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DCAT - Data Catalog Vocabulary

By using DCAT to describe datasets in data catalogs, publishers increase discoverability and enable applications easily to consume metadata from multiple catalogs. It further enables decentralized publishing of catalogs and facilitates federated dataset search across sites. Aggregated DCAT metadata can serve as a manifest file to facilitate digital preservation.

Status
W3C Candidate Recommendation 05 November 2013
Sponsor

The standard was first developed and published by DERI and and saw adoption by a number of organizations. The standard was further devoped by the W3C eGov Interest Group with additional work being done by the W3c Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group.
Standard's website
http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/

Extensions

Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS)

Used to describe semantic assets, defined as highly reusable metadata (for example: XML schemata, generic data models) and reference data (for example: code lists, taxonomies, dictionaries, vocabularies) that are used for eGovernment system development.

Tools

CKAN

Tool which utilizes the DCAT standard. CKAN is a powerful data management system that makes data accessible – by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data.

CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organizations) wanting to make their data open and available. Portals that use CKAN include http://data.gov.uk and http://open-data.europa.eu. The United States http://data.gov uses a version of CKAN wrapped up as the Open Government Platform.

Esri Geoportal Server

Geoportal Server is a standards-based, open source product that enables discovery and use of geospatial resources including data and services.