  The Data Privacy Vocabulary (DPV), developed by the W3C Data Privacy
Vocabularies and Controls Community Group (DPVCG), enables the creation of
machine-readable, interoperable, and standards-based representations for
describing the processing of personal data. The group has also published
extensions to the DPV to describe specific applications to support legislative
requirements such as the EU's GDPR. The DPV fills a crucial niche in the state
of the art by providing a vocabulary that can be embedded and used alongside
other existing standards such as W3C ODRL, and which can be customised and
extended for adapting to specifics of use-cases or domains. This article
describes the version 2 iteration of the DPV in terms of its contents,
methodology, current adoptions and uses, and future potential. It also
describes the relevance and role of DPV in acting as a common vocabulary to
support various regulatory (e.g. EU's DGA and AI Act) and community initiatives
(e.g. Solid) emerging across the globe.
