W3C Workshop on
the Future of ODRL

Why This Workshop?

Since becoming a W3C Recommendation in 2018, ODRL has gained increasing recognition and adoption across:

• Data space governance frameworks
• Industry consortia and international standards
• Digital media and creative content providers
• Financial sectors

At the same time, important challenges remain:

• Policy interoperability across domains
• Runtime enforcement and compliance verification
• Profile development and extension governance
• Tooling maturity and usability
• Integration with emerging Web standards

This workshop provides a forum to examine these topics collaboratively and define next steps.

Topics of Interest

We invite proposals for short talks (10–15 minutes) on topics including, but not limited to:

ODRL Adoption & Industry Experience

• Case studies of ODRL deployments
• Lessons learned from production implementations
• Integration within data ecosystems and digital platforms
• Governance and compliance use cases
• ODRL Linked data integration
• ODRL best practices
• Profiles and domain-specific extensions

Innovation and Semantics of ODRL

• Formal semantics of ODRL
• Policy evaluation engines
• Constraint modeling
• ODRL editors, validators, and libraries
• Automated policy generation
• AI-assisted policy authoring and validation
• Conformance and testing mechanisms

Interoperability & Architecture

• ODRL and access control systems
• Alignment with data space architectures
• Integration with Verifiable Credentials and DIDs
• Enforcement architectures and policy decision points

Roadmap & Community Development

• Gaps in the current ODRL Information Model
• Requirements for future revisions
• Governance of vocabularies and profiles
• Community sustainability and collaboration

Format

The workshop will include:

• Presentations (10–15 minutes each)
• Moderated discussion sessions
• Thematic breakout discussions
• Consolidated reporting of outcomes

All accepted talks and slides will be made publicly available after the event.

Submitting a Proposal

To propose a Position Paper please submit:

1. Name
2. Affiliation
3. Short biography (2–3 sentences) or (optional) LinkedIn link
4. Position Paper (up to 6 pages)

All Proposals should imagine the future direction of ODRL with constructive proposals, suggestions for consensus, concrete real-world examples and use cases, and surface new and innovative approaches for ODRL.

Submission details: Submit proposals via email to odrl-ws-submission@w3.org

We especially encourage submissions from industry implementers and tool builders.

If you would like to participate but do not have a specific topic to propose, you may submit a short expression of interest during the registration process, briefly describing your background, your interest in the workshop, and the topics you would like to discuss.

Who Should Attend?

• New adopters and implementers of ODRL
• Data space architects
• Digital rights and governance professionals
• Media Standards contributors
• Researchers in policy languages and asset control
• Tool developers and platform providers

Attendance is free for all participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C Members.

Program Committee

Co-Chairs:

• Renato Iannella, TRIPLES, Australia
• Nicoletta Fornara, USI Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
• Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

W3C Contacts: Rigo Wenning (rigo at_ w3.org)

Program Committee (Pending to be confirmed):

• Beatriz Esteves, Ghent University, Belgium
• Rigo Wenning, W3C, France
• Pierre-Antoine Champin, W3C/Inria, France
• Benedict Whittam Smith, DeonticData, UK
• Andrea Cimmino, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
• Matthias Autrata, JP Morgan Chase, UK
• Simon Steyskal, Siemens
• Joshua Cornejo, Marketdata, UK
• Yassir Sellami, Gaia-X, Belgium
• Wout Slabbinck, Ghent University, Belgium
• Philippe Rixhon, Valunode, Estonia
• Brendan Quinn, IPTC, Estonia
• Leonard Rosenthol, Adobe, USA

The Program Committee will review submissions and shape the final agenda.