On using CPSV-AP to publish public service descriptions as linked open data

Abstract

Public authorities worldwide provide a large number of Public Services (PS) to citizens, businesses and other authorities. In this context, they publish PS catalogues containing descriptions of these services, e.g. about cost, required documents, contact details, etc. Two main challenges in the design of PS catalogues are standardisation and interoperability. To address these challenges, the European Union (EU) has developed the Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV), as the proposed EU standard for PS modelling. CPSV-AP is an application profile of CPSV that uses linked data as an underpinning technology to exploit its benefits, e.g. interlinking PS descriptions with each other and with other web of data resources. Despite its potential however, there is only limited research on CPSV-AP use in practice. The aim of this paper is to devise a process for using CPSV-AP and conduct a pilot implementation, using this process, to investigate potential benefits or challenges from CPSV-AP practical usage. In the framework of this pilot implementation, we publish a set of PS descriptions, included in an official PS catalogue, as CPSV-AP compliant linked data. The contribution of this paper is a detailed process for CPSV-AP use in practice and relevant lessons learnt. We anticipate this research will be beneficial to both academics working on PS semantic interoperability and practitioners aiming to migrate existing PS catalogues exploiting CPSV-AP.