About Semantic Gov
Plain-English guides to the ideas, standards and laws behind joined-up public services, for the people who design, build, buy and study them.
What we publish
Semantic Gov explains how public administrations make their services and data work together: interoperability frameworks, shared vocabularies and linked data, digital identity, base registries and the rules that govern them. The guides are written for people who work in or with the public sector in the UK and Europe, and for students and researchers who want a clear starting point before reading the standards themselves.
How we work
- Sources first. Legal and policy facts come from the official texts and the bodies responsible for them. Every guide lists its sources with the date we checked them.
- In practice. Every guide ends with what the approach fixes, what tends to get in the way and a sensible place to start.
- Plain English. We spell out acronyms, explain technical terms when we use them and avoid jargon where we can.
- Kept current. Laws, standards and deadlines change. We review guides and update them when the official position changes.
Who writes the guides
The guides are researched and written by the Semantic Gov editors. We don’t sell software or consultancy.
Not legal advice
Our guides explain how frameworks and regulations work in general. They aren’t legal advice for a particular organisation or project; for that, use the official texts and your own legal and data protection advisers.