Re: eGov at W3C: Next Steps.

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the update about plans in the egov space at the w3c. In the
past I've been somewhat outspoken about not splitting off work on
Linked Data from the use of the web in egov generally. The reason for
this is that I've found it's often difficult to transition work that's
done by a group of people who all agree that the everything is going
to be in RDF, with the larger world of the web where people need to be
convinced to deploy data as RDF instead of some other representation
(XML, JSON, HTML, CSV, etc).

But I understand that sometimes there is too much overhead to having
these general discussions when trying to knock out some specific
deliverables, and that this type of analysis/discussion could take
place in the general interest group. So I can live with there being
two efforts. I've included a few comments/questions below:

>From the eGov IG charter [1]

"""
This group is chartered to serve as a connector among people,
especially government employees, looking for ways to use W3C
technologies to improve government services and operations. We believe
these technologies can provide significant benefit to governments of
all sizes, including city, regional, and national governments, in all
part of whe world.
"""

Would it be possible to broaden the scope a bit by s/looking for ways
to use W3C technologies/looking for ways to use Web technologies/? The
reason why I ask is that there are bodies like IETF and OASIS that
work on specifications/standards that are relevant in the egov space.
It would be good if this interest group could discuss these as
well...in particular if review and/or recommendation of web
technologies developed outside of the W3C is required or desirable.

The Government Linked Data Working Group charter [1] includes the
following as out-of-scope:

"""
A mechanism for notification and propagation of changes to datasets,
part of the field of dataset dynamics, such as SPARQL Push.
"""

My personal opinion is that it is essential that the W3C provide
practical guidance on how to announce new and updated egov data. It is
particularly important for hubs like data.gov.uk,
data.australia.gov.au, data.gov to help in the collection of data
assets from the places where it is generated (typically agencies
within the government); and it is also important to enable communities
of data consumers outside of government.

I think the W3C is uniquely situated to provide guidance on how egov
data efforts can leverage the decentralized nature of the Web to fit
the realities of the government data generation. I think Erik Wilde
and his colleagues at Berkeley nicely summarized why attention in this
area is needed [3]. If this needs to be out of scope for the
Government Linked Data Working Group (and I think it does since it's
not really limited to RDF) I would like to see it added to the scope
of the Interest Group charter. If you would like suggested text for
the IG charter I could propose some.

I also noticed that GovData is used in places in both documents (and
the URI for the charter) and would like to see "Linked" consistently
spliced into the working group's name if it's scope is going to be
limited to RDF technologies.

And finally just a typo that popped out at me in the eGov IG charter [1]:

s/in all part of whe world./in all parts of the world/

Thanks!
//Ed

[1] http://www.w3.org/egov/IG/charter-2011
[2] http://www.w3.org/2011/govdata/charter
[3] http://dret.net/netdret/docs/wilde-irep09-recovery-feeds.pdf

Received on Thursday, 16 December 2010 14:52:41 UTC