The FAIRness Project aims to improve and enhance data users' ability to find and assess federal data, reduce complexity for metadata producers, and standardize metadata requirements for geospatial, statistical, and other open data.
This project constitutes collaborative work in an open, consensus-based process. Federal employees and members of the public are encouraged to improve the project by contributing and participating in various ways. Your participation and input are needed!
Please contribute your requirements for the emerging DCAT-US metadata profile. Here’s how:
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Submit your requirements on the project GitHub here, or
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Or complete the Requirements Template document and email to: [email protected]
The requirements collection process is scheduled to be open for 30 days (ending June 30, 2023). The process is summarized here:
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Submit your requirement(s) via GitHub or the Requirements Template document.
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Based on submitted requirements, the schema development team reviews and analyzes the requirements to develop an initial draft DCAT-US application profile schema.
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An initial draft schema, specification, and crosswalk for the DCAT-US application profile is targeted for posting to the GitHub project for review on July 24, 2023.
For more information about the FAIRness project, the schema development process, and the governance of the application profile, please visit the project site on GitHub here.
The FAIRness Project is designed to advance efforts toward improving and enhancing data users' (both internal and external to the federal government) ability to find and assess the utility of federal data essential to implementing the new data-sharing authorities under Title III of the Evidence Act. The FAIRness Project's scope focuses on development and delivery of three products:
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A proposed governance model for updating and maintaining the federal metadata schema profiles in accordance with data inventory and data cataloging standards.
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An updated DCAT-US Schema v1.1 (Project Open Data Metadata Schema) to a United States profile of the W3C DCAT version 3 standard, aligning the schema with international standards, metadata for geospatial data and statistical data catalogs, and improving adoption by software vendors and open-source technologies.
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A strategic two-year sequencing plan to improve and integrate government-wide metadata cataloging to facilitate data users' ability to easily find, access, assess for fitness-for-use, and use federal data.
In alignment with the Building Trust and FAIRness into the Process for Finding and Using Government Data Project (FAIRness Project), this project was built as a planned update to the existing Project Open Data (DCAT-US 1.1) metadata standard. Data inventories are essential to implementing the new data-sharing authorities under Title III of the Evidence Act.
The existing metadata standards used for data catalogs and data inventories are out-of-date compared to current international metadata standards. They are generally purpose-built and focused on metadata producers.
The FAIRness project will provide an updated DCAT-US (3.0) schema that addresses the gaps and issues from Project Open Data (DCAT-US 1.1) metadata standards. Enterprise-wide requirements and data user feedback from real-world implementations will drive the updated schema.
The schema governance process consists of three phases:
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Initial schema development — The period from project inception to the first release of a draft application profile for comment. During this phase, the schema development team develops an initial application profile using the initial set of requirements and inputs.
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Pre-release governance — The period from the first release of a draft application profile for comment and the publication of the final schema. During this phase, the community of potential users and providers will provide input as issues containing possible changes for adjudication and resolution in an open, transparent process. As a result, the application profile will continually evolve, reflecting the adopted changes.
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Post-release governance — The period following the publication of the final application profile. During this period, experience recommends an open, transparent process to manage the application profile through any subsequent version releases.
Please review the FAIRness Project Governance Process documentation for more information about the process.
The project is a public domain work and is not subject to domestic or international copyright protection. See the license file for additional information.
Members of the public and US government employees who wish to contribute are encouraged to do so, but by contributing, dedicate their work to the public domain and waive all rights to their contribution under the terms of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.