Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group Charter

Deliverables

The titles of the deliverables are not final; the Working Group will have to decide on the final titles as well as the structures of the documents. The Working Group may also decide to merge some deliverables into one document or produce several documents that together constitute one of the deliverables.

• Data on the Web Best Practices (Recommendation)

  This will build on and extend the work done in the Government Linked Data Working Group, taking a domain and technology-agnostic approach to cover aspects such as:

  • URI design and management for persistence;
  • use of core vocabularies to improve interoperability;
  • guidance on the provision of metadata;
  • publishing and accessing versions of datasets;
  • making controlled vocabularies accessible as URI sets;
  • technical factors for consideration when choosing data sets for publication;
  • technical factors affecting potential use of open data for innovation, efficiency and commercial exploitation;
  • data preservation.

  Evidence of implementation will gathered from national or sector-specific guidelines that reference the Best Practices.

• Vocabularies (Working Group Notes)

  The working group will develop 2 new vocabularies to support the data ecosystem:

  • Quality and Granularity Description Vocabulary. This is foreseen as an extension to DCAT to cover the quality of the data, how frequently is it updated, whether it accepts user corrections, persistence commitments etc. When used by publishers, this vocabulary will foster trust in the data amongst developers.
  • Data Usage Description Vocabulary. This will describe the use made of one or more data sets. Where data is used in an application, it will facilitate a description of what the application does and what problem it helps to solve. This will improve discoverability of the application. Where data is used in other contexts, such as in research, it will facilitate provision of information about what data was used and how it was used during the research. This information can link to and be cited within published papers. In these scenarios, and others, use of the Data Usage Description Vocabulary will encourage the continued publication of the data on which the usage depends.

  Subject to its capacity, the working group may choose to develop additional relevant vocabularies in response to community demand.

Inputs

The Working Group will pay attention to independent efforts to develop standards and methods relevant to open data and may choose to refer to such efforts or incorporate them directly in its work. An indicative list of inputs is:

• Best Practices for Publishing Linked Data, B. Hyland, B. Villazón-Terrazas, G. Atemezing
• DCAT, F. Maali
• Cool URIs for the Semantic Web
• Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector (PDF) and its forthcoming update.
• Study on Persistent URIs with identification of best practices and recommendations on the topic for the Member States and the European Commission.
• Kerstin Forsberg's notes on URI design.
• Open Data Institute training materials
• ODI Open Data Certificate
• Open Quality Standards' 72 Open Data Best Practices
• Open Knowledge Foundation standards work
• Hydra Community Group
• The WG should of course take note of relevant projects and initiatives that represent bodies of expertise and experience. For example, the European Commission's ISA Programme, and projects such as ENGAGE, PRELIDA, LAPSI, HOMER, EUCLID, CitySDK, RECODE etc. The forthcoming Share-PSI 2.0 Thematic Network is of particular relevance.
• The Declaration of Data Citation Principles.

Success Criteria

To advance to Proposed Recommendation, evidence will be adduced that each of the best practices have been recommended in at least two environments, such as data portals and formal policies.

The vocabularies that will eventually be developed by the working group will be published via the W3C Vocabulary Management Process that offers stability of terms but the flexibility for future evolution in response to community demand.

Timeline View Summary

• December 2013: First teleconference
• February 2014: First face-to-face meeting
• March 2014: Vocabularies FPWD
• May 2014: Best Practices FPWD
• January 2015: WG Notes for the vocabularies
• November 2015: Best Practices document to Candidate Recommendation
• April 2016: Best Practices document to Proposed Recommendation
• June 2016: Best Practices document to Recommendation