Re: Civic Technology Community Group

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/ 
> <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 <https://www.ms.gov/>), which provides a chatbot, 
> and Utah (https://www.utah.gov/ <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 
> <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.
>
>