The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), the Stockholm County Association of Local Authorities (KSL) and PwC Sweden, supported by funding from Vinnova, have published a draft version of the Swedish national framework for open data for public review. Interestingly, the framework promotes DCAT-AP as the vocabulary for describing datasets.
The Swedish national framework for open data consists of guidelines and practical advice to local governments concerning open data. The framework is designed to support local governments in making information available for companies, organizations and individuals. The guiding principles create a uniform approach to assist in the collaboration between those who provide data and those who reuse it in order to increase the value of open data. The framework is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribute License, which allows copying, distributing, modifying and building upon the data for any purpose as long as the correct credit is indicated.
The framework consists of several parts. One of the included specifications provides recommendations on the metadata for describing open datasets published by the government. There, the DCAT-AP is suggested as the vocabulary for describing mandatory and optional classes and properties of datasets and catalogues.
DCAT-AP is an application profile of W3C’s Data Catalogue Vocabulary for European data portals. The DCAT-AP has been developed by 3 EC Directorates-General (DG): the Publication Office, DG DIGIT through the Interoperability for European Public Administrations (ISA) programme and DG CONNECT, being a key stakeholder, the European Commission delivered the first large-scale pan-European implementation of the DCAT-AP through its Open Data Support project.
Currently, a draft version of the Swedish national framework for open data is available for review. Until March 31st, 2014, municipalities, counties and other interested parties are invited to review and test the various components of the framework. Their views will be the basis for the framework's final form.