SEMIC

Public Service

Status
Working Draft
Published at
2021-12-22
This version
https://belgif.github.io/thematic/models/public%20services/index_en.html

Summary

The model presented below is an application profile of Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV), built in the context of the ICEG thematic working group regrouping experts from the federal and regional level as well as communities. It was designed through a series of workshops and a final open consultation.

The objective was to standardize the terms defined for public services at regional and federal level, starting from CPSV-AP. It serves the purpose to make data accessible as linked open data and to define standard interfaces (APIs) to simplify collaboration and integration of the various services and tools.

The Core Public Service Vocabulary is designed to support the exchange of basic information about public services. Using the vocabulary – with sector- or country-specific information – will make it easier for institutions publishing data about public services.

The Core Public Service Vocabulary is designed to describe the public service itself. Whilst the vocabulary may support links to evidence or public organization; other resources such as relevant legislation, channel or agent are not described in detail.

As the name suggests, the vocabulary is not concerned with features associated with commercial services such as profit or margin

Whenever possible, the Core Public Service Vocabulary will reuse existing vocabularies to avoid defining new terms. As such, it reuses schema, org, foaf, core location, core person, amongst others.

Please find below the namespaces used in the model:

Prefix Namespace IRI Source
dcat http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat# [[VOCAB-DCAT]]
dct http://purl.org/dc/terms/ [[DCTERMS]]
foaf http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ [[FOAF]]
schema http://schema.org/ [[schema-org]]
rdf http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# [[RDF-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR]]
rdfs http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema# [[RDF-SCHEMA]]
vcard http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns# [[VCARD-RDF]]
xsd http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema# [[XMLSCHEMA11-2]]
adms http://www.w3.org/ns/adms# [[VOCAB-ADMS]]
skos http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core# [[SKOS-REFERENCE]]
locn http://www.w3.org/ns/locn# [[LOCN]]

Status of this document

This model has the status of Working Draft published on 2021-12-22.

Conformance

To be defined

Overview

This document describes the usage of the following entities for a correct usage of the data model:
| Address | Agent | Business Event | Channel | Collection | Concept | Contact Point | Cost | Event | Evidence | Group | Legal Resource | Life Event | Opening Hours Specification | Output | Participation | Public Organization | Public Service | Public Service Dataset | Purpose | Requirement | Rule | Site |

Entities

Address

Description
A spatial object that identifies a fixed location of a property, in a human-readable way.
Usage

An "address representation" as conceptually defined by the INSPIRE Address Representation data type: "Representation of an address spatial object for use in external application schemas that need to include the basic, address information in a readable way."


The representation of Addresses varies widely from one country's postal system to another. Even within countries, there are almost always examples of Addresses that do not conform to the stated national standard. At the time of publication, work is progressing on ISO 19160-1 that defines a method through which different Addresses can be converted from one conceptual model to another.


This specification was heavily based on the INSPIRE Address Representation data type. It is noteworthy that if an Address is provided using the detailed breakdown suggested by the properties for this class, then it will be INSPIRE-conformant. To this very granular set of properties, we add two further properties:

  • - full address (the complete address as a formatted string)
  • - addressID (a unique identifier for the address)
The first of these allows publishers to simply provide the complete Address as one string, with or without formatting. This is analogous to vCard's label property.


The addressID is part of the INSPIRE guidelines and provides a hook that can be used to link the Address to an alternative representation, such as vCard or OASIS xAL.


Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: address area, address ID, administrative unit level 1 (country), administrative unit level 2 (country/region/state), full address, locator designator, locator name, post code, post name (city), post office box, thoroughfare.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
address area Text 0..1 The name or names of a geographic area or locality that groups a number of addressable objects for addressing purposes, without being an administrative unit. This would typically be part of a city, a neighbourhood or village, e.g. Montmartre.
address ID 0..1 A globally unique identifier for each instance of an Address.

The concept of adding a globally unique identifier for each instance of an address is a crucial part of the INSPIRE data spec. A number of EU countries have already implemented an ID (a UUID) in their Address Register/gazetteer, among them Denmark. OASIS xAL also includes an address identifier. It is the address Identifier that allows an address to be represented in a format other than INSPIRE whilst remaining conformant to the Core Vocabulary.


The INSPIRE method of representing addresses is very detailed, designed primarily for use in databases of addresses. Whilst data that is published in full conformance with the INSPIRE data structure can be made available using the Location Core Vocabulary the reverse is not true since the Core Vocabulary allows much greater flexibility.


Many datasets that include address data as one piece of information about something else are likely to have that data in simpler formats. These might be tailored to the specific need of the dataset, follow a national norm, or make use of a standard like vCard.


To provide maximum flexibility in the Core Vocabulary, whilst remaining interoperable with INSPIRE Address Guidelines (which EU Member States are obliged to use), the Location Core Vocabulary provides the extra property of full address and makes use of INSPIRE's addressID.

administrative unit level 1 (country) Code 0..1 The name or names of a unit of administration where a Member State has and/or exercises jurisdictional rights, for local, regional and national governance. Level 1 refers to the uppermost administrative unit for the address, almost always a country. Best practice is to use the ISO 3166-1 code but if this is inappropriate for the context, country names should be provided in a consistent manner to reduce ambiguity. For example, either write 'France' or 'FRA' consistently throughout the dataset and avoid mixing the two. The Country controlled vocabulary from the Publications Office can be reused for this.
administrative unit level 2 (country/region/state) Code 0..1 The name or names of a unit of administration where a Member State has and/or exercises jurisdictional rights, for local, regional and national governance. Level 2 referst to the region of the address, usually a county, state or other such area that typically encompasses several localities. Some recommended codelists from the EU Publications Office include: Administrative Territorial Units (ATU), NUTS and Local Administrative Units (LAU). The first arrondissement of Paris is for example expressed as "http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/atu/FRA_AR_PAR01" in the ATU controlled vocabulary.
full address Text 0..1 The complete address written as a formatted string. Use of this property is recommended as it will not suffer any misunderstandings that might arise through the breaking up of an address into its component parts. This property is analogous to vCard's label property but with two important differences: (1) formatting is not assumed so that, unlike vCard label, it may not be suitable to print this on an address label, (2) vCard's label property has a domain of vCard Address; the fullAddress property has no such restriction. An example of a full address is "Champ de Mars, 5 Avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, France".
locator designator String 0..1 A number or a sequence of characters which allows a user or an application to interpret, parse and format the locator within the relevant scope. A locator may include more locator designators. In simpler terms, this is the building number, apartment number, etc. For an address such as "Flat 3, 17 Bridge Street", the locator is "flat 3, 17".
locator name Text 0..1 Proper noun(s) applied to the real world entity identified by the locator.

The locator name could be the name of the property or complex, of the building or part of the building, or it could be the name of a room inside a building.


The key difference between a locator and a locator name is that the latter is a proper name and is unlikely to include digits. For example, "Schuman, Berlaymont" is a meeting room within the European Commission headquarters for which locator name is more appropriate than locator.

post code String 0..1 The post/zip code of an address. (INSPIRE's definition is "A code created and maintained for postal purposes to identify a subdivision of addresses and postal delivery points.") Post codes are common elements in many countries' postal address systems. One of the many post codes of Paris is for example "75000".
post name (city) Text 0..1 The key postal division of the address, usually the city. (INSPIRE's definition is "One or more names created and maintained for postal purposes to identify a subdivision of addresses and postal delivery points.) For example, "Paris".
post office box String 0..1 The Post Office Box number. INSPIRE's name for this is "postalDeliveryIdentifier" for which it uses the locator designator property with a type attribute of that name. This vocabulary separates out the Post Office Box for greater independence of technology. An example post office box number is "9383".
thoroughfare Text 0..1 An address component that represents the name or names of a passage or way through from one location to another. A thoroughfare is not necessarily a road, it might be a waterway or some other feature. For example, "Avenue des Champs-Élysées".

Agent

Description
The Agent class is any resource that acts or has the power to act. This includes people, organizations and groups. The Public Organization class, defined in the Public Organization model, is a notable subclass of Agent.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has address, identifier, name, plays role.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
has address Address 0..1 This property represents an Address related to an Agent. Asserting the address relationship implies that the Agent has an Address.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Agent.
name Text 1 This property represents the Name of the Agent.
plays role Participation 0..* This property links an Agent to the Participation class. The Participation class facilitates the detailed description of how an Agent participates in or interacts with a Public Service and may include temporal and spatial information.

Business Event

Description
This class represents a Business Event, which specialises Event. A Business Event is a specific situation or event in the lifecycle of a business that fulfils one or more needs or (legal) obligations of that business at this specific point in time. A Business Event requires a set of public services to be delivered and consumed in order for the associated business need(s) or obligation(s) to be fulfilled. Business Events are defined within the context of a particular Member State. In other words, a Business Event groups together a number of public services that need to be delivered for completing that particular event.
Subclass of
Event
Properties
No properties have been defined for this entity.

Channel

Description
The Channel class represents the medium through which an Agent provides, uses or interacts in another way with a Public Service. Typical examples include online services, phone, walk-in centres etc.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: availability restriction, description, has purpose, identifier, opening hours, owned by, via channel.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
availability restriction Opening Hours Specification 0..1 The availability restriction property links a Channel to details of specific details of its opening hours that override the general case.
description Text 1 This property represents a free text description of the Channel.
has purpose Purpose 0..* This property describes the relationship between a purpose and a channel. Different channels serve different purposes : information, activation of the service, assistance, appeal, ...
identifier Text 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Channel.
opening hours Text 0..* This property represents the normal opening hours of a channel. The value should follow the flexible format defined for schema.org's opening hours property. Following that structure, days of the week are represented by two letter codes (Mo,Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su). Lists should be comma separated (for example: Mo, We, Fr) and periods separated by a hyphen (for example: Mo-Fr). If it is appropriate to add opening hours then this follows the day so if a phone service is available 08:00-20:00 Monday to Saturday and 08:00-18:00 on Sundays that would be encoded as Mo-Sa 08:00-20:00, Su 08:00-18:00.
owned by Public Organization 0..* This property indicates the owner of a specific Channel through which a Public Service is being delivered.
via channel Evidence 0..* In the majority of cases, the evidence required to use a Public Service will be independent of the channel through which the service is accessed. The Has Input property should normally be used to link a Public Service directly to one or more pieces of Evidence. However, where the type of Evidence required varies according to the channel used to access the Public Service, then the Has Input property may be used at the Channel level. For example, a digital signature may be required for an online channel, whereas a physical signature may be required for a face to face service provision.

Collection

Description
This class represents the Collection to which a Concept belongs. Grouping different concepts defines a controlled vocabulary. In this context the CPSV-AP reuses the Collection class as defined in the SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System . For describing the attributes of a Collection (labels, preferred labels, alternative labels, definition …) we refer to SKOS.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: member.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
member Concept 0..* The Member property, as defined in SKOS, allows to indicate the Concepts that are part of a Collection.

Concept

Description
This class represents any concept that can be used for classifying the Public Service and which relates to the Public Service through the property Is Classified By. This class has been added in the CPSV-AP to complement the need for adding other ways of classifying the Public Service, which have not been explicitely defined in the CPSV-AP. In this context the CPSV-AP reuses the Concept class as defined in the SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System . For describing the attributes of a Concept (labels, preferred labels, alternative labels, definition …) we refer to SKOS. The Concept may or may not belong to (member) a certain Collection.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: classification.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
classification Code 0..1 Classification of the different types of public service. The classification of a Public Service can be done via a codelist. As an example, this one can be used: https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/ServiceTypeValue

Contact Point

Description
This class represents the contact information for a Public Service, Channel, Public Organization, etc. It is defined in the Core Public Organization Vocabulary and is provided as a schema:ContactPoint. Like Channel, a Contact Point may have regular opening hours that are then overridden by, for example, public holidays, using the Opening Hours Specification class.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: availability restriction, has email, has telephone, opening hours, website.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
availability restriction Opening Hours Specification 0..1 The availability restriction property links a Contact Point to details of specific details of its opening hours that override the general case.
has email Literal 0..1 A property through which an e-mail address for the Public Organization, or a representative of it, can be contacted.
has telephone Literal 0..1 A property through which a phone number for the Public Organization, or a representative of it, can be contacted.
opening hours Literal 0..1 The value of this property is structured text that gives the hours at which the contact point is normally available. Days are specified using two-letter combinations: Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su. For example, if the contact point is open Monday-Friday, 9 -5, the value of the openingHours property would be Mo-Fr 09:00-17:00. If the Contact Point is only available on Tuesday and Thursday between 6 and 8pm, the value would be Tu,Th 16:00-20:00.
website URL 0..1 A WebSite is a set of related web pages and other items typically served from a single web domain and accessible via URLs.

Cost

Description
The Cost class represents any costs related to the execution of a Public Service that the Agent consuming it needs to pay.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: cost breakdown, currency, description, identifier, if accessed through, is defined by, value.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
cost breakdown Text 0..1 The cost breakdown property represents as a free text how the cost is calculated. Since the cost calculation can be complex, this property simplifies the possible relationships between cost and other classes by inviting the user to describe the calculation of the cost. The cost breakdown property is not to be confused with the description property since the first explains how the cost is calculated and the latter gives a brief description of the cost.
currency Code 0..1 This property represents the currency in which the Cost needs to be paid and the value of the Cost is expressed. The possible values for this property are described in a controlled vocabulary.
description Text 0..1 This property represents a free text description of the Cost.
identifier Text 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Cost.
if accessed through Channel 0..1 Where the cost varies depending on the channel used, for example, if accessed through an online service cf. accessed at a physical location, the cost can be linked to the channel using the If Accessed Through property.
is defined by Public Organization 0..* This property links the Cost class with one or more instances of the Public Organization class. This property indicates which Public Organization is the Competent Authority for defining the costs associated with the delivery of a particular Public Service.
value Double 0..1 This property represents a numeric value indicating the amount of the Cost.

Event

Description
This class represents an event that can be of any type that triggers, makes use of, or in some way is related to, a Public Service. It is not expected to be used directly, rather, one or other of its subclasses should be used. The properties of the class are, of course, inherited by those subclasses. The Event class is used as a hook either to a single related Public Service, such as diagnosis of illness being related to application for sickness benefit ; or to a group of Public Services, such as all those related to the establishment of a new business.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, identifier, name, related service, type.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 0..1 This property represents a free text description of the Event. The description is likely to be the text that a business or citizen sees for that specific Event when looking for relevant Public Services. Public administrations are therefore encouraged to include a reasonable level of detail in the description.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Event.
name Text 1 This property represents the Name (or title) of the Event.
related service Public Service 0..* This property links an event directly to a public service that is related to it.
type Code 0..* The type property links an Event to a controlled vocabulary of event types and it is the nature of those controlled vocabularies that is the major difference between a business event, such as creating the business in the first place and a life event, such as the birth of a child.

Evidence

Description
The Evidence class is defined in the Core Criterion and Core Evidence vocabulary (CCCEV) as any resource that can document or support a response. It contains information that proves that a normal requirement exists or is true, in particular evidences are used to prove that a specific riquerement is met.
Usage
Although the wording of the definition is different, the semantics are an exact match for CPSV's Input class which it replaces. Evidence can be any resource - document, artefact - anything needed for executing the Public Service. In the context of Public Services, Evidence is usually administrative documents or completed application forms. A specific Public Service may require the presence of certain Evidence or combinations of Evidence in order to be delivered. In some cases, the Output of one service will be Evidence for another service. Such relationships should be described in the associated Rule(s).
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: comes from, confidentiality level type, country, is about, is created by, is issued by, is provided by, language, supports Requirement.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
comes from Output 0..* This property describes the case where an Evidence is considered as one or multiple Output. This property might be used when a Public Service consumes its own Output as Evidence.
confidentiality level type Code 0..1 The security classification assigned to an Evidence or, in general, to a content.
country Code 0..1 Country where the evidence has been issued. Best practice is to use the ISO 3166-1 code but if this is inappropriate for the context, country names should be provided in a consistent manner to reduce ambiguity. For example, either write 'France' or 'FRA' consistently throughout the dataset and avoid mixing the two. The Country controlled vocabulary can be reused for this.
is about Agent 0..* The Agent that is the main actor in the provided Evidence.
is created by Agent 0..* The Agent that produces the Evidence.
is issued by Agent 0..* The legal authority responsible for an Evidence.
is provided by Agent 0..* The Agent that provides the trust and/or certifies that the Evidence is genuine.
language LinguisticSystem 0..* This property represents the language(s) in which the Evidence is issued. This could be one language or multiple languages, for instance in countries with more than one official language. The possible values for this property are described in a controlled vocabulary.
supports Requirement Requirement 0..* The Requirement for which the Evidence provides information (proof, support).

Group

Description
The Group class represents a collection of individual agents (and may itself play the role of a Agent, ie. something that can perform actions). This concept is intentionally quite broad, covering informal and ad-hoc groups, long-lived communities, organizational groups within a workplace, etc. Some such groups may have associated characteristics which could be captured in RDF (perhaps a homepage, name, mailing list etc.). While a Group has the characteristics of a Agent, it is also associated with a number of other Agents (typically people) who constitute the Group. FOAF provides a mechanism, the membershipClass property, which relates a Group to a sub-class of the class Agent who are members of the group. This is a little complicated, but allows us to make group membership rules explicit.
Subclass of
Agent
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: member.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
member Agent 0..* The member property relates a Group to a Agent that is a member of that group.
Description
This class represents the legislation, policy or policies that lie behind the Rules that govern the service.
Usage
The definition and properties of the Legal Resource class in the CPSV-AP are aligned with the ontology included in "Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Legislation Identifier (ELI)". For describing the attributes of a Legal Resource (labels, preferred labels, alternative labels, definition ...) we refer to the ELI ontology.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: related.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
related Legal Resource 0..* This property represents another instance of the Legal Resource class that is related to the particular Legal Resource being described.

Life Event

Description
The Life Event class represents an important event or situations in a citizen's life where public services may be required. Note the scope: an individual will encounter any number of 'events' in the general sense of the word. Within this model, the Life Event class only represents an event for which a Public Service is related. For example, a couple becoming engaged is not a Life Event, getting married is, since only the latter has any relevance to public services.
Subclass of
Event
Properties
No properties have been defined for this entity.

Opening Hours Specification

Description
The Opening Hours Specification class can be used to provide details of exceptional circumstances, such as being closed on public holidays.
Usage
The Core Public Service Vocabulary makes full use of schema.org's openingHours property to provide details of regular operations. The Opening Hours Specification class can be used to provide details of exceptional circumstances, such as being closed on public holidays. Note that the property schema:opens is not used, therefore the contact point is closed. More specific closures can be indicated by including the schema:validFrom and schema:validThrough properties.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: day of week, valid from, valid through.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
day of week URI 1 The day of the week for which these opening hours are valid.
valid from DateTime 1 The date when the Opening Hours Specification becomes valid.
valid through DateTime 1 TThe date after when the Opening Hours Specification is not valid.

Output

Description
An output can be any resource - document, artefact - anything produced by the Public Service. In the context of a Public Service, the output provides an official document or other artefact of the Competent Authority (Public Organization) that permits/authorises/entitles an Agent to (do) something.
Usage
In some cases, the Output of one Public Service will be used as evidence to fulfil a normal requirement of another Public Service. Such relationships should be described in the associated Rule(s).
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, has legal resource, identifier, is about, is legal resource, is used as, name, response time, type.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 0..1 This property represents a free text Description of the Output.
has legal resource Legal Resource 0..* The Has Legal Resource property links an Output to a Legal Resource. It indicates the Legal Resource (e.g. legislation) to which the Output relates, operates or has its legal basis.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Output.
is about Agent 0..*
is legal resource Legal Resource 0..* This property must be used if the Output is one or multiple legal resource
is used as Evidence 0..* This property describes the case where an Output is considered as one or multiple Evidence. This property might be used when a Public Service consumes its own Output as Evidence.
name Text 1 This property represents the official Name of the Output.
response time Duration 0..1 The duration necessary for the Public Service to deliver the Output given that the Beneficiary has provided all the Evidences.
type Code 1 This property represents the type of Output as defined in a controlled vocabulary.

Participation

Description
This model recognises a common role connected with public services, i.e. the Competent Authority. However, this simple structure does not allow statements to be made about those participants, such the start and end date of a contract, nor does it support the inclusion of other roles. The Participation class supports this extra complexity if required, for instance, the description of a service user or a service provider. The model is consistent with the CPOV which in turn is based on the W3C Organization Ontology that supports the common cases simply but allows the complex cases where necessary. The Participation class can be mapped to the Organization Ontology's Membership class that allows more complex relationships and richer metadata to be applied to a role filled by a given Agent.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, identifier, role.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 1 A free text description of the Participation.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Participation.
role Code 1..* Provides the role played. This should be provided using a controlled vocabulary. Since this is an extension mechanism for the CSPV-AP, the controlled vocabulary should be decided to suit local implementations.

Public Organization

Description
Any Organization that is defined as being part of the public sector by a legal framework at any level.
Usage
Within this model the following properties are mandatory: preferred label and spatial. The value of the latter should be a URI from the Administrative Territorial Units Named Authority List maintained by the Publications Office's Metadata Registry.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has channel, has site, legal form.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
has channel Channel 0..* This property indicates the specific Channel through which a Public Organization delivers a Public Service.
has site Site 1..* Indicates a site at which the Organization has some presence even if only indirect (e.g. virtual office or a professional service which is acting as the registered address for a company).
legal form Text 1 The type of entity as defined by the Belgian law

Public Service

Description
This class represents the Public Service itself, as it is described in a public service catalogue. A Public Service is a mandatory or discretionary set of activities performed, or able to be performed, by or on behalf of a public organization, publicly funded and arise from public policy. Services may be for the benefit of an individual, a business, or other public authority, or groups of any of these. A service exists whether it is used or not, and the term 'benefit' may apply in the sense of enabling the fulfilment of an obligation. As defined in the revised version of the European Interoperability Framework, a European public service comprises any service provided by public administrations in Europe, or by other organizations on their behalf, to businesses, citizens or others public administrations.
Usage
For instance, in the description of a public service, the procedure, i.e., actions necessary to apply for a public service, can be described.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, follows, has channel, has competent authority, has contact point, has cost, has legal resource, has participation, has preferred channel, has requirement, identifier, is classified by, is described at, is grouped by, keyword, language, lifecycle status, name, processing time, produces, related, requires, sector, spatial, status, thematic area.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 1 This property represents a free text Description of the Public Service. The description is likely to be the text that potential users of the Public Service see in any public service catalogue. Public administrations are encouraged to include a reasonable level of detail in the description, for instance including basic eligibility requirements for the particular Public Service and contact information.
follows Rule 0..* The Follows property links a Public Service to the Rule(s) under which it operates. The definition of the Rule class is very broad. In a typical case, the competent authority that provides the public service will also define the rules that will implement its own policies. This model is flexible to allow for significant variation in such a scenario.
has channel Channel 0..* This property links the Public Service to any Channel through which an Agent provides, uses or otherwise interacts with the Public Service, such as an online service, phone number or office.
has competent authority Public Organization 1..* This property links a Public Service to a Public Organization, which is the responsible Agent for the delivery of the Public Service. Whether the particular Public Organization provides the public service directly or outsources it is not relevant. The Public Organization that is the Competent Authority of the service is the one that is ultimately responsible for managing and providing the public service. The term Competent Authority is defined in the Services Directive (2006/123/EC) in the following way: “Any body or authority which has a supervisory or regulatory role in a Member State in relation to service activities, including, in particular, administrative authorities, including courts acting as such, professional bodies, and those professional associations or other professional organizations which, in the exercise of their legal autonomy, regulate in a collective manner access to service activities or the exercise thereof”.
has contact point Contact Point 0..* A contact point for the service is almost always helpful. The value of this property, the contact information itself, should be provided using schema:ContactPoint. Note that the contact information should be relevant to the Public Service which may not be the same as contact information for the Competent Authority or any Participant.
has cost Cost 0..* The Has Cost property links a Public Service to one or more instances of the Cost class. It indicates the costs related to the execution of a Public Service for the citizen or business related to the execution of the particular Public Service. Where the cost varies depending on the channel through which the service is accessed, it can be linked to the channel using the If Accessed Through relationship.
has legal resource Legal Resource 0..* The Has Legal Resource property links a Public Service to a Legal Resource. It indicates the Legal Resource (e.g. legislation) to which the Public Service relates, operates or has its legal basis.
has participation Participation 0..* This property links a Public Service to the Participation class. The Participation class facilitates the detailed description of how an Agent participates in or interacts with a Public Service and may include temporal and spatial information.
has preferred channel Channel 0..* This relationship represents the preferred channel for a specific Public Service. Citizen can pay their taxes via paper or via a webpage but the prefereed channel would be the webpage.
has requirement Requirement 0..* The term Competent Authority is defined in the Services Directive (2006/123/EC) in the following way: "Any body or authority which has a supervisory or regulatory role in a Member State in relation to service activities, including, in particular, administrative authorities, including courts acting as such, professional bodies, and those professional associations or other professional organisations which, in the exercise of their legal autonomy, regulate in a collective manner access to service activities or the exercise thereof."
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents a formally-issued Identifier for the Public Service.
is classified by Concept 0..* The Is Classified By property allows to classify the Public Service with any Concept, other than those already foreseen and defined explicitely in the CPSV-AP (Thematic Area, Sector, …). It is a generic property which can be further specialised to make the classification explicit, for instance for classifying public services according level of digitisation, type of audience …
is described at Public Service Dataset 0..* The Is Described At property links a Public Service to the Public Service Dataset(s) in which it is being described.
is grouped by Event 0..* This property links the Public Service to the Event class. Several Public Services may be associated with a particular Event and, likewise, the same Public Service may be associated with several different Events.
keyword Text 0..* This property represents a keyword, term or phrase to describe the Public Service.
language LinguisticSystem 0..* This property represents the language(s) in which the Public Service is available. This could be one language or multiple languages, for instance in countries with more than one official language. The possible values for this property are described in a controlled vocabulary. The recommended controlled vocabularies are listed in section 4.
lifecycle status Code 0..* This property represents the status within the lifecycle of the public service (exp: creation, use or deletion of a Public Service). It doesn't refer to the status within the Public Service process.
name Text 1..* This property represents the official Name of the Public Service.
processing time Duration 0..1 The value of this property is the (estimated) time needed for executing a Public Service. The actual information is provided using the ISO8601 syntax for durations. Some examples are provided below: Duration Syntax - Syntax 5 years - P5Y 1 month - P1M 3 days - P3D 2 days 4 hours - P2DT4H Durations begin with an uppercase P followed by the number and the relevant designator, formally: P[n]Y[n]M[n]DT[n]H[n]M[n]S, where Y is for years, M for months etc. Note that days and times are separated by an uppercase T which also disambiguates M as meaning month (P2M means 2 months) or minute (PT2M means 2 minutes). Durations may also be defined as a number of weeks so P4W means 4 weeks. A full explanation is provided in the Wikipedia page16 that references the official ISO standard17. This approach is consistent with both schema.org and the W3C OWL Time Ontology.
produces Output 0..* The Produces property links a Public Service to one or more instances of the Output class, describing the actual result of executing a given Public Service. Outputs can be any resource, for instance a document, artefact or anything else being produced as a result of executing the Public Service.
related Public Service 0..* This property represents a Public Service related to the particular instance of the Public Service class. Indication of a public service having a relationship with other public services. For example, in Flanders there is a child allowance package, “groeipakket”. It consists of different services that can be requested together. Those different services are including, but not limited to: • Basic benefit for every child • Day care benefit • School benefit • Additional benefit for children that have special needs (e.g., Children with a handicap) • Additional benefit for orphans • …
requires Public Service 0..* One Public Service may require, or in some way make use of, the output of one or several other Public Services. In this case, for a Public Service to be executed, another Public Service must be executed beforehand. The nature of the requirement will be de
sector Code 0..* This property represents the industry or sector a Public Service relates to, or is intended for. For example: environment, safety, housing. Note that a single Public Service may relate to multiple sectors. The possible values for this property are provided as a controlled vocabulary.
spatial Location 0..* A Public Service is likely to be available only within a given area, typically the area covered by a particular public authority. A common usage of the spatial property will be to define the Administrative Territorial Unit(s) - typically a country or region - in which a Public Service is available. The Publications Office of the European Union offers a URI set that is suitable for this purpose, e.g. Malta is identified by http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/atu/MLT, West Flanders by http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/atu/BEL_PR_WVL and so on. In case the ATU code list is not suitable, NUTS or LAU, NAL Place or Geonames are recommended to use, in that order. If those are still not sufficient, we recommend to define your own code list. N.B. The spatial restriction is not meant to be used to describe eligibility or the speed of operation of the service.
status Code 0..1 Indicates whether a Public Service is active, inactive, under development etc. according to a controlled vocabulary.
thematic area Code 0..* This property represents the Thematic Area of a Public Service as described in a controlled vocabulary, for instance social protection, health, recreation, culture and religion, family, traveling economic affairs, tax, staff, environment...

Public Service Dataset

Description
The class describes all the metadata related to a public service. These metadata can be displayed on a regional public service portal and/or a national eGovernment portal.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, identifier, publisher, title.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 1..* This property contains a free-text account of the Dataset. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
identifier Identifier 0..* This property contains the main identifier for the Dataset, e.g. the URI or other unique identifier in the context of the Catalogue.
publisher Agent 1 This property represents the Publisher of the Public Service Dataset, i.e. an entity (organization) responsible for making the Public Service Dataset available.
title Text 1..* This property contains a name given to the Dataset. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the name.

Purpose

Description
This class represents any concepts that can be used to specify the purpose of the Channel and which relates to the Channel through the properties has Channel and has preferred channel.
Usage
This class has been added because different channels serve different purposes : information, activation of the service, assistance, appeal, … More specifically: Each channel could serve several purposes. Each purpose can have one or more preferred channels, and one or more "deprecated" channels (ex. you can introduce you tax declaration in paper but you're not encouraged to do so)
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has channel.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
has channel Channel 0..* This property describes the relationship between a purpose and a channel. Different channels serve different purposes : information, activation of the service, assistance, appeal, ...

Requirement

Description
A normal requirement is an atomic requirement. Some criteria can be expressed with several atomic requirements. A normal requirement can specify the expected value that the requirement response has to contain, or a range of threshold values within which the requirement response has to fit in. The normal requirement may apply to a certain period of time. It also can provide a list of candidate evidences that the responder can use to prove the normal requirement.
Usage
Not all public services are needed or usable by everyone. For example, the visa service operated by European countries is not needed by European citizens but is needed by some citizens from elsewhere, or public services offering unemployment benefits and grants are targeting specific societal groups. This model reuses the Core Criterion and Core Evidence Vocabulary for this class. The CCCEV provides more details but the Requirement class has three mandatory properties.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, has qualified relation, has requirement, has Supporting Evidence, identifier, is derived from, is issued by, is requirement of, name.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 1 A short explanation about the nature, attributes, uses or any other additional information that helps clarify the understanding of the Requirement being instantiated.
has qualified relation Requirement 0..* A described and/or categorised relation to the instance of another Requirement class or subclass.
has requirement Requirement 0..* A sub-Requirement.
has Supporting Evidence Evidence 0..* The Evidence that supplies information (proof, support) for this Requirement.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Requirement.
is derived from Legal Resource 0..* The Legal Resource that is responsible for the creation/initiation of the Requirement.
is issued by Agent 0..* The Agent that has published the Requirement.
is requirement of Requirement 0..* A reference between a sub-Requirement and its parent, more general, Requirement. Inverse relation from hasRequirement. If there is no hierarchy then this relationship is not needed.
name Text 1 This property represents the official Name of the Requirement.

Rule

Description
The Rule class represents a document that sets out the specific rules, guidelines or procedures that the Public Service follows. It includes the terms of service, licence, and authentication requirements of the Public Service. Instances of the Rule class are FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) Expressions, that is, a concrete expression such as a document, of the more abstract concept of the rules themselves.This model does not envisage instances of the Rule class as machine-readable business rules. Detailed modelling of the rules related to Public Services is out of scope of this model.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: description, identifier, implements, language, name.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
description Text 1 This property represents a free text Description of the Rule.
identifier Identifier 1 This property represents an Identifier for the Rule.
implements Legal Resource 0..* The Implements property links a Rule to relevant legislation or policy documents i.e. the Legal Resource under which the Rules are being defined (see section 3.16).
language LinguisticSystem 0..* This property represents the language(s) in which the Rule is available. This could be one or multiple languages, for instance in countries with more than one official language. The possible values for this property are described in a controlled vocabulary.
name Text 1 This property represents the Name of the Rule.

Site

Description
An office or other premise at which the organization is located. Many organizations are spread across multiple sites and many sites will host multiple locations.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: address.
Property Expected Range Cardinality Description Usage Codelist
address Address 1 A property to link an organization to its address. For consistency with INSPIRE, the Location Core Vocabulary's Address class should be used.

Changelog w.r.t. previous version

(non-normative)

No changelog defined.

JSON-LD context

(non-normative)

A reusable JSON-LD context definition for this Core Vocabulary is retrievable at: /doc/iceg/public-service/context/iceg-public-service_en.jsonld