W3CThe W3C Organization Ontology provides a generic, reusable vocabulary for publishing linked data about organizational structures. Widely adopted in government open data initiatives, it offers a common foundation for describing how organizations are composed, how people relate to them, and how organizations change over time.
Background
The Organization Ontology was originally developed outside of W3C but was extended and formalized within the Government Linked Data Working Group. It was published as a W3C Recommendation on 16 January 2014, edited by Dave Reynolds of Epimorphics Ltd. The ontology was motivated by the need for a standardized way to publish organizational information as linked data, particularly for government transparency initiatives in the UK and EU.
Purpose & Scope
ORG addresses the type of information typically found in organizational charts. It provides terms for:
- Organizational structure -- Organizations, sub-organizations, organizational units, and their hierarchical composition
- Membership and reporting -- How people relate to organizations through membership, roles, and posts; reporting chains
- Location -- Sites and buildings associated with organizations
- Organizational history -- Change events such as mergers, splits, and renamings
The ontology is deliberately domain-neutral. It does not prescribe classification schemes for organization types, purposes, or roles; instead, it provides extension points where domain-specific vocabularies can be plugged in through profiles.
Key Classes and Properties
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| Organization | A collection of people organized for a common purpose |
| FormalOrganization | An organization recognized in legal jurisdictions |
| OrganizationalUnit | A unit meaningful only in context of a containing organization |
| Membership | N-ary relationship between an agent, an organization, and a role |
| Role | A role within an organization |
| Post | A position that may or may not be filled |
| Site | A building or location associated with an organization |
| ChangeEvent | An event resulting in organizational change |
| OrganizationalCollaboration | A collaboration between organizations |
Key properties include subOrganizationOf, hasUnit, memberOf, hasMember, headOf, reportsTo, hasSite, basedAt, classification, and purpose.
Serializations & Technical Formats
The ontology is published in Turtle and RDF/XML at the namespace URI http://www.w3.org/ns/org#. It imports terms from FOAF, SKOS, and OWL, and can be serialized in any standard RDF format.
Governance & Maintenance
ORG was published by the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group. As a W3C Recommendation, it is a stable specification. An errata page tracks issues discovered after publication. The specification encourages the creation of profiles that constrain and extend the ontology for specific domains.
Notable Implementations
The UK government's reference data portal used ORG extensively for publishing departmental structures as linked data. The EU's Core Public Organization Vocabulary (CPOV) extends ORG for European public administration contexts. Italian, Spanish, and other European government linked data portals have adopted ORG-based patterns for organizational data.
Related Standards
- SKOS -- Used for classification schemes within ORG
- FOAF -- ORG references
foaf:Agentfor representing people - Core Public Organization Vocabulary (CPOV) -- An EU ISA extension of ORG