Maintenance Roles and Responsibilities

Maintenance Roles and Responsibilities

Draft for discussion and revision by the DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team and the Data.gov team.

This page describes the proposed roles and responsibilities for maintaining the DCAT-US v3.0 metadata standard.

The maintenance process is intended to provide a clear and repeatable structure for:

• Reviewing proposed changes to the DCAT-US metadata standard
• Triaging issues and questions
• Coordinating schema updates
• Maintaining documentation
• Communicating releases to agencies
• Gathering agency implementation feedback
• Supporting annual retrospective review

The DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team governs schema maintenance decisions. The Data.gov team at GSA maintains the DCAT-US repository and coordinates the maintenance cycle.

Major version changes, such as DCAT-US v4.0, are planned separately.

---

Summary of Roles

Role or Group	Primary Responsibility
DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team	Governs schema maintenance decisions and reviews proposed changes
Data.gov Team	Maintains the repository, coordinates the maintenance cycle, manages releases, and supports documentation and outreach
Schema Team	Provides technical review and confirms schema-specific implementation details
Documentation Contributors	Maintain resources.data.gov content, examples, migration guidance, and changelog updates
Participating Agencies	Provide implementation feedback, examples, blockers, and practical impact assessment
Agency Points of Contact	Coordinate agency-specific feedback, questions, and follow-up
CDO Council Channels	Support broader agency communication and awareness
Data.gov Help	Receives questions related to Data.gov harvesting, documentation, and coordination

---

DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team

The DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team governs schema maintenance decisions for DCAT-US v3.0 and provides interagency review of proposed changes, clarifications, and implementation concerns.

The team supports the ongoing maintenance of DCAT-US v3.0 by reviewing prioritized issues, considering agency implementation impacts, and helping determine whether proposed changes should be approved, deferred, closed, or addressed through documentation.

---

Responsibilities

The DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team is responsible for:

• Reviewing prioritized DCAT-US GitHub issues
• Reviewing issues assigned to Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 milestones
• Assigning issue dispositions
• Approving issues for pull requests, when appropriate
• Deferring issues to a future cycle, when appropriate
• Closing issues as won’t fix, when appropriate
• Identifying issues that need more information
• Identifying issues that should be handled through documentation or FAQ updates
• Reviewing potential breaking changes
• Considering agency implementation impacts
• Reviewing proposed deprecation notices
• Supporting decisions related to release scope
• Supporting the annual retrospective
• Identifying priorities for the next maintenance cycle

---

Issue Dispositions

When reviewing issues, the DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team may assign one of the following dispositions:

Disposition	Meaning
Approved for PR	The issue should move forward as a pull request
Deferred	The issue should be reconsidered in a future cycle
Closed as won’t fix	The issue will not be addressed through a schema or documentation change
Needs more information	Additional information is needed before a decision can be made
Documentation update only	The issue should be addressed through documentation, examples, FAQs, or guidance rather than a schema change

---

Schema Maintenance Decisions

The DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team should consider the following when making schema maintenance decisions:

• Whether the issue is a bug, enhancement, or question
• Whether the proposed change is breaking or non-breaking
• Whether the issue affects agency implementation burden
• Whether the issue affects validation behavior
• Whether the issue affects Data.gov harvesting or display
• Whether the issue affects existing data.json implementations
• Whether the issue requires documentation, examples, or migration guidance
• Whether a deprecation notice is required
• Whether a 90-day agency implementation window is required
• Whether the issue should be deferred to a later release cycle
• Whether the issue should be handled outside the DCAT-US maintenance process

---

Data.gov Team

The Data.gov team at GSA maintains the DCAT-US repository and coordinates the maintenance cycle.

The Data.gov team supports the operational side of the maintenance process, including issue triage, milestone management, release coordination, documentation coordination, and agency communication.

---

Responsibilities

The Data.gov team is responsible for:

• Maintaining the DCAT-US GitHub repository
• Coordinating the semi-annual maintenance cycle
• Triaging new issues within two weeks of submission
• Applying issue classification labels
• Cross-filing issues received through Zendesk or CDO Council channels, when appropriate
• Assigning issues to milestones, when appropriate
• Preparing issue lists for DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team review
• Coordinating pull requests for approved changes
• Managing release milestones
• Coordinating release readiness activities
• Tagging point releases using semantic versioning
• Preparing or coordinating changelog entries
• Confirming whether the conformsTo URI requires updating
• Coordinating resources.data.gov documentation updates
• Coordinating validation of example records
• Publishing or coordinating release notes
• Supporting agency outreach
• Supporting annual retrospective analysis
• Tracking follow-up actions from maintenance meetings

---

Issue Triage Responsibilities

The Data.gov team applies a classification label to each new issue within two weeks of submission.

Issue labels include:

Label	Meaning
bug	The schema behaves incorrectly or inconsistently with the specification
enhancement	A proposed addition or improvement to the schema
question	A request for clarification on schema intent or behavior

During triage, the Data.gov team determines whether an issue should be:

• Assigned to a release milestone
• Left in the backlog
• Referred to the DCAT Interagency Maintenance Team
• Routed to the Data.gov Team Board
• Routed to the Harvest Source Management process
• Addressed through documentation
• Addressed through FAQs
• Closed as out of scope
• Marked as needing more information

---

Release Coordination Responsibilities

For each maintenance release, the Data.gov team coordinates:

• Pull request readiness
• Release scope confirmation
• Documentation updates
• Example validation
• Changelog entries
• GitHub release notes
• Release tagging
• Agency outreach
• Grace period language
• Deprecation notices, if applicable
• Post-release follow-up

---

Schema Team

The Schema Team provides technical review and schema-specific guidance for approved or proposed changes.

The Schema Team may include Data.gov technical staff, repository maintainers, or other technical contributors familiar with the DCAT-US schema structure and implementation requirements.

---

Responsibilities

The Schema Team is responsible for:

• Reviewing proposed schema changes for technical feasibility
• Supporting pull request development or review
• Confirming whether a proposed change is breaking or non-breaking
• Reviewing schema consistency
• Reviewing validation impacts
• Reviewing compatibility with existing implementations
• Confirming whether the conformsTo URI requires updating for a new version
• Reviewing security considerations for relevant fields
• Supporting release readiness review

---

Security Considerations

Schema changes touching any of the following fields must include a security considerations note in