Abstract
The Core Public Service Vocabulary Application Profile (CPSV-AP) is a data specification used to harmonise the description of public services in a machine-readable format. It allows public administrations and service providers to describe their services in a standardised way, ensuring interoperability at European, national, and local levels. CPSV-AP offers benefits such as improved efficiency, reduced administrative burden, and enhanced service management. It has been implemented by various countries, including Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Spain. Supporting tools and training materials are available to facilitate its implementation.
Table of Contents
- What is the CPSV-AP ?
- What are the benefits of using CPSV-AP ?
- CPSV-AP key milestones
- CPSV-AP users: examples
- CPSV-AP as part of the Core Vocabularies
- Supporting tools
- Process & Methodology
- Questions
The latest version of CPSV-AP is 3.2.0 and the specifications of the previous version can be found here. Both versions can be found and downloaded from GitHub.
What is the CPSV-AP ?
The Core Public Service Vocabulary Application Profile (CPSV-AP) is a reusable and extensible data specification used for harmonising the way public services are described in a machine-readable format. CPSV-AP captures fundamental characteristics of a public service, such as the name, description, competent public organisation, output, etc. Public administrations and service providers can therefore use this approach to describe their services and guarantee a level of cross-domain and cross-border interoperability at European, national and local level.
The CPSV-AP includes the cardinality and data type of the properties, while specifying mandatory and optional elements to be used. According to the latest version, only 2 classes are mandatory: public service and public organisation, the rest being optional classes. Mandatory classes and properties indicate the minimum requirements to comply with CPSV-AP, while other elements are optional. A minimal implementation of the CPSV-AP at least provides information on the mandatory properties of the mandatory classes. Optional classes can still have mandatory properties for which information should be provided when the particular class is used in the description of public services and business events.
What are the benefits of using CPSV-AP ?
CPSV-AP benefits public administrations, businesses, and citizens. The model harmonises public services (information) stored in different local, regional, and national information sources, allowing the information to be searched and shared easily within and across public administrations all over Europe. This improves efficiency within public administrations and lowers the administrative burden for businesses and citizens who want to access public services (information). Additionally, the management of portfolios for public services is enhanced thanks to the model.
By taking into account the maturity level of the solutions, SEMIC offers personalised support to the administration to best fulfil its needs (e.g. from developing a catalogue of public services from scratch to enhancing the interoperability of an existing solution). By offering these support services, the Action is intended to guarantee a certain level of uniformity of the solutions developed between the Member States, which results in a significant interoperability improvement (such as the CPSV-AP specification which is used to describe public services related to business and life events, to facilitate the set-up of catalogues of services oriented to businesses and citizens).
CPSV-AP key milestones
Published in 2014, the main focus of the initial version of CPSV-AP (version 1.00) was the description of public services and business events on the Points of Single Contact which each Member State had to implement in the context of the Services Directive (2006/123/EC).
In 2016, the scope of the data model was progressively extended to cover any type of public services, thus creating version 2.0.0. This work focused ultimately on improving and harmonising the provision of information about public services on established eGovernment portals, adopting a user-centric perspective focusing on citizens and businesses.
Version 2.0.0 has been reviewed by the Working Groups Members, leading to the publication of CPSV-AP v2.1.0. The update finds its motivation in the experience of implementing version 2.0.0 of the CPSV-AP by different Member States and stakeholders and subsequent requests received from them, such as the addition of the concept of catalogue to cover the metadata of the origin of the sources of those public service descriptions that are collected into a common database (decentralised approach).
CPSV-AP version 2.2.0 was developed through implementing version 2.1.0 of the CPSV-AP by different Member States and stakeholders and subsequent requests received from them through GitHub, during webinars and the workshop organised in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria.
The update to CPSV-AP 2.2.1 in 2019 finds its motivation in the experience of implementing version 2.2 of the CPSV-AP by different Member States and stakeholders and subsequent requests received from them through GitHub or during webinars and the workshop organised in Brussels, Belgium.
In 2022, CPSV-AP 3.0.0 was released following two webinars with the Working Group members and analysis of the feedback received on version 2.2.1. The new major revision has an improved alignment with Core Vocabularies and has increased flexibility to facilitate the re-use of the specification.
Following the input from stakeholders and subsequent requests received on GitHub by Member States, revisions were made to create and implement version 3.1.0.
With the use of version 3.1.0 by different Member States, CPSV-AP was updated in 2022 after input and feedback received on the GitHub issues page. With these smaller updates, existing bugs were fixed.
A new version (v3.2.0) came out in 2024 after careful reviews by stakeholders and Member States. In addition ReSpec styling has been applied to the specification.
CPSV-AP users: examples
Below, some member states and their application of CPSV-AP are described. This list is non-exhaustive and may not be fully up-to-date. These examples thus serve as an illustration of the meaningful use of CPSV-AP by the public sector.
| The region of Flanders in Belgium adopted a translated and slightly updated, extended version of the CPSV-AP. The product of the governmental organisation Digital Flanders serves as their regional model for describing public services, called ‘Open Standard for Local Governments (OSLO)’. They are currently in the process of implementing their model in a regional catalogue of public services. |
| Estonia reused the standard data model to develop a metadata harvesting solution based on the CPSV-AP to define a common vocabulary for describing public services in a machine-readable format. In addition, they ran a pilot with Finland for which they used the CPSV-AP and tools to create a cross-border catalogue of public services as well as a user-centric website to visualise the data. One notable example of its implementation is the e-Estonia website. This website showcases the various digital services and solutions offered by the Estonian government, and CPSV-AP is utilised to provide standardised and structured information about these services. By adopting CPSV-AP, Estonia ensures consistency and interoperability in the presentation and exchange of public service information, making it easier for both citizens and businesses to navigate and access the digital services available in the country. This initiative took off in 2015, and has been evolving since then. The model helps in the service mapping process because it is based on uniform principles. |
| Finland used the CPSV-AP as inspiration to create a national data model, called the Suomi.fi Quality Tools which was released in 2022, helping public sector organisations to develop customer-oriented digital services and improve knowledge-based management. They reused classes and properties of the CPSV-AP and tailored the model to their needs. The model will be linked to the CPSV-AP soon. In addition, they ran a pilot with Estonia for which they used the CPSV-AP and tools to create a cross-border catalogue of public services as well as a user-centric website to visualise the data. |
| The Agency of Digitisation in Italy has developed the CPSV-AP_IT, a national data model that extends to CPSV-AP to include country-specific characteristics. They are currently implementing their model in a national catalogue of public services. To do so, they are collecting public service descriptions from different sources across the country and automatically validating the descriptions using an adapted version of the CPSV-AP Validator. The Autonomous Province of Trento is also using the CPSV-AP to describe public services through a distributed Content Management System (CMS), called ComunWeb, which is used by several local authorities. The CMS shares a common data model that includes the CPSV-AP. |
| Slovakia serves as a perfect example of successfully implementing the SEMIC Core Vocabularies and Application Profiles with the creation of a centralised knowledge graph. This knowledge graph contains both national and international standards resulting in an easy access to common assets for Slovakian governmental institutions. More information about their success story can be found here. |
| Spain is one of the actively collaborating member states related to CPSV-AP, and makes use of the Application Profile to create a catalogue of the offered governmental services. |
| The Netherlands reused certain CPSV-AP tools while running a pilot to develop a simple way of creating public service descriptions matching the Dutch national data model, i.e. Samenwerkende Catalogi. They adapted the public service description editor to allow for the one-time creation of standardised public services descriptions by Public Administrations and allow for the widespread dissemination and reuse of the information at the national and European level. |
CPSV-AP as part of the Core Vocabularies
The CPSV-AP has been seen as a first step for creating a model for describing public services related to business and life events, to facilitate the set-up of catalogues of services oriented to businesses and citizens. The CPSV-AP has been defined as an Application Profile of the SEMIC e-Government Core Vocabularies maintained by the Semantic Interoperability Community Action (SEMIC).
A Core Vocabulary is a simplified, reusable, and extensible data model that captures the fundamental characteristics of an entity in a context-neutral fashion. Core Vocabularies are the starting point for agreeing on new semantic interoperability assets and defining mappings between existing assets to guarantee a level of cross-domain and cross-border interoperability that can be attained by public administrations.
An Application Profile is a specification that re-uses terms from one or more base standards, adding more specificity by identifying mandatory, recommended, and optional elements to be used for a particular application, as well as recommendations for controlled vocabularies to be used.
All the versions of the e-Government Core Vocabularies can be downloaded here.
Supporting tools
Several tools have have been developed in the context of the Interoperable Europe Programme. These solutions are open-source tools that facilitate creating, validating, harvesting and exchanging public service descriptions that comply with the CPSV-AP. The tools are fully reusable and easily adaptable to, for example, other data models, business contexts, etc.
You can learn more here.
Training material
For readers to become familiar with the CPSV-AP specification and understand what benefits can be derived from its implementation, a training has been developed and is available here on the EU academy platform. The training covers basic notions to grasp the interest and use of the CPSV-AP specification via the concepts of interoperability, Linked Data, RDF and more.
Process & Methodology
The handling of change requests follows the process described in "Description of a change management release and publication process for structural metadata specifications developed by the ISA Programme".
The approach for the revision and extension of the CPSV-AP is based on the "Process and Methodology for Developing Core Vocabularies".
Questions
If you wish to access technical documentation related to CPSV-AP, as well as the change requests, please click here to be redirected to the GitHub repository. For further questions, you can contact the SEMIC team or visit the SEMIC collection on Joinup.
