Updates of the NIFO factsheets track interoperability initiatives that enable cross-border reuse of open data in European countries. The updates were made available in December on the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO) community.
The updated NIFO factsheets describe - for 15 of the countries - their participation in the interoperability initiative on cross-border reuse of open data. The initiative enables them to share the description of their datasets using the pan-European linked metadata infrastructure (http://data.opendatasupport.eu/). This improves the discoverability and visibility and facilitates the access to datasets published on local and national open data portals in order to increase their re-use across borders.
The interoperability initiative is part of the Open Data Support project of DG CONNECT at the European Commission. Some countries contribute a large amount of datasets, such as the United Kingdom with near 20 000 datasets and France with near 14 000 datasets. A sixteenth contributor is the open data portal of the European Commission. It adds over 7 600 datasets. This brings the total to 16 harmonized data catalogues and over 70 000 datasets.
The initiative uses ODIP software, available on the Joinup platform (Open Data Interoperability Platform). It allows to share metadata of datasets described using the DCAT Application Profile for data portals in Europe. DCAT-AP is a specification based on the Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. The specification provides a commonly-agreed metadata model for homogenising the metadata representations of different Open Data portals and catalogues. DCAT is W3C Recommendation since January 2014. The DCAT-AP is a joint initiative driven by several Directorate-Generals of the European Commission and involving 15 Member States.
The NIFO factsheets give a high level abstract of the National Interoperability Framework (NIF) of each country. They present:
- An overview of the MS main activities on interoperability and the main online sources
- A summary of the NIF
- An overview of the alignment of the NIF with the EIF
- An overview of other initiatives on interoperability
- An overview of the implementation of the NIF
NIFO is a project by the European Commission's ISA programme (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations). It assists countries in aligning their national interoperability frameworks (NIFs) with the European one and in monitoring their implementation.