The agenda of the meeting was as follows:

1. Welcome Note and Round Table
2. BRegDCAT-AP and reusable open source tools
3. Feasibility Study for European Registry of Base Registries
4. ABR eLearning
5. What’s next
6. AOB
7. Q&A

The presentation from the meeting is available here.

I. Welcome Note and Round Table

The Working Group meeting gathered 26 participants from 14 Member States and several European institutions. 

II. BRegDCAT-AP and reusable open source tools

A major part of the meeting was dedicated to the discussion regarding the proposed changes for the BRegDCAT-AP which will be implemented in the next release planned for the end of 2021. The following decisions have been taken:

 #1 - EuroVoc should not be mandatory; however, this was not mentioned explicitly for cv:thematicArea.

After the meeting, it was agreed to state that EuroVoc is not mandatory, prior to publishing the major release.

#2 - The multiplicity for property of 1..n for cv:hasCompetentAuthority will stay intact

Taking into consideration that Member States shared the examples in which this multiplicity is needed.

#3 – Should properties dct:format and dcat:mediaType: be added as recommended?

Considering that there was no consensus regarding the inclusion of the mentioned properties as recommended, this question will remain open until the next release. In the meantime, Working Group members will be informed about the possible ways of reaching the solution for this proposal.

In this block, several questions were clarified with the participants.

Q1 - The usage note for dct:type in dcat:DataService in BRegDCAT-AP v.2.00 says the following: This property refers to the type of the Data Service. It must use a controlled vocabulary that offers the type of master data to represent specific data of Base Registries. This taxonomy of terms has not been defined yet. Is such a taxonomy under development at the EU level?

Representatives from the Publications Office clarified that the new vocabularies are currently under the editing phase and are planned for publication at the end of October 2021. Therefore, the usage of such vocabularies will be considered at that time.

Q2 - Checksum: spdx:checksumAlgorithm_sha1 and the Usage note “Currently, SHA-1 is the only supported algorithm.”

This issue was also raised at the Working Group regarding DCAT-AP and it was agreed to use the wider list of values which will be also implemented in the DCAT3. Therefore, it was decided to align with DCAT3.

Finally, the section concluded with the results of the analysis regarding alignment of BRegDCAT-AP with DCAT-AP v2.0.1. Namely, the WG members were informed that currently there are no misalignments between the two specifications that need to be addressed.

III. Feasibility Study for European Registry of Base Registries

This Working Group meeting was also an opportunity to share the current findings regarding the study and reflect with Working Group members on the next steps. It was first clarified what the difference is between Registry of Registries (RoR) and European Registry of Base Registries (ERBR).

Also, it was explained that ERBR is not imagined as an interconnection infrastructure. It is a catalogue that collects metadata about the data contained in the registries.

There was also a question from WG members regarding what the difference is between the European Data Portal (EDP) and the ERBR. What is important to mention is that the EDP only provides open data, while the ERBR would provide an overview of what data are contained in base registries (including closed data). Hence, it is important to note that ERBR includes also information on closed data (for example personal data).

The ABR Team presented the methodology that was implemented for the Feasibility Study, current findings, and requirements for ERBR which were defined based on desk research, survey results and expert knowledge. More details about this are available in the WG meeting’s presentation from slide 18 to 28.

IV. ABR eLearning

Finally, the ABR Team informed WG members about the creation of the introductory course on Access to Base Registries, which aims to provide more information about the objectives of the ABR action, BRegDCAT-AP and its advantages, how to implement BRegDCAT-AP and what reusable tools are available to Member States. The idea was also to present a use case to WG members and collect their feedback. The ABR Team will share the draft course with WG members as soon as it is ready.

V. What’s next

The ABR Team announced the next release of the BRegDCAT-AP and asked WG members for their review and feedback, either through Joinup discussions or via email. For any further information, WG members, as well as the broader audience, can contact the ABR Team at abr(at)trasysinternational.com.