The CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) contains metadata of studies from CESSDA service providers (SPs) and serves as an entry point for search and discovery of European social science data. The CDC has been present in the European research space for several years, but its development has been hampered by metadata harmonisation and technical support issues. 

The goal of the CDC Upgrade Task group under Agenda 21-24 is to develop a list of recommended features and updates for the next version of CDC, including search and discovery of variable-level information. Based on desk research of available resources, a survey of SPs about needed improvements of the CDC, and an analysis of their variable-level metadata examples, we have developed a list of recommendations for the next CDC release. The challenge is to either build the CDC on the SPs' existing metadata (i.e., primarily DDI Codebook) or to advocate for a metadata upgrade (i.e., DDI Lifecycle, currently used by only a handful of SPs). The result could be limited functionality for end-users who want to search and find variables documented in different languages. The goal of this presentation is to give a first insight into possible future developments of the catalogue.