A family of international standards for data interchange on the web. RDF is based on the idea of identifying things using web identifiers or HTTP URIs and describing resources in terms of simple properties and property values.

The original data, in machine-readable form, underlying any application, visualisation, published research or interpretation, etc. An expression that refers to data in its original state that has not been processed, aggregated or manipulated in any other way. It is also defined as ‘primary’.

Sources: ODH, EU OD

A type of question accepted by a database about the data it holds. A complex query may ask the database to select records according to some criteria, aggregate certain quantities across those records, etc. Many databases accept queries in the specialised language SQL or dialects of it. A web API allows an app to send queries to a database over the web.

Anyone who distributes and makes available data or other content. Data publishers include government departments and agencies, research establishments, NGOs, media organisations, commercial companies, individuals, etc.

Any undertaking active in the areas set out in point (b) of Article 1(1) of the OD Directive over which the public sector bodies may exercise directly or indirectly a dominant influence by virtue of their ownership of it, their financial participation therein, or the rules which govern it.

Data that is collected, produced, reproduced, processed, disseminated, or controlled by the public sector bodies in many areas of their activity while accomplishing their institutional tasks.  The work of government involves collecting huge amounts of data, much of which is not confidential (economic data, demographic data, spending data, crime data, transport data, etc).

Public sector body’ means the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law or associations formed by one or more such authorities or one or more such bodies governed by public law.

Content to which copyright does not apply, for example because it has expired or it never existed, is free for any kind of use by anyone and is said to be in the public domain. CC0, one of the licences of Creative Commons, is a ‘public domain dedication’ which attempts so far as possible to renounce all rights in the work and place it in the public domain. Source: ODH

Pseudonymization is a data management and de-identification procedure by which personally identifiable information fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms. Pseudonymization is suggested as one of the technical measures that can help with compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and its obligations for data controllers to ensure secure processing of personal data.

 (i) Proprietary software is owned by a company which restricts the ways in which it can be used. Users normally need to pay to use the software, cannot read or modify the source code, and cannot copy the software or re-sell it as part of their own product. Common examples include Microsoft Excel and Adobe Acrobat. Non-proprietary software is usually open source.