In fact I think that systems will be the main data consumers. That should happen with OGD Catalogs as in any other Big Data process, and probably that may be also stressed in the document as it is also on the main reason for developing interoperability solutions that take into account machine readable and standard metadata.

Our basic use case is to enable a cross-data portal search for data sets. I agree that data consumers could also be systems (machines). Systems may even consult a data portal to find out information about datasets (e.g. if a particular dataset has been updated recently). Howver, the main objective of exchanging descriptions of datasets between data portals is to bridge the gap between the supply and demand for (public) data (see the /descrition page) for a motivation.

Proposed resolution: state explicitly data data consumers can also be systems.

This has been included in Draft 2