DE4A Semantic interoperability

<<insert high-level diagram>>

Title

Component	Description
IAL	Issuing Authority Locator (IAL) component helps the Data Consumer (DC) to find out the issuing authority that can provide the required evidence within a particular country.
ESL	Evidence Service Locator (ESL) helps the DC to locate the evidence service able to provide a canonical evidence from a particular competent issuing authority, along with the relevant evidence service characteristics
CAAR	Cross-border Access Authorisation Registry (CAAR) is the authorization controller that allows for checking access to specific evidence types initiated by a specific DC to a selected data owner (DO).
MOR	Multilingual Ontology Repository (MOR) provides a common understanding of the semantics and syntax of canonical evidence types, additional parameters of provisions, and code lists used for the cross-border evidence exchange, by describing all the terms that compose them.
Canonical Evidence	Canonical Evidence is the canonical form of domestic evidence according to a common data structure and format. DE4A has defined a canonical form for each of the evidence types required by the procedures involved in the cross-border evidence exchange.

According to the European Interoperability Framework,

Semantic interoperability ensures that the precise format and meaning of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between parties, in other words ‘what is sent is what is understood’. In the EIF, semantic interoperability covers both semantic and syntactic aspects:

• The semantic aspect refers to the meaning of data elements and the relationship between them. It includes developing vocabularies and schemata to describe data exchanges, and ensures that data elements are understood in the same way by all communicating parties;
• The syntactic aspect refers to describing the exact format of the information to be exchanged in terms of grammar and format.

In this sense, semantic interoperability agreements need to be set up and manage as part of the interoperability governance and the public service governance. In DE4A, there are concepts and information that need to have a common understanding and the semantic assets of the Information Desk implement the corresponding semantic interoperability agreements. The main concepts of such agreements and the components that implement them are:

• Canonical evidence type: canonical form for each evidence type that has been identified by the DE4A pilots as needed by their online procedures and issued by cross-border authorities. The full semantic description of the terms that compose each canonical evidence type is available trough the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository (MOR).
• Provision: availability of a data service according to a exchange pattern for issuing a canonical evidence type by a issuing authority (data owner) corresponding to an administrative territorial unit within a country. Each provision can also require some additional parameters for properly identity the data subject and the evidence. The full semantic description of provisions is available through the DE4A Issuing Authority Locator (IAL), obtaining the provision information from an administrative territorial level or unit and a canonical evidence type. The additional parameters are semantically described in the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository.
• Data Service Endpoint: information for actually use of the data services that are part of the DE4A evidence exchange system. This information is available through the DE4A Evidence Service Locator (ESL), obtaining the data service endpoint information from a issuing authority (data owner) and a canonical evidence type. Besides, the DE4A Information Exchange Model (IEM) implements the semantic agreement for the exchange of business messages through the data services.
• Multilingual term: term uniquely identified and semantically described from the semantic and the syntactic point of view for a common understanding. The meaning of a term is described in every EU official language through automatic translations from English or translations verified by national domain experts. The data type of a term can be a simple type (e.g. string) or a complex type; complex types are compose by other simple and/or complex types. A special complex type is either a canonical evidence type, or a set of additional parameters for a provision or a code list. The full semantic description of all the terms used in DE4A is available trough the DE4A Multilingual Ontology Repository (MOR).