Calling all Data and Technology Professionals to Participate: 2025 OMG Semantic Augmentation Challenge
Even as data drives the markets, financial sector data and analytics professionals struggle to interpret and integrate datasets that lack proper semantic documentation. CSV files, JSON structures, and other common formats typically provide only basic column names without explaining their true meaning or relationships. This semantic gap creates significant barriers to effective data use in reporting, AI applications, compliance efforts, and analytics. Our Financial Sector Domain Task Force (FSDTF) announces its 2025 OMG Semantic Augmentation Challenge to invite and reward solutions to this critical problem!
OMG FSDTF members and their firms are interested in proposals for methods to use when datasets don't reference formal ontologies or provide clear semantic context, so users don't need to guess meanings from column names and sample data. The right solution(s) could reduce inefficiencies, errors, and missed opportunities to acquire and integrate valuable information assets across systems and organizations.
The OMG Semantic Augmentation Challenge invites practical, easy-to-use, and innovative solutions to bridge this semantic gap through standardized metadata approaches. By developing better ways to augment datasets with machine-readable semantic references, we can transform how data is shared, understood, and utilized across industries. The goal is to discover or advance metadata formats that can turn basic data structures into semantically rich resources that both humans and machines can interpret correctly.
What You'll Do
- Work with our sample Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) bank dataset
- Create metadata that maps columns to semantic references which provide meaning
- Show how your solution helps both humans and machines understand the data
- Demonstrate that your approach works with updated dataset versions
Why Participate
- $1,000 prize for the winning solution
- Showcase your work on the OMG website
- Present your solution at our June meeting in Denver (in-person or remote)
- Help shape potential future standards
- Engage with industry leaders in data management
Submission Requirements
As described above, participants are provided with a dataset in CSV format, which they must use. Participants must provide, in turn,
- A file that describes what is in each of the CSV columns. Participants should show a mapping of columns in a machine-readable and processable format to common and citable resources
- A specification for the format used for the mapping. The format used should reflect current best practices, languages, ergonomics, and technologies.
- A demonstration (e.g., a video) of the original transformation. All demonstrations and other requirements can be done remotely; no travel is required.
- Supporting materials about how the format works and how it would be extensible to other formats.
While not required, we would be especially interested in files that can be described in and/or mapped to RDF. Individuals and teams alike are welcome to enter.
The meaning of the columns of the dataset should be mapped to common and citable resources. We will expect at least one mapping to the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO), and to OGC GeoSPARQL or GeoNames, but we also expect citations to a variety of other types of resources that will demonstrate the robustness of the mapping approach, for example.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
All submitted IP will remain the IP of the original owner. OMG's intent is to share certain materials of or about selected submissions online, unless usage is specifically withheld by the owner, so please indicate what can be used and any details about its IP ownership.
Please send your submission in a single zip file to: [email protected].
Important Dates
- May 28: Submission deadline
- June 2: Shortlist announced
- June 9: Test with revised dataset
- June 11: Presentations and winner announcement (Denver/online)
Organized by the Object Management Group's Financial Sector Domain Task Force