The European Commission, in the context of the ISA programme, is undertaking a number of initiatives related to metadata management and semantic interoperability. These initiatives centre on 2 concepts:

• Semantic interoperability assets: highly reusable metadata and reference data that can be used for e-Government system development. To increase their discoverability, a new common metadata format is being developed to describe semantic interoperability assets: the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS).
• Core Vocabularies: simplified, reusable and extensible data models capturing the fundamental characteristics of an entity. At present, Core Vocabularies are being developed to represent the concepts of a Person, a Location and a Business.

If you are interested in contributing and taking part in these challenges, you can now join these projects and communities on Joinup:

• The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) project;
• The Community of European Semantic Assets Repositories (CESAR);
• The e-Government Core Vocabularies community;
• The Core Person Vocabulary project;
• The Core Location Vocabulary project;
• The Core Business Vocabulary project.

As a member, you can learn more about semantic interoperability in the context of e-Government, share your own thoughts and opinions and ultimately contribute to the delivery of interoperable e-Services in the European Union.