The Hague, 3 September 2010

The standard called OWMS is a Dublin Core Application Profile, and is published (in Dutch) on the central website for all government information. It calls for nine descriptive elements which are considered to provide crucial metadata for government information. By keeping it relatively simple this way, ICTU hopes to drive adoption forward.

Next to this ICTU also published a range of vocabularies to be used as value lists for OWMS metadata. These contain labels and identifiers for government organizations such as ministries, provinces and municipalities etc. These lists are published as Linked Open Data with 'cool URI's' so they are available in both human readable HTML as well as machine readable formats such as RDF, N3 and XML.

With this meta data standard and these vocabularies, it will be possible for Dutch government information to be described and linked properly. There is also a likelihood that a Dutch open government data catalogue will be launched in the near future. Discussions on how to use OWMS and the vocabularies as part of the description of data sets in that catalogue are ongoing.

Related Links:

Dutch Government sets example

Open Government Data in the Netherlands

Linked Data and Government