Vivek Kundra, the current US government CIO and a major player in the US’s open data initiatives, recently shared his concerns regarding data security. The article states, “In a wide ranging discussion Friday with President Barack Obama’s top science advisers, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra warned of the dangers of open data access and complained of “an IT cartel” of vendors. He also believes the US can operate with just a few data centres. Kundra, who is leaving his job in mid-August, offered a kaleidoscopic view of his concerns about federal IT in an appearance before President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.” Read more

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Photo Courtesy: Flickr/Vironevaeh

As we get ready to celebrate the July 4 holiday here in the States, there’s a lot to cheer for about how the Semantic Web can be a force for good when it comes to creating an informed and empowered populace upon which democracy depends. Examples of this include the work being done by the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to translate open government datasets into RDF and create applications using linked government data (read more here); and work by the Sunlight Foundation, which does things such as make semantic information in its OpenCongress wiki available via an API with the help of the Semantic MediaWiki extension.

The departure of Vivek Kundra as federal CIO that takes effect in August  – together with the planned funding cuts to e-government initiatives, such as the Data.gov open data effort –  may take its toll on the data that’s available to Semantic Web initiatives at the federal level. On the other hand, states themselves are plowing ahead, most recently with the launch of the State of Illinois Open Data site that’s built on Socrata’s platform. Socrata supports a number of different formats for developers, RDF among them, with its Open API. Cities won’t be left out of the mix, either, with New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, to name a few, pursuing this agenda.

But let’s take a moment to look beyond government data.

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Disclaimer:  This article does not reflect the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and does not constitute endorsement by the EPA of the standards or products mentioned.

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Podcast Link
In September’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang we are joined by Brand Niemann of the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a discussion of efforts to apply semantic technologies to Government data in the USA and elsewhere.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

apps.gov, and Vivek Kundra’s post on the White House [...]

Original Article