Re: Civic Technology Community Group

Hi Adam,

I thought i'd alert you to; https://www.w3.org/community/humancentricai/

Noting - that whilst it is likely to be somewhat different to the works of
your proposed group; one might hope that we're able to figure out good
safety and interoperability solutions, after working through various
processes to illustrate, define, reduce and formeralise use-cases,
requirements, etc...   whilst also seeking to see what can be done as
'quick wins' along the way...

There's a few people who I suspect may be interested in participating in
your group, i'll alert them to it.

Best of luck!

Tim.


On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 at 11:29, Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com> 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.
>
>