This product will bring together the three main controlled vocabularies available to public sector bodies in one merged vocabulary or taxonomy. The vocabulary can be used to populate Subject Metadata and index and categorise information across the public sector. The vocabularies that are being merged:
- The Government Category List (GCL) – a high level category list owned by the Cabinet Office E-Government Unit for use across government
- The Local Government Category List (LGCL) – a product of the LAWS National Project for use in the Local Government Community
- The seamlessUK Taxonomy – a product of the seamlessUK Project for use in a broad community information environment.
The merger has the support of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Local e-Government Standards Body (eSB) and the vocabulary owners. It is funded by the ODPM via the LAWs2 Project from the Roll Out and Dissemination Budget for the National Projects.
The vocabularies are being merged in order to hit the following goals:
- One vocabulary will reduce the confusion for public sector organisations creating subject metadata schema or indexing other resources.
- The single vocabulary supports citizens, customers and staff by offering easier, more efficient access to information by: -consistent indexing, categorisation and retrieval -interoperability across data sets from multiple organisations -the ability to offer the same information across a variety of delivery channels
- It will provide the mandatory encoding scheme for the eGMS’s Subject element.
- It will support the delivery of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Priority Outcome R3 “Community Information”.
- One vocabulary will reduce the overheads, costs and workload required to implement a controlled vocabulary within content management systems, search systems and automatic metadata creation systems.
- One vocabulary will offer a strategic advantage in linking e-enabled services to the Government's Directgov portal.
The merger is underway now and will be completed by March 2005. Some draft sections are being tested by volunteer Local Authorities, the ENCORE Project (www.encore.gov.uk) and an Editorial Panel has been set up to advise on the editorial policy.
The Project aims to deliver:
- One merged vocabulary available for the entire UK public sector, built and maintained to recognised quality standards
- A software solution, built to recognised technical standards, that provides outputs in a variety of formats, maintaining compatibility between any subsets or views for different purposes
- A method for maintaining links to other existing vocabularies e.g. The Local Government Services List
- A method for sustaining the vocabulary and disseminating its outputs
- A governance structure
- Full guidance documentation
- Promotion of the new vocabulary to promote take-up
How should you use / implement the IPSV?
- If you have not started building in the LGCL or haven’t got very far, then from 1 April 2005 you may start to implement the IPSV. The ODPM has agreed that the IPSV is a recognized taxonomy for the purposes of meeting the requirements of Local e-Government Priority Outcome R3. Authorities that are currently implementing the LGCL as part of R3 should continue to do so and will be offered further guidance and support around implementation of metadata and migration to the IPSV after December 2005.
- Mappings to IPSV will be provided from LGCL and LGSL
- From Summer 2005, e-GMS will recommend the IPSV as the mandatory encoding scheme for subject metadata in place of GCL.
- You should be prepared to migrate to the new list to enable interoperability across the public sector.
- The date for completion of migration has not yet been fixed.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 25.02.2005
