.1.1 to coordinate the promotion and dissemination of results to several types of recipients. The Action includes within its plan communication activities which are of technical nature, while Action 4.1.1 will promote the results to a broader audience, using appropriate non-technical language, and different channels.
| Event | Representatives | Frequency of meetings / absolute dates of meetings? |
| The Action tries to disseminate its work with presentations, posters and panels in the major eGovernment and semantic technologies conferences and events | | |
| The Action will try to raise awareness for the importance of metadata management and alignment in MSs and internally in the EC | | |
| The Action will try to disseminate and promote the use of the Core Vocabularies and linked data best practices in the EU MSs | | 5 MSs visits per year |
1.1.7.3 Governance approach
The Action is run by the European Commission, DG DIGIT, B.6 (ISA Unit).
For the work expected in this Action, collaboration with MSs and other stakeholders (e.g. the EU Publications Office, other DGs, other EU institutions, agencies and bodies, standardisation bodies) is considered of critical importance. For this reason, communication with the MSs and third parties will be frequent and their active involvement will be encouraged via invitations for participation in ad hoc groups discussing specialised issues related to the content of the Action. The ISA Trusted Information Exchange Working Group will be the main point of contact and reference for the work foreseen in the Action.
1.1.8 TECHNICAL APPROACH
In 2011, an assessment of the Action results for the period 2008-1010 took place. Based on this evaluation, recommendations were provided to identify areas where the Action could contribute. Following these recommendations, the Action produced the following results:
a) In the period 2011-2012, the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) was developed as a common vocabulary to describe semantic assets. ADMS has been extended to describe any type of interoperability solution. Based on this specification, a federation of semantic assets repositories has been developed and is available via the Joinup platform. This federation went live in January 2013. Currently, more than 20 repositories participate in the federation making available over 2.000 specifications.
The Action will continue providing support to MSs to participate in the federation and use ADMS for describing their own assets. Nevertheless, the EFIR Action (action 4.2.4) remains the focal place for the federation maintenance and support in Joinup.
b) In the period 2011-2013, the Action has developed four Core Vocabularies, namely Core Business, Core Person, Core Location, and Core Public Service in close collaboration with other EU bodies including DG MARKT, Eurojust, and the JRC. These specifications (together with ADMS) have been endorsed by the ISA Coordination Group. In 2013-2014, implementations of the vocabularies have been implemented in 5 pilots with data coming from MSs and different EC/DGs.
c) In 2013, the DCAT Application Profile (DCAT-AP) as a specification to describe open data catalogues and datasets was developed in close collaboration with DG CONNECT and the EU Publications Office.
d) During the period 2011-2014 several case studies, surveys and recommendations have been published trying to raise awareness on issues related to semantic interoperability, open and linked data, metadata management and persistent Unique Resource Identifiers (URIs).
e) In 2014, the Action has tried to promote the use of core vocabularies both at national and at European level. Issues related to sustainability, governance, publication and persistence for these specifications were also identified and work has started to set up relevant policies. During the same year, the Action produced guidelines and support for the publication of high-value datasets, and initiated cross-institutional work to draft metadata and URI policies for the EU institutions which are reusable by the MSs. Work to create a stack of tools for metadata management with the participation of DG MARE, JRC, DG COMP and the PO has been also initiated.
In WP2015, the Action will continue to maintain, update whenever necessary, and promote the above-mentioned specifications. It will also try to identify and develop more Core Vocabularies, promote the real usage of the existing specifications, make available a robust toolset for metadata management, further elaborate on policies for metadata and URI management.
More specifically, the Action focuses on providing results in the following areas:
a) Strategic/policy dimension
i) Raising MSs awareness on the importance of establishing cross-sector metadata management policies to harmonize existing semantic solutions. Relevant good practices amongst MSs are identified and shared. A metadata management maturity model is used to help MSs become aware of what needs to be done to further advance their metadata management policies and systems.
ii) Establishing a forum where national semantic interoperability policies and strategies could be identified, and discussed to discover commonalities, conflicts and opportunities for alignment.
iii) Drafting a metadata management and persistence URI policies for the EU institutions with close collaboration with the EU Publications Office, piloting the approach and testing relevant supporting tools/services to DGs which have already expressed an interest in the field, namely DG COMP and DG MARE.
b) Vertical dimension (alignment): The Action will use the experience gained in the previous period and continue on drafting, hosting, and maintaining a small set of commonly agreed, generic metadata schemata (Core Vocabularies) to be promoted for direct adoption in NIFs and/or national metadata frameworks/architectures/policies. In the meanwhile, the pilot implementations of the Core vocabularies will be actively promoted based amongst others on requests from MSs (e.g. Estonia). Implementations may also involve EU Institutions and other organizations.
c) Horizontal dimension (coverage): The Action will continue contributing to the improvement of the infrastructure for the ADMS-based federated portal in EFIR. ADMS provides a semantic information model for IOP solutions. Using this model is the first step for MSs to establish the lifecycle management of their interoperability solutions and requirements.The Commission will provide support to MSs to use ADMS as basis to describe their interoperability solutions.
0.1.9 COSTS AND MILESTONES
0.1.9.1 Breakdown of anticipated costs and related milestones
| Phase: Inception Execution Operational | Description of milestones reached or to be reached | Anticipated Allocations (KEUR) | Budget line ISA/ others (specify) | Start date | End date |
| Operational | Provision of the online services via the SEMIC.eu platform including the clearing process, coaching and support activities, collaboration activities as well as all relevant news. | 800 | ISA | Q3/2010 | Q3/2011 |
| Inception | Project Charter, Revision of the SEMIC.eu Roadmap document, to reflect the period 2010 - 2015, highlighting concrete activities for the achievement of this action. | 150 | ISA | Q3/2010 | Q4/2010 |
| Execution | Revision of the Licensing Framework, Quality Framework, Clearing Process Definition to reflect the changes in the SEMIC.eu roadmap and the scope and objectives of this action. | 250 | ISA | Q4/2010 | Q2/2011 |
| Operational | Development, promotion, use of Core Vocabularies | 550 | ISA | Q3/2011 | Q4/2012 |
| Operational | Specifications for the Federation of Semantic Assets Repositories | 150 | ISA | Q3/2011 | Q4/2012 |
| Operational | Specifications for the Federation of OSS Repositories | 150 | ISA | Q3/2011 | Q4/2012 |
| Operational | Identification and registration of new semantic assets, collaboration activities for cross border asset development and sharing, and showcasing real semantic interoperability examples. Maintenance of the online services via the Joinup platform including the clearing process, support activities, collaboration activities, publishing relevant news and community animation. | 500 | ISA | Q3/2011 | Q4/2012 |
| Operational | Continuation of the Core Vocabularies work, emphasizing on promotion and practical implementation activities, enhancement of the federation of the semantic interoperability solutions, identification of conflicts, overlaps and alignment opportunities, collaboration activities for cross border asset development and sharing, showcasing real semantic interoperability examples. | 1000 | ISA | Q1/2013 | Q4/2013 |
| Operational | Continuation of the Core Vocabularies work, emphasizing on promotion and practical implementation activities, collaboration activities for cross border asset development and sharing, showcasing real semantic interoperability examples. | 900 | ISA | Q1/2014 | Q4/2014 |
| Operational | Identification of areas for new Core Vocabularies. Establishment of governance process. Definition of metadata policy templates. Continuation of the promotion and dissemination work. | 850 | ISA | Q1/2015 | Q12/2015 |
| | | | | | |
| | Total | 5350 | | | |
0.1.9.2 Breakdown of ISA funding per budget year
| Budget Year | Phase | Anticipated allocations (in KEUR) | Executed budget (in KEUR) |
| 2010 | Operational | 300 | 300 |
| 2010 | Inception | 150 | 150 |
| 2010 | Execution | 100 | 100 |
| 2011 | Execution | 150 | 150 |
| 2011 | Operational | 850 | 850 |
| 2012 | Operational | 1.000 | 1.063 |
| 2013 | Operational | 1.000 | 989 |
| 2014 | Operational | 900 | 1048 |
| 2015 | Operational | 900 | |
0.1.10 ANNEX AND REFERENCES
| Description | Reference link | Attached document |
| Federation of Semantic Assets Repositories | https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/catalogue/all?filters=bs_current_version:true | |
| Core Vocabularies (Core Person, Core Business, Core Location, Core Public Service) | https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/core_vocabularies/description | |
| The DCAT Application Profile | https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/description | |
| Towards Open Government Metadata | http://www.semic.eu/semic/view/documents/towards_open_government_metadata.pdf | |
[1] for information on these semantic solutions visit: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/semic/description