What is the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary?

The Core Public Organisation Vocabulary provides a common data model for describing public organisations in the European Union.

Description

The SEMIC Core Vocabularies are the starting point for developing interoperable e-Government systems as it allows mappings with existing data models. The guarantees Public Administrations to attain cross-border and cross-sector interoperability.

The Core Public Organisation Vocabulary is one of the Core Vocabularies that have been developed by the SEMIC action of the former ISA² Programme, which is now named Interoperable Europe. The specification is developed in an open process with the active involvement of the SEMIC action stakeholders including: The e-Government Core Vocabularies Working Group (with a total of 69 people from 22 countries, 19 EU and 3 non-EU countries (USA, South-Africa, and Norway), and several EU Institutions and the Directorate-General for Digital Services: DG DIGIT.

The current version of the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary is 2.1.2. This version can be downloaded at GitHub.

Benefits

The Core Public Organisation Vocabulary facilitates the process for institutions publishing data about public organisations. It can be enriched with sector- or country-specific information.

The Core Public Organisation Vocabulary (CPOV) addresses specific needs of businesses, public administrations, and citizens across the European Union, including the following use cases:

• Facilitate information sharing: CPOV enables G2G (Government-to-Government), G2B (Government-to-Business) and G2C (Government-to-Citizen) information sharing.
• Facilitate the development of common information systems: the use of existing data models for the development of common information systems facilitates the development of those systems and improves their interoperability.
• Linked Open Organograms: CPOV has the potential to link organograms to each other and to high-value data sets.
• Cross border information exchange: CPOV allows to manage a cross-border repository of public services and organisations.
• Find a PO by its function: the public organisation portfolio facilitates discovery of which public authorities and departments are responsible for given areas of the public task.
• Increase efficiency: CPOV helps to identify where responsibilities and functions are duplicated or overlap.

Version information

• On 5 May 2026, version 2.1.2 was released.
• On 1 February 2024, version 2.1.1 was released.
• On 15 May 2023, version 2.1.0 was released. 
• April 2021 - New public review cycle of several Core Vocabularies started. After a series of five webinars, version 2.0.0 of the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary was released
• January to December 2016 - version 1.00 of the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary was developed and released

Development and maintenance process

This specification was produced by the Core Vocabularies Working Group (Business Task Force), following the Process and Methodology for Developing Core Vocabularies. It has been reviewed by representatives of the Member States of the European Union, PSI publishers, and by other interested parties. Publication of this Final Draft does not imply endorsement by the European Commission or its representatives.

Reuse of the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary

The list below includes countries and organisations that reuse or promote the use of the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary.

• Fi-Core & Digital and Population Data Services Agency of Finland in the Data Vocabularies Tool.
• The Electronic Administration Portal (PAE) of Spain.
• The International Hellenic University of Greece for research purposes.
• DIGST of Denmark in their common digital public architecture.
• The Center of Semantic Integration of Russia.
• The Social Insurance Institute (ZUS) of Poland for research purposes.
• The National Interoperability Framework of Slovenia.
• The Dutch Governmental Reference Architecture.
• The Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP) as part of their backend.
• The Agency for Digital Italy (AGID) and their Core Organisation Vocabulary.
• Digital Flanders from Belgium and their Organisation Ontology.

Get involved!

Do you want to participate in the work of our Core Vocabularies Working Group? Share your comments and change requests via the GitHub Core Public Organisation Vocabulary repository.