DRAFT Digital Policy Working Group Charter

The mission of the Digital Policy Working Group is to develop and maintain the foundational digital policy layer for the digital economy, enabling data, AI, digital assets, and services to be governed through a common, machine-actionable, rules-based language. By providing a shared semantic framework for expressing and evaluating usage, compliance, and governance policies, organisations are able to exchange digital resources with confidence, automate policy-centric systems, and build interoperable ecosystems at global scale.

Join the Digital Policy Working Group.

This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date 01 January 2027
End date 31 December 2028
Chairs [chair name] (affiliation) (Remember that Listing W3C-Member organizations names is a W3C Member benefit. Non-W3C-Member (co)-Chair(s) are to be affiliated as 'W3C Invited Expert'.)
Team Contacts [team contact name] (0.1 FTE)
Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: 1-hour calls will be held bi-weekly
Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 3 per year.
See also this group calendar

Motivation and Background

The ODRL V2.2 Recommendations (the Model and the Vocabulary) were finalised in 2018 and have more recently achieved several notable adoptions across the global community. These include, for example, adoption by the JPEG Trust standard as the default policy language, and adopted across Europe by organisations in the Data Spaces domain and intellectual property/copyright sectors. These real-world usages are both significant in terms of the recognition of the applicability of ODRL to a wide range of industry scenarios, as well as clear indicator of industries emerging future needs for robust and flexible policy mechanisms. A recent W3C ODRL Workshop was organised to capture the momentum (see report) and to propose new work to ensure that ODRL can continue to address the future needs of policy-centric communities.

Scope

The scope of this Working Group is to augment and extend the two current ODRL recommendations to incorporate new features and expanded capabilities. More specifically:

Out of Scope

The following features are out of scope, and will not be addressed by this Working group.

  • Building or mandating specific enforcement infrastructure
  • Legal interpretation of policy content

Deliverables

Updated document status is available on the group publication status page.

Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable at the time of the charter approval. Expected completion indicates when the deliverable is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state.

Normative Specifications

The Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:

ODRL 3.0 Semantic Model

This specification will define the formal conceptual and computational foundation for ODRL policies. It will strengthen the semantics of the current ODRL information model and provide the normative foundation upon which the vocabulary, profiles, conformance mechanisms and implementation architecture of ODRL 3.0 can be built. This specification will only define the core language, expressed in OWL, and validated by a SHACL Profile.

Draft state: ODRL Information Model 2.2 (W3C Recommendation, 15 Feb 2018) developed by the W3C POE Working Group

Adopted draft: ODRL Formal Semantics adopted from W3C ODRL Community Group

Expected completion: Q4 2027

ODRL 3.0 Vocabulary and Registry

This specification will provide the authoritative, modular and extensible vocabulary framework for expressing policies using the ODRL Semantic Model. It will define and organise the core policy concepts, including policy types, actions, constraints, parties, assets and other terms required to express interoperable digital policies, while providing mechanisms for extending ODRL for particular domains and communities.

Draft state: ODRL Vocabulary & Expression 2.2 (W3C Recommendation, 15 Feb 2018) developed by the W3C POE Working Group

Adopted draft: ODRL Community Vocabulary adopted from W3C ODRL Community Group

Adopted draft: ODRL Profile: AI Vocabulary adopted from W3C ODRL Community Group

Expected completion: Q4 2027

ODRL 3.0 Profile Declaration

This specification defines a standard mechanism for declaring the particular subset, extensions, constraints and capabilities of ODRL supported within a specific domain or implementation. Profiles will allow communities to use ODRL without requiring every implementation to support the complete conceptual and computational complexity of the language. The Profiles will be validated, with the Core Profile, utilising SHACL Profiles.

Draft state: No draft

Adopted draft: ODRL V2.2 Profile Best Practices adopted from W3C ODRL Community Group

Expected completion: Q1 2028

ODRL 3.0 Conformance Evaluation

This specification will establish how implementations demonstrate that they correctly process ODRL policies. Rather than limiting conformance to checking whether a policy is syntactically valid, the conformance evaluation framework will test the behaviour of policy-processing software, such as policy engines, validators, evaluators, compliance checkers, policy converters and other ODRL processors conform with the ODRL specifications.

Draft state: No draft

Adopted draft: ODRL Formal Semantics adopted from W3C ODRL Community Group

Expected completion: Q2 2028

ODRL 3.0 Architecture and Protocols

This specification will define how ODRL operates as a policy layer within a broader ecosystem of digital policy, identity, trust, provenance and enforcement technologies. It will describe the architectural relationships between ODRL policies and complementary technologies such as verifiable credentials, identity frameworks, provenance, data-policy standards and domain-specific policy systems. It will also address how policies are discovered, exchanged, translated, evaluated and ultimately acted upon by policy-processing systems, while defining appropriate interfaces and protocols where standardisation is required.

Draft state: No draft

Expected completion: Q3 2028

These five key deliverables provide the Digital Policy community with a coherent ODRL 3.0 framework, consisting of:/

  • The Semantic Model defining what ODRL means,
  • The Vocabulary and Registry defining what can be expressed,
  • The Profile Declaration defining which ODRL parts and extensions are used in a particular context,
  • The Conformance Evaluation defining whether an implementation behaves correctly, and
  • The Architecture and Protocols defining how ODRL operates within the wider policy ecosystem.

Tentative Deliverables

Depending on the incubation progress, interest from multiple implementers, and the consensus of the Group participants, the Working Group may adopt the following documents as Rec-track specifications

Market Data Profile for ODRL

This specification defines the semantics and vocabulary needed to express the rights and obligations controlling the use of financial market data using ODRL

Draft state: Proposal in Market Data Profile for ODRL 1.0 developed by W3C Rights Automation for Market Data Community Group

ODRL Data Spaces Profile

This specification defines the semantics and vocabulary needed to support Data Spaces.

Draft state: Proposal in ODRL Profile: Data Spaces developed by the W3C ODRL Data Community Group

ODRL DPV Profile

This specification defines the use of ODRL with the Data Privacy Vocabulary.

Draft state: Proposal in Guide for using DPV with ODRL developed by the W3C Data Privacy Vocabularies (DPV) and Controls Community Group

ODRL AI/Data Governance Profile

This specification defines the use of ODRL policies for Data and AI governance.

Draft state: Proposal in ODRL Profile: AI Vocabulary developed by the W3C ODRL Community Group

ODRL/PLUS Image Profile

This specification defines the use of ODRL policies to support PLUS licenses for images.

Draft state: No Draft

Other Deliverables

ODRL 3.0 Primer

This specification supports the community understanding of ODRL digital policies

Draft state: No Draft

ODRL 3.0 Best Practices

This specification supports web developers when building ODRL applications and services.

Draft state: Proposal in ODRL V2.2 Implementation Best Practices developed by the W3C ODRL Community Group

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

  • ODRL Use case and requirement documents;
  • ODRL Test suite and implementation report for the specifications;
  • ODRL Visualisations to support development of consistent ODRL user experiences.
  • ODRL Profiles for specific communities.

Timeline

Put here a timeline view of all deliverables.

  • Month YYYY: First teleconference
  • Month YYYY: First face-to-face meeting
  • Month YYYY: Requirements and Use Cases for FooML
  • Month YYYY: FPWD for FooML
  • Month YYYY: Requirements and Use Cases for BarML
  • Month YYYY: FPWD FooML Primer

Success Criteria

In order to advance beyond Candidate Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent interoperable implementations of every feature defined in the specification, where interoperability can be verified by passing open test suites. In order to advance beyond Candidate Recommendation, each normative specification must have an open test suite of every feature defined in the specification.

There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.

To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications in Candidate Recommendation or to features that have deployed implementations should have tests. Testing efforts should be conducted via the Web Platform Tests project.

Each specification should contain separate sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and users.

Each specification should contain a section on accessibility that describes the benefits and impacts, including ways specification features can be used to address them, and recommendations for maximising accessibility in implementations.

This group is expected to be guided by the following documents:

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least 3 months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

W3C Groups

Dataset Exchange Working Group
Collaborate on DCAT and ODRL integration, and the use of the Profiles Vocabulary for ODRL Profiles.
Data Shapes Working Group
Collaborate on using SHACL Profiling for ODRL Profiles.
Linked Web Storage Working Group
Collaborate on the use of ODRL in the Linked Wed Storage Protocol.
Privacy Working Group
Collaborate on using ODRL for the Global Privacy Control specification.
Publishing Maintenance Working Group
Collaborate on the use of ODRL in W3C Publishing recommendations.
Social Web Working Group
Collaborate on the use of ODRL and the use of Activity specification in context of the Social Web.
Verifiable Credentials Working Group
Colaborate on the use of Verifiable Credentials with ODRL Policies.

External Organizations

JPEG Trust
Collaborate on the use of ODRL with JPEG Trust (ISO/IEC 21617).
IPTC
Collaborate with IPTC and RightsML.
SOLID Community Group
Collaborate with SOLID Community to support ODRL Policies.
Data Privacy Vocabularies and Controls Community Group
Collaborate and align work between ODRL and DPV.
Gaia-X
Collaborate and align work between ODRL and Data Spaces.
PLUS Coalition
Collaborate and align work between ODRL and the PLUS licences for images.

Participation

To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a working day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication. The group also welcomes non-participants to make technical contributions for ongoing work, provided they agree to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

The Chairs should periodically look through the non-W3C-Member contributors to the Working Group or the [name of an associated Community Group, if any] and consider whether each one should be invited to participate as an Invited Expert. If a non-W3C-Member contributor would like to participate in meetings, they are encouraged to apply to be an Invited Expert.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Digital Policy Working Group home page.

Most Digital Policy Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work pick one, or both, as appropriate: on the public mailing list public-[email-list]@w3.org (archive) or on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-only mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from [pick a duration within:] one week to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

[Keep 'Patent Policy' for a Working Group, 'Patent Disclosures' for an Interest Group]

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 May 2025). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Patent Disclosures

The Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

Note:Display this table and update it when appropriate. Requirements for charter extension history are documented in the Charter Guidebook (section 4).

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period Start Date End Date Changes
Initial Charter [dd monthname yyyy] [dd monthname yyyy] none
Charter Extension [dd monthname yyyy] [dd monthname yyyy] none
Rechartered [dd monthname yyyy] [dd monthname yyyy]

[description of change to charter, with link to new deliverable item in charter] Note: use the class new for all new deliverables, for ease of recognition.

Change log

Changes to this document are documented in this section.