Introduction & LOD for Open Government

W3C eGovernment Interest Group,

As a new member of your group I would like to introduce myself:  I am
Cory Casanave, CEO of Model Driven Solutions
(http://www.modeldriven.com/).  Model Driven Solutions core competency
is architecture at many levels - Enterprise Architecture, SOA, BPM,
Systems of Systems, Solutions Architectures and Model Driven
Architecture.  We use a variety of architectural languages including
UML, BPMN, SoaML and RDF/OWL.  Our open source effort - ModelDriven.org
has MDA tools as well as a newly released pre-alpha "Enterprise
Knowledge Base".  Some background of our thoughts on how to leverage LOD
for government architectures can be found in our ISWC presentation,
here:
http://lib.modeldriven.org/MDLibrary/trunk/Pub/Presentations/ISWC_OpenGo
vernmentArchitectures.ppt

 

My other hat is as the chair of the new OMG "Open Government Task force"
(http://gov.omg.org/gov-wg-opengov.htm) for which I am the liaison to
the W3C eGovernment group.  My hope is to contribute to this group and
also support a collaborative relationship between the OMG and W3C
government efforts, which I see as very complementary.  The OMG has been
quite successful in collaborating with the U.S. government, including
OMB and NARA.  We have been active in OMG for years, have helped author
several standards and serve on the BOD.

 

My primary interest within this group is to refine and promote the use
of linked open data to support government and, in particular, the open
government initiative.  I feel that there is a tremendous opportunity to
improve government effectiveness and openness with LOD and that by
embracing LOD as the infrastructure for government data, the government
will help bring this technology into the mainstream.  

 

Helping the LOD for open government movement

 

At the ISWC meeting an ad-hoc group formed and had some informal
meetings to discuss what we could do to help the LOD for Open Government
movement progress.  

 

I was asked to summarize some of the ideas we brainstormed.  As the "new
guy" I don't want to step on any of the great work that is already going
on but I also don't want to loose these thoughts. I am also sure many of
these efforts are already in progress.  So with the utmost humility I
pass on what we came up with...

 

1.	Work with the eGov interest group to focus on LOD for open
government, initially on US Federal. 
2.	Establish info pages on LOD for Open Government with high-level
business cases and links to success stories (CxO Focus)
3.	Start periodic (monthly?) info sessions in DC aimed at the CIO
to Lead architect level to explain the LOD for government vision.
Follow the tutorial session with a government use case story 
4.	Initiate a joint pilot project along the lines of a next-gen
federal IT dashboard per George's vision.  Get participation from the
eGov group and vendors.  Involve Kshemendra Paul (OMB)
5.	Get some exposure with AIC, IAC and the chief architects council

6.	Once we get a bit of momentum, see if we can get another high
level meeting with the administration
7.	Plan a summit - but not prior to having a bit more momentum.

 

The group that game up with this list includes:

*	Sandro Hawke- W3C
*	Brand Niemann - EPA & Community of Interest
*	Rick Murphy - GSA & data.gov
*	George Thomas - HHS & CIO Council
*	Mills Davis - Project10x
*	Cory Casanave - Model Driven Solutions / ModelDriven.org

 

I look forward to working with you and contributing to the work of the
interest group.

 

Regards,

Cory Casanave

Model Driven Solutions

OMG Open Government Workgroup