Summary

The Reporting Requirement Metadata Vocabulary is an ontology designed to model reporting requirements, or 'requests', within legal provisions. The RRMV offers a model aiming to standardise how these requirements are drafted in legislation through the use of a metadata vocabulary. Such structured information can then be integrated into IT systems that manage registries of reporting requirements, aiding in the reduction of administrative burdens and enhancing system interoperability.
RRMV context
This specification describes the main entities that form the core of the RRMV Application Profile (i.e. request, action and action result), with its supportive entities (i.e. agents, agent roles, temporal information, etc.). These terms are aligned with the ELI ontology. To support the understanding and use of RRMV, examples and supporting implementation artefacts such as a JSON-LD context and SHACL validation rules are provided.

Introduction

Context

As EU policies evolve, the demand for data in the form of reporting requirements from Member States and other stakeholders continues to grow. This may potentially lead to an increase in the regulatory reporting burden, as stakeholders need to increasingly monitor regulations to be fully compliant with them.

To address this issue, the European Commission, in its 16 March 2023 Communication on the Long-term competitiveness of the EU, committed to "make a fresh push to rationalize and simplify reporting requirements for companies and administrations with first proposals for each of the green, digital and economic thematic areas before the autumn. The aim should be to reduce such burdens by 25%, without undermining the related policy objectives.”

In line with this effort, streamlining regulatory reporting burdens has been identified as a critical policy need for the European Commission's proposals. The European Commission aims to eliminate redundancies and harmonise reporting requirements to assist policy officers in understanding existing frameworks in detail. By avoiding duplicate requests and considering factors such as dates and reporting frequencies, the Commission seeks to optimise new requirements effectively.

Potential uses of the model

History

The context let to the Study on Regulatory Reporting Standards (SORTIS), a combined effort of the University of Bologna, the University of Liège, and the European Commission. The project aimed to define a vocabulary to standardise and organise regulatory reporting metadata of EU legislations and to develop standard formulations to be able to identify the appropriate data of reporting requirements.

The results of this study included a definition of a model known as Reporting Requirements Metadata Vocabulary (RRMV). This model aimed at defining the set of concepts and categories contained in reporting requirements within existing EU legislations and define their properties and the relations between them. It could serve as a base for interoperable reporting requirements monitoring solutions that could extract information and automatically feed regulatory reporting databases across different policy domains to be accessed by stakeholders.

SORTIS provided an initial data model which is visually depicted below.

SORTIS Model
Model created by Monica Palmirani ( CIRSFID-AlmaAI – University of Bologna), Ashwin Ittoo (University of Liege) and the European Commission on 05/09/2023 in the context of the project "SORTIS - Study On Regulatory reporting Standards"
The initial data model has been further elaborated by a SEMIC action conducted by PwC EU Services, resulting in this specification.

Status

This application profile has the status SEMIC Working Draft published at 2025-01-15.

Information about the process and the decisions involved in the creation of this specification are consultable at the Changelog.

License

Copyright © 2024 European Union. All material in this repository is published under the license EUPL 1.2, unless explicitly otherwise mentioned

Conformance

This data specification has not yet formalized any conformance requirements besides the proper use of the terms according to the formal specification in the sections Main Entities and Supportivie Entities.

Terminology

An Application Profile is a specification that reuses terms from one or more base standards, adding more specificity by identifying mandatory, recommended and optional elements to be used for a particular application, as well as recommendations for controlled vocabularies to be used.

An Annex to an Application Profile is a specification that precises the use of some aspects of the Application Profile for a specific context.

This specification uses the following prefixes to shorten the URIs for readibility.
PrefixNamespace IRI
admshttp://www.w3.org/ns/adms#
dcthttp://purl.org/dc/terms/
elihttp://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#
foafhttp://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/
rdfhttp://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
rdfshttp://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
rrmvhttp://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#
rrmv-codeshttp://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv-codes#
skoshttp://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#
timehttp://www.w3.org/2006/time#
xsdhttp://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#

Overview

Application profile diagram

An overview of RRMV is shown by the UML diagram below. The UML diagram illustrates the specification described in this document. For readability purposes the representation has been condensed as follows:

The cardinalities and qualifications are included in the figure.

This document describes the usage of the following main entities for a correct usage of the Application Profile:
| Action | Action Result | Request |

The main entities are supported by:
| Agent | Agent Role | Agent Type | Concept | Frequency | Instant | Legal Expression | Literal | Manifestation | Organization | Period of Time | Person | Result Type | Role | Role Type | Status | Temporal Duration | Temporal Function | Work |

And supported by these datatypes:
| langString | xsd:anyURI | xsd:boolean | xsd:string |

Main Entities

The main entities are those that form the core of the Application Profile. The properties and their associated constraints that apply in the context of this profile are listed in a tabular form. Each row corresponds to one property.

As this is the toplevel application profile for this usage context the reuse of the terms is indicated by their URIs. If an URI is used from another vocabulary than the namespace 2qy it means that the information is inherited as expressed in the data specification in which that URI is defined.

Action

Definition
An event with at least one agent that is participant in it in a given time.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has agent role , has annotation , has next , has result , has status , related to .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
has agent role Agent Role 0..* The involvement of an agent in a role within this action. The involvement of the agent may be time dependent.
has annotation langString 0..* A note added by way of comment or explanation. This property is included to capture any information of value identified by a domain expert and that is valuable to be shared with other experts.
has next Action 0..* A succeeding action A request may formulate a repetitive sequence of actions. This property chains the actions together.
has result Action Result 0..* A result of an action.
has status Status 0..* A status of this Action.
related to Action 0..* Indicates a somehow related other document, not necessarily a legal resource. This relation cannot reuse the eli URI as it would force the class to be an eli:Expression

Action Result

Definition
The outcome of an Action
Usage Note
It could be an activity (e.g., to do something) or an physical or digital entiity (e.g., report).
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has title , has type .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
has title langString 0..* Title of the action result
has type Result Type 0..* A kind of result

Request

Definition
A portion of legal source expression including a mandate that produces at least one Action.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: changes , has annotation , has frequency , has topic , has URI , is part of , produces , related to .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
changes Request 0..* Indicates that this work or expression legally changes another. This encompasses the notions of amendment, replacement, repeal, or other types of change. This may be a direct change (textual or non-textual amendment) or a consequential or indirect change. This relation cannot reuse the eli URI as it would force the class to be an eli:Expression
has annotation langString 0..* A note added by way of comment or explanation. This property is included to capture any information of value identified by a domain expert and that is valuable to be shared with other experts.
has frequency Frequency 0..* The frequency in which the request is to be executed in case of repetitive mandate.
has topic Concept 0..* The topic of the request.
has URI xsd:anyURI 0..* URI of the Request.
is part of Legal Expression 0..1 A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Replaced eli:is_part_of with dct:isPartOf because of the domain constraint. TBD.
produces Action 0..* The action that is produced by a request.
related to Request 0..* Indicates a somehow related other document, not necessarily a legal resource. This relation cannot reuse the eli URI as it would force the class to be an eli:Expression

Supportive Entities

The supportive entities are supporting the main entities in the Application Profile. They are included in the Application Profile because they form the range of properties.

Agent

Definition
Individual people or groups of people, like an institution with a legal recognition, who have the potential to perform intentional actions for which they can be held responsible.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has type .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
has type Agent Type 0..* A kind of agent

Agent Role

Definition
A supportive class connecting agents with a role they play.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: with role .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
with role Role 0..* The property linking an Agent to Role.

Agent Type

Definition
The kind of Agent.
Subclass of
Concept
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Concept

Definition
An idea or notion; a unit of thought.
Usage Note
However, what constitutes a unit of thought is subjective, and this definition is meant to be suggestive, rather than restrictive.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: preferred label .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
preferred label Literal 1..n A preferred label of the concept. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the label.

Frequency

Definition
Frequency of an Request over time (e.g., every 6 months, each quarter).
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has unit , value .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
has unit Concept 0..1 The unit of the Frequency e.g. Quarter
value Literal 0..1 The value of the frequency.

Instant

Definition
A temporal entity with zero extent or duration
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Legal Expression

Definition
The intellectual realisation of a legal resource in the form of a "sequence of signs" (typically alpha-numeric characters in a legal context). For example, any version of the legal resource whose content is specified and different from others for any reason: language, versions, etc.; Note that ELI ontology accommodates different point of view on what should be considered a new legal resource, or a new legal expression of the same resource. Typically, a consolidated version can be viewed, in the context of ELI, either as separate legal resource (linked to original version and previous consolidated version using corresponding ELI relations), or as a different legal expression of the same legal resource.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: cites , embodies , is part of .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
cites Legal Expression 0..* Citation in the text of the legislation. This may be at the legal resource or legal expression level, as required by the implementation context. This includes verbatim citation and citations in referrals.
embodies Manifestation 0..* Relates a manifestation to the expression that it embodies. Inverse of "is_embodied_by".
is part of Legal Expression 0..* Indicates a work in which this one is physically included. Covers the case of text included in an Official Journal, or an article included in a text.

Literal

Definition
A literal value such as a string or integer; Literals may be typed, e.g. as a date according to xsd:date. Literals that contain human-readable text have an optional language tag as defined by BCP 4715.
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Manifestation

Definition
The physical embodiment of an Expression, either on paper or in any electronic format.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: is embodied by .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
is embodied by Legal Expression 0..* Relates an expression to a manifestation of that expression.

Organization

Definition
Institutions or groups of people that have obtained a legal recognition as a group and can act collectively as agents.
Subclass of
Agent
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Period of Time

Definition
A temporal entity with non-zero extent or duration.
Usage Note
The value of the start time and end time properties should be different,and/or a duration should be given.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: duration , end time , has function , is incomplete , start time .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
duration Temporal Duration 0..1 Duration of a temporal entity
end time Instant 0..1 Time instant at which the Period was terminated.
has function Temporal Function 0..* The function the temporal infomation plays For instance as deadline, moment of entering into force, etc.
is incomplete xsd:boolean 0..1 The temporal information is incomplete.
start time Instant 0..1 Time instant at which the Period was initiated

Person

Definition
A real person who live or has lived.
Subclass of
Agent
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Result Type

Definition
The kind of Action Result
Subclass of
Concept
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Role

Definition
Function played by an Agent involved in a Request.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: has type .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
has type Role Type 0..* A kind of Role

Role Type

Definition
The kind of Role played by an Agent.
Subclass of
Concept
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Status

Definition
Status of Action.
Subclass of
Concept
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Temporal Duration

Definition
Time extent; duration of a time interval separate from its particular start position
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Temporal Function

Definition
Function of the temporal infomation in legislation.
Usage Note
for instance as deadline, moment of entering into force, etc.
Subclass of
Concept
Properties
This specification does not impose any additional requirements to properties for this entity.

Work

Definition
Any distinct intellectual creation (i.e., the intellectual content), in the context of ELI.
Properties
For this entity the following properties are defined: is realized by , is realized by .
Property Range Card Definition Usage
is realized by Legal Expression 0..* Relates an expression to a work realised through that expression. Inverse of "is_realized_by".
is realized by Legal Expression 0..* Relates an expression to a work realised through that expression. Inverse of "is_realized_by".

Datatypes

The following datatypes are used within this specification.
Class Definition
The datatype of language-tagged string values.
An anyURI represents an Internationalized Resource Identifier Reference (IRI).
A boolean represents the values of two-valued logic.
The string datatype represents character strings in XML.

Controlled Vocabularies

The usage of controlled vocabularies in RRMV conforms to the best practices as set by the Publications Office. In the context of this specification, classes mapped on the URI skos:Concept always indicate the usage of some controlled vocabulary.

In addition, the following controlled vocabularies MUST be used for the properties listed in the table below. The MUST be used interpretation means that the range value space of the property is closed under the controlled vocabulary. Validation systems SHOULD produce errors.

Property URIUsed for ClassVocabulary nameVocabulary URIUsage note
rrmv:hasTypeAction ResultAction Result TypeThis controlled vocabulary is under construction.
rrmv:hasTypeRoleRole TypeThis controlled vocabulary is under construction.
rrmv:hasTypeAgentAgent TypeThis controlled vocabulary is under construction.
rrmv:hasstatusActionStatusThis controlled vocabulary is under construction.
A first version of the controlled vocabularies can be downloaded as the file rrmv-codes.ttl.

The EU Vocabularies contains a codelist for frequencies. It should be considered if this codelist is not better suited to address the usecase of the class Frequency.

Considered instances are ReportInProgress, report, actionResult, plan, standard.

Considered instances are bearer, addressee, addresser, proposer, implementor.

Considered instances are company, individual, association, publicAdminisitration, agency.

Considered instances are completed, implemented, suspended, activated, postponed, reiterated, duplicated, deleted.

Considered entitities are deadline, validity.

Example

In this section we illustrate the usage of the RRMV with examples. The examples in this section are fictitious; their sole purpose is to illustrate the use of the application profile to ensure a clear understanding of the model.

A Request expressed in a legislation

Example 1 - Relating a Request with legislation

The example uses the ELI as unique reference for the legal document: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/1011/oj. Question to be raised is whether implementations should always use this one? Or other like the CELEX are allowed? The fact that a legal document has many identifiers may raise implementation questions. It is unclear if this needs to be discussed in the context of RRMV.

A Request is an interpretation of the legislation with the objective to track reporting obligations. As such it has a strong connection with the legislation, but it is not the THE legislation. If it would be the same then one should reflect on why the existing ELI machine readible annotations are not sufficient to track and followup reporting obligations. In the following we assume that this reflection has happened and that the conclusion was they are different entities with a different lifecylce, yet strongly connected.

Given the above context, it is assumed that requests are managed in systems outside the legislation. It is not needed to annotate the legation with a RRMV interpretation to be formally adopted. Therefore the structure of the identifier of Request is not determined by RRMV. For the sake of readibility the examples assume that the URI is the identifier of the Request (a Linked Data implementation).

Annotation example

This example can be downloaded at poladv.ttl.

Support for implementation

Implementing the RRMV data specification in a data exchange between two systems raises also technical questions.

JSON-LD context file

One common technical question is the format in which the data is being exchanged. For RRMV conformance, it is not mandatory that this happens in a RDF serialisation, but the exchanged format SHOULD be unambiguously be transformable into RDF. For the format JSON, a popular format to exchange data between systems, RRMV provides a JSON-LD context file. JSON-LD is a W3C Recommendation [[json-ld11]] that provided a standard approach to interpret JSON structures as RDF. The provided JSON-LD context file can be used by implementers to base their data exchange upon, and so create a RRMV conformant data exchange. This JSON-LD context is not normative, i.e. other JSON-LD contexts are allowed to create a a conformant RRMV data exchange.

The JSON-LD context file downloadable here.

Validation

To verify if the data exchange is (technically) conformant to RRMV, the exchanged data can be validated using the provided SHACL shapes. SHACL [[shacl]] is a W3C Recommendation to express constraints on a RDF knowledge graph. The provided SHACL shapes allow to check whether data expressed in a RDF serialization is valid. As it should be possible for RRMV conformance to transform the data exchange in RDF, these SHACL shapes can be used in any data exchange context. However, likewise the use of the JSON-LD context, the provided SHACL shapes provide only a start point for implementers.

The file rrmv-SHACL.ttl is the generated SHACL representation.

OWL Representation

A OWL representation that corresponds to this specification can be found at rrmv.owl.

The code lists are availables in the file rrmv-codes.ttl.

Quick Reference of Classes and Properties

This section provides a condensed tabular overview of the mentioned classes and properties in this specification. The properties are grouped under headings mandatory, recommended, optional and deprecated. These terms have the following meaning.
ClassClass IRIProperty TypePropertyProperty IRI
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
has agent role
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasAgentRole
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
has annotation
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasAnnotation
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
has next
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasNext
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
has result
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasResult
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
has status
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasStatus
Action
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Action
related to
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#related_to
Action Result
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#ActionResult
has title
http://purl.org/dc/terms/title
Action Result
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#ActionResult
has type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasType
Agent
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Agent
has type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasType
Agent Role
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#AgentRole
with role
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#withRole
Agent Type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#AgentType
Concept
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#Concept
preferred label
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel
Frequency
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Frequency
has unit
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasUnit
Frequency
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Frequency
value
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#value
Instant
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#Instant
Legal Expression
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#LegalExpression
cites
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#cites
Legal Expression
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#LegalExpression
embodies
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#embodies
Legal Expression
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#LegalExpression
is part of
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#is_part_of
Literal
http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Literal
Manifestation
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Manifestation
is embodied by
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#is_embodied_by
Organization
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Organization
Period of Time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#ProperInterval
duration
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#hasTemporalDuration
Period of Time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#ProperInterval
end time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#hasEnd
Period of Time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#ProperInterval
has function
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasFunction
Period of Time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#ProperInterval
is incomplete
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#isIncomplete
Period of Time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#ProperInterval
start time
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#hasBeginning
Person
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Person
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
changes
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#changes
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
has annotation
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasAnnotation
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
has frequency
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasFrequency
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
has topic
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasTopic
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
has URI
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasURI
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
is part of
http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
produces
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#produces
Request
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Request
related to
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#related_to
Result Type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#ResultType
Role
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Role
has type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#hasType
Role Type
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#RoleType
Status
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#Status
Temporal Duration
http://www.w3.org/2006/time#TemporalDuration
Temporal Function
http://data.europa.eu/2qy/rrmv#TemporalFunction
Work
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Work
is realized by
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#is_realized_by
Work
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#Work
is realized by
http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#is_realized_by

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge the contributions made to this document by all members of the working group. Special thanks goes to Monica Palmirani of the University of Bolonga. This work was undertaken under the lead of the Digital Ready Policy Making team - DIGIT.B2 under with the support of SEMIC by Interoperable Europe.

Past and current contributors are : Cristina Ioana Condurat, Vidas Daudaravicius, Lorena Hernandez, Serge Le Gal, Kuban Michal, Giuseppe Ascone Modica, Koen Tzeni Myriam, Fernando Nubla Durango, Joao Diogo Nunes Cartaxo, Stefan Paduraru, Monica Posada, Tamas Schlemmer, Georges Serrano, Robin Smith, Cristina Stanciulescu, Mario Tenreiro, Tomas Vagner, Celina Valverde, Jean-Christophe Willain .