Today, version 1.00 of the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) is officially released under the ISA Open Metadata Licence v1.1.

ADMS is a common way to describe semantic interoperability assets including metadata schemas, controlled vocabularies and code lists. Better documenting semantic assets can help improve interoperability of eGovernment initiatives across Europe, and possibly beyond.  ADMS will also be a key element of the upcoming federation of semantic asset repositories in Europe.

The current version of ADMS was elaborated in the period October 2011 – March 2012 by a multi disciplinary working group of 60 people, from 20 different Member States, Croatia, Norway, Australia and the US. This work was based on earlier work in 2010, by a Working Group with representation from 17 EU member states, several EU institutions and the US.

ADMS was open for a month-long public review in January 2012. On 14 March a last Working Group Virtual Meeting was held which leaded to this release of version 1.00 of ADMS. This version of ADMS will be implemented on Joinup and used to exchange metadata about semantic assets (e.g. code lists, domain models, information exchange package descriptions) with the Community of Semantic Asset Repositories (CESAR).

Future plans:

ADMS is the first step towards a federation of European asset repositories. From mid 2012, Joinup will make available a large number of semantic interoperability assets, described using ADMS, through a federation of asset repositories of Member States, standardisation bodies and other relevant stakeholders. Through this federation, semantic interoperability assets will become retrievable and available via a single point of access.

Also ADMS, together with three Core Vocabularies (Core Person, Core Business, and Core Location), will be contributed to the W3C’s Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group. The GLD Working Group was set up in 2011 to provide standards and other information which help governments around the world to publish their data as effective and usable Linked Data using Semantic Web technologies. The ISA Programme outputs will be published by the GLD Working Group as First Public Working Drafts for further consultation within the context of the typical W3C standardization process. The desired outcome of that process will be the publication of these vocabularies as open Web standards available under W3C's Royalty-Free License.

To know more:

• ADMS – Joinup description
• ADMS v1.00
• ADMS Brochure
• video: towards open metadata management

Related News item:

• 2012-03-27 - Key specifications for interoperability developed by the EU’s Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administration (ISA) Programme to become W3C standards
• 2012-02-09 - 1200 reads and 640 downloads - enthusiasm around ADMS echoed in its public review
• 2012-01-06 - EU - The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) open for public review