Consolidating approaches: how the Public Policy Taxonomy was made
Channel: Australian Research Data Commons - ARDC
Date: 2022-12-05

Recorded:  14/11/2022
Presenter:  Les Kneebone - University of Melbourne - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5640-3202

In 2017, the Analysis and Policy Observatory (APO) set out to improve the way subject vocabularies were used in the APO website. Another goal was to make APO subject vocabularies share-able with collaborators, as part of the Linked Semantic Platforms project (LE180100094). Over three years of development, rationalization and consolidation, APO achieved these objectives, resulting in the Public Policy Taxonomy (PPT). This case study discusses the strategies, systems and tools employed to revise, consolidate, and publish the PPT. Challenges that confronted the APO team and project are also discussed.

This case study presents a strategy involving bottom-up vocabulary development and alignment with external vocabularies and authorities. The PPT is the result of a combination of approaches and inputs, where disparate sources and workflows were consolidated. Key drivers of this work were: improve APO website useability; simplify business investment in vocabulary management and workflows; and enable sharing PPT via services.

The case study will reveal the disparate inputs to the PPT and how these were wrangled. A key starting point were ‘home grown’ keyword lists that were refined using taxonomy automation methods (Kang et al, 2021). PPT also absorbed textual and structural elements from the Fields of Research (FOR), Australian Public Affairs Information Service Thesaurus (APAIS), Australian Government’s Interactive Functions Thesaurus (AGIFT), Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST), and in some cases made concept-level, machine-readable mappings to elements within these vocabularies. Engagement with these established vocabularies will be discussed in the case study.

PPT is available as a SKOS vocabulary within the Research Vocabularies Australia service. PPT continues to be updated but is arguably an unfinished case study: for example, there remain challenges for community engagement and persistent identifier issues. The case study will present concluding remarks about lessons learned from the project.

Acknowledgements
The presented work was funded by Australian Research Council grant no: LE180100094

References
1. Y.Kang, J.Woo, L.Kneebone and T. Sellis (2021). Methodology for refining subject terms and supporting subject indexing with taxonomy: A case study of the APO digital repository. Decision Support Systems, Volume 146, 2021. Available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2021.113542.