Building Bridges: Linked Open Data

31-Oct 2012 W3C TPAC Lyon France

Fueling Economic Growth with Government Open Data

Bernadette HylandW3C Government Linked Data WG

@BernHyland

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Slide credit: Jennifer Bell

VisibleGovernment.ca

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Context of today’s breakout session is to briefly describe the activities & deliverables of the W3C Government Linked Data working group, what we’re doing and then focus on an interactive discussion about what each of us needs to more effectively work with government.

Could the W3C as an organization help us to be more effective within our organizations, foundations, etc?

“We’re moving from managing documents to managing discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed up and presented in the way that is most useful for the consumer of that information.”

-- Report on Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People

Growing chorus ...

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Governments around the world are defining detailed digital services plans that are based on Open data and open APIs to deliver government and private digital services. At the highest level, government executives in the UK, EU, US, India, Brazil are committed to managing open data and content in a way that is useful for the consumer of that content. The question is HOW?

Game changing technology to meet government missions

• Highly scalable computing & hosting via the Cloud

• International Data Exchange Standards

• Agencies publishing Open Data as “5 star Linked Data”

•Open Source tools

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Over the last decade, a Web-oriented approach to information sharing has impacted how scientists, researchers, regulators and the public interacts with government. Linked data lowers the barriers to re-use and interoperability among multiple, distributed and heterogeneous data sources. Specifically, the mechanisms by which the environmental & human health scientific community shares information is changing.

The Digital Government Strategy sets out to accomplish three things: Access to high quality digital information & services; procure and manage devices, applications, and data in smart, secure and affordable ways; and unlock the power of government data to spur innovation.Access to high-quality Linked Open Data via the Web means millions of researchers and developers will be able to shorten the time-consuming research process involving data cleansing and modeling.

“Big Data Is Important, but Open Data Is More Valuable”As change agents, enterprise architects can help

their organizations become richer through strategies such as open data.

David Newman, VP Research, Gartner

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Open data refers to the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other forms of control. The term “open data” has gained popularity with open data initiatives including data.gov.uk, data.gov and other government data catalog sites.

Enterprise architects are playing an important role in fostering information-sharing practices. Access to, and use of, open data will be particularly critical for a business that operate using the Web; organizations should focus on using open data to enhance business practices that generate growth and innovation.

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The mission of the Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group is to provide standards and other information which help governments around the world publish their data as effective and usable Linked Data using Semantic Web technologies.

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We are 16 months into the Government Linked Data Working group’s two year charter.

Refers to a set of best practices for publishing and interlinking structured data for access by both humans and machines via the use of the RDF family of syntaxes (e.g., RDF/XML, N3, Turtle and N-Triples) and HTTP URIs.

Linked Data can be published by an person or organization behind the firewall or on the public Web. If Linked Data is published on the public Web, it is generally called Linked Open Data.

- W3C Linked Data Glossary: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gld/raw-file/default/glossary

Let’s agree on some terms ... Linked Data

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But first, let’s define terms. Lots of people use the term “open data” to mean a range of things. The Administration through data.gov and other sites, is committed to increasing public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch, agencies and offices.

“The primary goal is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., Web applications),” - About Data.gov.

The term “Linked Open Data” refers to the best practices and standards for achieving that goal, specifically, to publish data on the Web for access and re-use.

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“The primary goal is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., Web applications),” - About Data.gov.

The term “Linked Open Data” refers to the best practices and standards for achieving that goal, specifically, to publish data on the Web for access and re-use.

W3C sees Linked Data as the set of best practices and technologies to support worldwide data access, integration and creative re-use of authoritative data.

Answers the question, “how are we using technology to make a real difference in people’s lives ...”

Data re-use on the Web matters ...

Government Linked Data

can help you navigate

Linked Data is simply sensible ...

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We need messaging that works for the stakeholders in government.It cannot be academic speak nor retail speak. Our deliverables have to address the key issues that motivate government to invest in improving the worldwide INFORMATION infrastructure, the Web of Data.

Credits

Golden Gate Bridge, Seattle Bridge

Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paraflyer/3179937406/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives/2548358743/

David NewmanGartner: “Innovation Insight: Linked Data Drives Innovation Through Information-Sharing Network Effects” Published: 15 December 2011

David Wood, ed. Linking Government Data, Springer (2011) http://3roundstones.com/linking-government-data/

US Executive Branch

Digital Government Strategy: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/egov/digital-government/digital-government.html

W3C Linked Data Cookbook http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/Linked_Data_Cookbook

All other photos and images © 2010-2012 3 Round Stones, Inc. and released under a CC-by-sa licenseAll other photos and images © 2010-2012 3 Round Stones, Inc. and released under a CC-by-sa license

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