Under the ISA² programme, more than 40 actions are currently supported. For the SEMIC (Semantic Interoperability) action, 2016 was a particularly successful year which brought numerous results.
In May, ISA² organised the international SEMIC 2016 Conference in Rome, which was attended by more than 200 participants from 32 countries.
In addition, together with groups of experts from EU Institutions and Member States, the SEMIC action developed a number of new data specifications. These were:
· the DCAT-AP for statistical datasets (StatDCAT), an extension of the DCAT Application Profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP). This solution enhances interoperability between descriptions of statistical datasets within the statistical domain, and between statistical data and open data portals;
· the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary (CPOV), a data model to describe public organisations in the European Union, based on W3C's Organisation Ontology;
· the Core Criterion and Core Evidence Vocabulary (CCCEV), a data model that simplifies the exchange of information between organisations, businesses and citizens in public procurement processes, allowing them to provide the evidence required.
This collaborative work resulted in the publication of:
· version 2.0 of the Core Vocabularies, which are simplified, re-usable and extensible data models;
· a set of technical implementation guidelines for the DCAT-AP, with organisations from Member States and EU Institutions that have implemented or are still implementing DCAT-AP;
· the RDF dissemination vocabulary for the EU Budget Vocabulary for representing EU budget data, aimed at increasing government transparency by improving the availability, usability and intelligibility of the EU Budget. The latter is currently used by the Publications Office of the European Commission to publish the EU budget as Linked Open Data on the EU Open Data Portal.
Moreover, SEMIC supported the implementation of the Persistent Uniform Resource Identifier Policy by helping the Publications Office to operate a Persistent URI Service (PURI Service) and by facilitating the operation of the PURI Committee, composed of experts from various EU Institutions and Commission Services.
In addition, SEMIC continued to provide support on policy matters of different European Commission Directorate-Generals, namely:
· DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (EMPL), by implementing a pilot for linking national qualifications systems together with ESCO (European Skills/Competences, qualifications and Occupations);
· DG Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (FISMA), to improve standardisation in financial data;
· the EU Publications Office, to conduct a survey on data visualisation tools, and to organise a workshop on data visualisation tools in the EU Institutions to collect institutional experience and user requirements for this;
· the European Food Safety Agency, to implement an Information Governance Policy.
Through the ISA2 programme, the SEMIC action provides an important push to semantic interoperability in Europe. The SEMIC action is enriched by numerous contributions of the SEMIC Community on Joinup, with some 1500 members and stakeholders from different Public Administrations and European Commission Services.
For more information about SEMIC, visit our actions page, our solutions page and our Community on Joinup, and follow us on Twitter (@SEMICeu).
Stay tuned for more news on semantic interoperability!