The DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) is a specification based on the Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. Its basic use case is to enable a cross-data portal search for data sets and make public sector data better searchable across borders and sectors. This can be achieved by the exchange of descriptions of data sets among data portals.

The elaboration of the DCAT-AP was a joint initiative of DG CONNECT, the EU Publications Office and the ISA Programme. The specification was elaborated by a multi-disciplinary Working Group with representatives from 16 European Member States, some European Institutions and the US. From April till July 4 Virtual Meetings were held and the specification has gone through a public review period of 2 months.