RE: Proposal to structure new eGov IG

Chris wrote:

> Oh - suggestion - in addition, the IG could produce a monthly news digest of e-Gov related material from the W3 (and Governments/elsewhere?), with each TF using their W3 liason contacts with other W3 groups to collate news of relevance within thier sphere for inclusion.

Absolutely.

What I have thought for a while now would be useful is a "this week in …"-type summary/digest of activity. This should be targeted at time-poor followers who want to know what is being done and what is being debated. I know from my own experience that it can be very difficult to get back up to speed with goings on after one "drops the ball", so to speak. You can't find a way back in and you're lost forever (it seems).

It requires a keen community-minded person to create such a summary. An example is http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Community_Updates for the OpenStreetMap community. I'm not volunteering.

(Also, it's especially difficult to follow threads with all the lengthy top-posts. Really, inline replies work much better for many readers ("me" :) ) and archive searchers.)

Now I'm going to abandon thread context (for reason above) and address a few things I noticed:

* could someone explain the reason to single out accessibility as an eGov focus [1]? I've been a huge accessibility advocate since long before it was fashionable and I understand that government information *must* be published accessibly, but surely this is a given and there are plenty of general accessibility resources available that do this job? What am I missing about eGov?

* use of social media should be singled out for guidance as an effective tool for engagement [1], but please can we use generic terms? Twitter is a single application platform owned by a for-profit corporation. Let's call it microblogging. My personal belief/hope is that federated open microblogging of the type available with StatusNet [2] will be the norm, probably after Twitter annoys everyone with their profit-making initiatives (which I understand they are under pressure from investors to pursue). Should W3C be encouraging private networks, even if they are in many respects, at least now, "open"? See also "A Standards-based, Open and Privacy-aware Social Web" [3]. </rant>

* I'm not sure I see much of a need to address cloud computing either [1]. You could outlines pros and cons, but it seems fairly a policy-driven operational decision that will necessarily differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I could be having a bad day, but I just don't get it.

* I liked Daniel's public utility/service-oriented approach very much [4]. Let the tech be suggested to address the service need. For example, "Publishing documents especially laws and regulations that can be used and cited.", so we need to advocate well constructed, consistent, stable URIs.

This is as much time as I can give to the conversation right now. Sorry I was mainly critical :~|

Cheers

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[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-egov-ig/2010Dec/0023.html

[2] http://status.net

[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/XGR-socialweb-20101206/

[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-egov-ig/2010Dec/0027.html

Received on Monday, 20 December 2010 01:46:03 UTC