SEMIC has compiled a list of third party tools to allow public administrations to bootstrap their journey to become increasingly interoperable in the EU. Each tool in this list responds to a practice for increasing semantic interoperability such as modelling your data according to a specification, managing controlled vocabularies, compliance with said specifications, and the harvesting, validating and publishing of your data.

Additionally, SEMIC offers the SEMIC Tooling Assistant. This interactive wizard allows the user to find a specific tool based on a small set of questions related to the task that is to be performed.

Modelling data specifications

Data specification is one form for organisations to agree on what the data exchanged are. Specifications are a prescribed form of generating data for a consumer audience. For the consumer audience, data specifications contain information on how to process retrieved data. Data specification is a form of social contract between data producers and consumers on how to best exchange data. In this sense data specifications are one core element to enable interoperability among all parties.

SEMIC proposes a basic tooling architecture that can be found on this page. In addition to this reference architecture, the page contains a recommended tool for each architectural component.

In addition to the various semantic specifications, SEMIC offers the Style Guide validator. The Style Guide is a document that defines stylistic rules that are applied to the SEMIC specifications. These rules and guidelines include naming conventions, syntax, artefact management and organisation and can be applied to any semantic specification. To facilitate the automation of this process SEMIC has developed the Style Guide Validator which is available as a service on the Interoperability Test Bed. This service allows the validation of models in UML, SHACL and OWL against the SEMIC Style Guide. Additional documentation on the Style Guide Validator can be found here.

Click here to be redirected to the UML Style Guide Validator, or click here to be redirected to the SHACL/OWL Style Guide Validator. Both validators are also available as a REST API or SOAP API.

Managing controlled vocabularies

Successful interoperability is also based on eliminating the ambiguity of referring to an entity in a data space. This is normally achieved by maintaining authoritative naming lists, or controlled lists of terms, sharing glossaries or thesaurus. It is highly beneficial that all the parties can refer to a term with unambiguous definition and understanding, and it plays well for organisations interoperability. The Publication Office, for instance, has a long-standing effort of maintaining EUROVOC together with many other terminologies, to keep all the units of the EC that publish institutional content, aligned around the same critical terms.

Authoritative naming lists, or controlled vocabularies and thesaurus need dedicated governance of their editorial lifecycle, in order to keep long term value. Below a list of tools can be found that help in editing, or validating SKOS code lists.

Modelling data according to SEMIC specifications

Semantic interoperability is largely based on agreeing on the meaning of exchanged data, and how data specifications are the instrument that allows to formalise these agreements. Specifications naturally lead to a defined structure for data to be published.

Your data undergo a set of intermediate transformations, normally originating in a format other than the one prescribed by a specification. 

Learn about available data specifications published by SEMIC.

In the spirit to serve reusable solutions to common problems, SEMIC outlined a workflow that can be followed to effortlessly produce data compliant with CPSV-AP. The workflow for CPSV-AP can be found here.

Harvesting data from online catalogs

SEMIC makes a commitment to increase interoperability by adhering to data specifications. This is most evident in scenarios where administrations expose compliant data from online catalogues. Base registries and public services description represent one instance where administrations enable data consumers to effortlessly plug into their online catalogues via SEMIC connectors. On one end an administration is providing the latest version of the data, consumed on the other end by a second administration. The first administration makes the publication of data and connectors only once, while the second administration only needs to adopt the connectors to trigger interoperability.

Below a list of tools can be found that can facilitate harvesting, and in which pipelines can be built.

Validating compliance with a specification

Interoperability requires rigorous actions to ensure faithful adherence to the data specifications, and that the administrations keep exchanging data effortlessly. SEMIC action provides support to verify that data on the way to being exchanged, are compliant to the specifications. SEMIC offers a set of validators for CPSV-AP, DCAT-AP and BRegDCAT-AP data specifications to its community of adopters on the Interoperability Test Bed.

Additionally, below a list of third party tools that can validate data against a data model are provided.

Publishing interoperable data

Publishing documentation on a data model or linked data is crucial to enhance interoperability. It provides a shared understanding of data structure, format, and semantics, enabling different systems and applications to interact cohesively. This not only enhances data integration and reuse but also promotes transparency and citizen engagement by making public data more accessible and understandable.

Below a list of third party tools can be found that facilitate the publication of documentation on data and data models.

Click here to access the SEMIC GitHub.