We would like to announce the availability of an ontology for
description of organizational structures including government organizations.
This was motivated by the needs of the data.gov.uk project. After some
checking we were unable to find an existing ontology that precisely met
our needs and so developed this generic core, intended to be extensible
to particular domains of use.
The ontology is documented at [1] and some discussion on the
requirements and design process are at [2].
W3C have been kind enough to offer to host the ontology within the W3C
namespace [3]. This does not imply that W3C endorses the ontology, nor
that it is part of any standards process at this stage. They are simply
providing a stable place for posterity.
Any changes to the ontology involving removal of, or modification to,
existing terms (but not necessarily addition of new terms) will be
announced to these lists. We suggest that any discussion take place on
the public-lod list to avoid further cross-posting.
Dave, Jeni, John
[1] http://www.epimorphics.com/public/vocabulary/org.html
[2]
http://www.epimorphics.com/web/category/category/developers/organization-ontology
[3] http://www.w3.org/ns/org# (available in RDF/XML, N3, Turtle via
conneg or append .rdf/.n3/.ttl)
