Re: Civic Technology Community Group

Dear Pierre Antoine and Adam

 thanks for sharing with this group your proposal to restart a CG
All the topics of interest to these CGs are of utmost importance, and
should be followed closely. If a CG achieves nothing but only keeping track
of the state of the art,  like the AI KR CG tries to do, it is of some
benefit. After years of keeping track of things, I have become aware of
certain recursions, for example hype cycles,  manipulation of knowledge and
information to serve political and economic agendas, No about of KR can
resolve deeper challenges that pertain to human nature (self deceit)
I am personally therefore starting to devote myself to knowledge that
cannot be explicitly represented, knowledge that pertains to the deeper
personal sphere, transcendent knowledge.

It is important to continue to gain insights and share whatever wisdom we
gather in whatever way we can. even if it is just for conversation's sake.
We are so controlled by a system that aims and achieves that we have lost
our appreciation for exchanging thoughts on topics, conversations,
philosophical discourse. Information sharing.
Let these CG serve that important purpose, if nothing else


PDM

On Wed, Apr 5, 2023 at 1:40 PM Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine@w3.org>
wrote:

> Dear Adam,
>
>
> there was in the past an "eGovernance" Community Group [1], which was very
> recently closed due to a lack of activity. It seems to me that there is a
> large overlap between your proposal and that pre-existing group. Would it
> make sense to reactivate the old CG instead?
>
>
> [1] https://www.w3.org/community/egovernance/
>
>
> On 05/04/2023 03:28, Adam Sobieski wrote:
>
> INTRODUCTION
>
> A new W3C *Civic Technology Community Group* is proposed. I would like to
> invite you to support its creation and then to join! You may click to
> support its creation here: https://www.w3.org/community/ . Please feel
> free to help spread the word!
>
> Artificial intelligence is already having a big impact across domains,
> including government services. Users will soon be able to ask
> natural-language questions and engage in multimodal dialogues about
> large-scale public-sector financial, accounting, and budgetary data while
> receiving responses comprised of language, mathematics, charts, diagrams,
> figures, and graphs.
>
> This Community Group will bring together those interested in civic
> technology, open government, and artificial intelligence to share and
> discuss how to ensure that the Web is well-suited for these and related
> applications.
>
> This new group may discuss topics including, but not limited to:
>
>    1. how existing and new standards could benefit civic technology and
>    open government,
>    2. software interoperability scenarios involving Web browsers,
>    3. how chatbots in webpages, in Web browsers (browser sidebar
>    chatbots), and in desktop and Web-based office software (e.g., Copilot) may
>    interoperate with one another,
>    4. how recent developments in AI can enhance public-sector websites,
>    5. multimodal dialogue systems or chatbots which can provide, beyond
>    natural-language responses, charts, diagrams, figures, graphs, and so forth,
>
>    6. multimodal dialogue systems or chatbots which can answer questions
>    which involve processing data from multiple governments, federal, state,
>    county, and city governments,
>    7. how users can embed data from dialogue systems or chatbots into
>    documents and websites,
>    8. how users can share responses with one another on social media,
>    9. differences between static and dynamic, updating, refreshable
>    AI-generated content,
>    10. other technical requirements from the domain of civic technology.
>
> Interested participants are invited to enter an election process to serve
> as group Chairs.
> CIVIC TECHNOLOGY AND OPEN GOVERNMENT
>
> According to Wikipedia, “civic technology enhances the relationship
> between the people and government with software for communications,
> decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes
> information and communications technology supporting government with
> software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits,
> consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working
> within government.”
>
> “Open government is the governing doctrine which maintains that citizens
> have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to
> allow for effective public oversight.”
> ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
>
> Recent advancements to artificial intelligence technology, e.g., large
> language models and GPT, can equip: (1) accountants, auditors, analysts,
> comptrollers, public officials, legislators, oversight committees, and
> members of their staffs, and (2) the public, journalists, and government
> watchdog organizations, to better make sense of and interact with
> large-scale public-sector financial, accounting, and budgetary data.
>
> Users will soon be able to ask natural-language questions and to engage in
> multimodal dialogues about large-scale public-sector financial, accounting,
> and budgetary data while receiving responses which include language,
> mathematics, charts, diagrams, figures, and graphs. Users will soon be able
> to copy AI-generated content into document authoring software and share
> such content with one another using social media.
> AWARD-WINNING GOVERNMENT WEBSITES
>
> Award-winning government websites include those of Mississippi (
> https://www.ms.gov), which provides a chatbot, and Utah (
> https://www.utah.gov/), which provides live chat support.
> GOVERNMENT WEBSITE MODERNIZATION
>
> There are opportunities to assist in the modernization of federal
> government websites such as data.gov, performance.gov, and usaspending.gov
> .
>
> A 2021 GAO study (https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104127) determined
> that “the Secretary of the Treasury should add a broad website search
> function to USAspending.gov to help users find content on the website.” The
> study indicated that Treasury officials responded to the GAO that they were
> “in the process of laying the foundation for a broad (‘global’) search
> function across all USAspending.gov content. However, they expect the
> design work for a global search function will not begin until FY2024 at the
> earliest.”
>
> Such a broad search function would be greatly enhanced by modern
> artificial intelligence technologies.
>
>