This document discusses the potential of semantic e-government and linked open data to transform how governments operate and engage with citizens. It outlines several stages in this process, from initial projects using semantic technologies to link government data, to giving citizens access and control over their own personal data. If fully realized, this could decentralize public services, increase transparency, and empower citizens by leveraging their competence and ability to solve problems through open data and technologies like linked data. However, challenges remain around data discovery, alignment of standards, interfaces, quality assurance, and privacy protections.

1. The Information
Spring
The Semantic Web, Linked Data, Open
Data and the Quiet Revolution in
Government
Kieron O’Hara
04 September 2013

2. Structure of the talk
• E-government
• Semantic e-government
• Challenges to the standard model
• Transparency
• (Linked) open data
• The revolutionary potential
2

3. E-Government
• Digital interactions between government and citizen
– G2C, G2B, G2G, C2G, B2G
• Use of IT
• Use of business process re-engineering
• Transformational government
– Use of IT and BPR to improve delivery of public services
3

4. Information Flow
• “If we examine the kind of information that executives use
we find that a large proportion of it is simply natural
language text. … [Computers could be] initial filters for
most of the information that enters the organisation from
outside.”
Herbert Simon, ‘Applying Information Technology to Organization Design’, 1973
• 30+ years before this insight was acted upon
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5. Semantic e-Government
Challenges and Opportunities
• Complex politics, multiple targets
– Lack of efficiency or market discipline in gov’t
– Many other drivers
– Perceptions of SW
– Change management
• Information management
– Heterogeneity
– Search/discovery
– From services to Web services
– Privacy/access
– Standards 5

6. EU Examples
• Access e-Gov (Access to e-Government services employing semantic
technologies)
• FIT (Adaptive portals and processes in e-Government)
• LD-CAST (Local development cooperation actions enabled by semantic
technology)
• OntoGov (Ontology-enabled e-Government services)
• SAKE (Semantic-enabled agile knowledge-based e-Government)
• SEEMP (Semantic interoperability infrastructure for e-Government
services in the employment sector)
• SemanticGov (Semantic Web services for public administration)
• Terregov (Impact of e-Government on territorial government) 6

7. Example Approaches
• Life event ontologies
– Moving house, dealing with a death, registering to vote
7From Sanati & Lu, Electronic Government, 2010

8. Example Approaches
• SemanticGov architecture (Vitvar et al 2010)
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9. Issues
• Incremental change or big bang?
– Vast amount of restructuring needed
• Lack of expertise among major suppliers
– Lack of in-house expertise
– Lack of ability to manage major upgrades
• Multiple standards
• Finding partners and building networks
• Ontological commitment
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10. The Problem of Prescription
• Standards to be agreed by governments
– Followed by citizens
• Services defined by governments
– Whether in-house, outsourced or privatised
• The right solution for a pluralistic society?
10
From Sanati & Lu,
Electronic Government,
2010

11. The Transparency Agenda
• Citizens’ access to information
– To facilitate understanding of decision-making
– To hold governments to account
– To reduce opportunities for corruption
• Dates from ICT and WWW revolutions, late 1990s
• Examples from 1990s
– Andhra Pradesh (e-government: cf. Naidu, Plain Speaking)
– South Africa (procurement)
– Mexico (electoral reform)
– Lithuania (neutral civil service)
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12. From Medicine to Opportunity
• The agenda moves on
– No longer a corrective for poorly functioning systems
– Now an opportunity to improve government
– From emerging nations to the rich democracies
• The technology is in place
– World Wide Web (Web of Linked Documents)
– Web of Linked Data
– Massive number-crunching power
– Democratisation of analysis
– Ideology of serendipitous reuse
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13. Stage 1: AKTive PSI
• Alani et al 2007 (ISWC), 2008 (IEEE Intelligent Systems)
• The possibilities of data, the pragmatics of the SW
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Camden food premises data +
PointX (Ordinance Survey’s
addresses and points of interest
dataset)

14. Open Data
• Use of technology to maximise reuse of data
– Online
– Machine readable
– Open licence
– Ideally non-proprietary open formats (CSV, RDF etc)
• No restrictions on use
– No access/query controls
– No Ts & Cs
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15. Open Government Data
• Lots of data
• Good provenance
• Fair quality
• Relevant to people’s concerns
• Serve accountability
• Right to data
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16. Rights to Data
• Government legitimacy
• Government funding
• Freedom of Information
• Data Protection
• Form of data
• EU PSI Directive
– “Member States shall ensure that, where the re-use of documents held by public
sector bodies is allowed, these documents shall be re-usable for commercial or non-
commercial purposes in accordance with the conditions set out in Chapters III and
IV. Where possible, documents shall be made available through electronic means.”
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17. The Berners-Lee Progression
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18. Linked Data Machinery
• URIs as authoritative identifiers
• Linkable vocabularies
– INSPIRE (spatial data)
– DataCube (statistics)
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19. Stage 2: EnAKTinG
• Shadbolt et al 2012, IEEE Intelligent Systems
• Web of linked data
• Ontology building and reuse
• Scalable query methods
• Visualisation/browsing
• Populate LDW to provide network effects
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20. Quick Wins
• Departments can consume their own linked data
• Standard-setting
• Needn’t let go of the narrative
– Release at 1* and 3*/5* at the same time
• Questioning task bias
• Crowdsourcing quality
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21. Example: legislation.gov.uk
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22. Example: Lambeth in Numbers
22
Mashup of Lambeth council
public health data with
national government statistics

23. Crowdsourcing Data Quality
23

24. Open Government Data
Infosphere
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25. Linked Open Data
25By Anja Jentzsch (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

26. Stage 3: Midata
• Shadbolt, in Hildebrandt, O’Hara & Waidner (eds), 2013
• Gives personal data back to the consumer
– Secure private-sector cooperation
– Let consumers access data safely
– Develop innovative services
• TACT
– Transparency
– Access
– Control
– Transfer
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27. Digital Era Governance
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Change of public
management regime
Level of
autonomous
citizen competence
Level of institutional
and policy complexity
Level of social
problem-
solving
From Dunleavy et al, Digital Era Governance, 2006
Cf. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1999
+ve influence
-ve influence

28. Stage 4: A New Vision of
Government
• Shadbolt & O’Hara 2013, IEEE Internet Computing
• Publishing, not managing
• Decentralising service design
• Allow mashups with personal data
• Avoid prescription
• Leverage autonomous citizen competence
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29. Institutions for technology
• Transparency Board
• Departmental Transparency Sector Panels
• Local Government Data Panel
• Open Data Institute
• Transparency Unit in the Cabinet Office
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30. The Effect of Linked Open
Government Data?
30
Decentralise public
management regime
Level of
autonomous
citizen competence
Level of institutional
and policy complexity
Level of social
problem-
solving

31. Lessons for Governments
• Regulation: open licences needed
• Accurate catalogues
• Generic metadata standards
• Minimise temporal/geographical/methodological gaps
• Plan for essential join points
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32. Lessons for Techies
• User interfaces for interrogating linked data
• Identify join points
– Geography
– Time
– Provenance
– Life events
• Lightweight and pragmatic
• Coreference resolution
• Quick consumption wins
– E.g. CoPs on data.gov
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33. Discussion: Bottlenecks
• Discovery of open gov’t data
• Ontological alignment
• Interfaces
• Consumption
• Quality
• Accountability mechanisms
• Privacy
33

34. The Information Spring
• Information can
be set free
• Need to make
sure technology
does not get in
the way
• Need to avoid
prescription
• Decentralise
service
specification 34

35. Disclaimer
• Texts, marks, logos, names, graphics, images, photographs,
illustrations, artwork, audio clips, video clips, and software
copyrighted by their respective owners are used on these
slides for non-commercial, educational and personal
purposes only. Use of any copyrighted material is not
authorized without the written consent of the copyright
holder. Every effort has been made to respect the
copyrights of other parties. If you believe that your
copyright has been misused, please direct your
correspondence to: kmo@ecs.soton.ac.uk stating your
position and I shall endeavour to correct any misuse as
early as possible.
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