Government

Sir Tim Berners-Lee recently spoke out against UK government plans to monitor citizen’s internet use, Ian Katz reports. Katz writes, “The government’s controversial plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor the internet use and digital communications of every person in the UK suffered a fresh blow on Tuesday when the inventor of the world wide web warned that the measures were dangerous and should be dropped. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who serves as an adviser to the government on how to make public data more accessible, says the extension of the state’s surveillance powers would be a ‘destruction of human rights’ and would make a huge amount of highly intimate information vulnerable to theft or release by corrupt officials.” Read more

Simon Rogers reports that the National Audit Office has released its report on the United Kingdom’s open government data project. Rogers writes, “This should be a good week for open government data in the UK. The British government is one of the key drivers in the Open Government Partnership, presently meeting in Brasilia, where it is being lauded for the way it has released a ‘tsunami of data’. And yet, according to the National Audit Office, all is not entirely rosy. Read between the lines of its report out today, Implementing Transparency, and you will see a government which has been chucking out tonnes of data, that no-one looks at and without a complete strategy. Oh and it’s cost an awful lot of money.” Read more

Jeni Tennison recently discussed the United Kingdom’s current open standards consultation, calling UK citizens to action. She writes, “Over the last few months, the UK Government has been running a consultation on its Open Standards policy. The outcome of this consultation is incredibly important not only for organisations and individuals who want to work with government but also because of its potential knock-on effects on the publication of Open Data and the use of Open Source software within public sector organisations. Read more

NOTE: This post is provided by guest author, Mr. Dennis E. Wisnosky, Chief Technical Officer and Chief Architect, Business Mission Area, U.S. Department of Defense. Dennis will be delivering a Special Presentation, “The Enterprise Information Web: Analytics, Efficiency and Security” at the June SemTechBiz Conference.

Semantic Technology brings a number of unique capabilities to data stores and applications.  These capabilities evidence themselves both at the user interaction level, in what users can do with and expect from Semantic technologies; and at the system level, in terms of things applications can do internally without rework or recoding.  Semantic Technology, based upon W3C standards, provides capabilities significantly beyond those of proprietary approaches based on technologies that were founded a half century earlier.

1. User Interaction Capabilities

Access to Meaning

Semantic Technology is based upon the development of the ontology of a particular domain.   That is, “what do I need to know to have an unambiguous understanding of a particular thing, organization, subject, etc.?”  This knowing is based upon precise understanding of the meaning of words used in the domain.  A Semantic-Technology-based application depends on and provides a user with access to the defined meaning of the terms—the vocabulary, the words—used in the application.  This means access to a human-only readable definition, such as one found in a dictionary, and access to the formalized definition found in the ontology that frames the system which executes the application.  Such access should be presented in a human consumable form, and is one of the areas in which various formalisms such as Controlled Natural Language (CNL) are useful for translating technical forms of ontologies, such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL) , a W3C standard, to provide a human consumable form.

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Tim Davies recently pointed out two new open data publications. The first was a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on open government. The second is a report:  ICT for or against development? An introduction to the ongoing case of Web 3 (PDF). The paper was written by Mike Powell, Tim Davies, and Keisha Candice Taylor. The full paper is available for download here. Read more

Tim Davies recently discussed two new publications covering open data. The first is a Special Issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on Open Government Data (OGD). According to Davies, the issue brings together “four new papers, five field notes, and two editorials that critically explore how Open Government Data policies and practices are playing out across the world. All the papers and notes draw upon empirical study and grassroots experiences in order to explore key challenges of, and challenges to, OGD.” Read more

Alex Howard recently interviewed Steven VanRoekel, the current US CIO. Howard notes, “As the nation’s federal CIO, he has inherited a staggering challenge: evolve the nation’s aging IT systems toward a 21st century model of operations. In the age of big data, he and everyone who works with him must manage a lot of petabytes, and do much more with less. He must find ways to innovate to meet the needs of the federal government and the increased expectations of citizens who transact with cutting-edge IT systems in their personal and professional lives.”

During the interview VanRoekel stated, “The federal government must fundamentally shift how it thinks about digital information and data. Read more

The Open Knowledge Foundation is using open data to try to prevent violent conflict around the world. The foundation states, “We’re in the planning stages of a conflict prevention project called PAX and open data perspectives have fed into our thinking in its processes and structures. PAX aims to provide early warnings of emerging violent conflict, through an online collaborative system of data sharing and analysis. We’re still in the early stages of exploration and experiment, but the principle is that open data could help provide warnings of emerging violent conflict, enabling governments, NGOs and citizens to take action to prevent it escalating.” Read more

The W3C Government Linked Data Working Group has published four public working drafts. The first is for Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT): “DCAT is an RDF vocabulary designed to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs published on the Web. This document defines the schema and provides examples for its use.”

The second is for the RDF Data Cube Vocabulary. The description states, “There are many situations where it would be useful to be able to publish multi-dimensional data, such as statistics, on the web in such a way that it can be linked to related data sets and concepts. The Data Cube vocabulary provides a means to do this using the W3C RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard.” Read more

John Sheridan recently shared how APIs are being utilized by the United Kingdom. He writes, “Mention the word ‘API‘ to the wrong audience and blank looks shortly follow. For the uninitiated, an API, or ‘Application Programming Interface’, is a way for one computer to use information or services held on another computer, often across the internet. The strategists say that developing high quality APIs has the potential to transform public services. One example where this is proving to be the case is legislation.gov.uk, the official UK legislation website, operated by The National Archives.” Read more