Disclaimers

• Formal work has just started
• We don’t have the solutions!
  • trying to identify the challenges
• Not yet the view of the Group
  • but the view of the charter

Role of the Web

Source: Australians' Use of and Satisfaction with e-Government Services – 2007

Some Challenges

• 29% people would now prefer to contact government by internet, but more needs to be done...
• Improve content and design of websites
• Strategies to make government services easier to find
• Security is a fundamental condition

Source: Australians' Use of and Satisfaction with e-Government Services – 2007

eGovernment at W3C

Activity to tackle issues in three main areas:

• Open Standards
• Participation and Transparency
• Data Integration

Open Standards: Big Picture

Organization vs. User

One stop shops

But...

• Example: get to a purchase order
  • Click 2 javascript: links
  • Go through 3 pop-up windows
  • Finally, get to a URI like this:
    https://www.example.com/PublicAccess/PA_POCheck.aspx?IdPurchase=YES&QS=ER4TEngVFRMXeBQSERIfHxQ=

Replay (with common sense)

• Example: get to a purchase order
  • Click one regular link
  • Get to a URI like this:
    https://www.example.com/PurchaseOrders/2008/05/19/IDXXX
    or
    https://www.example.com/PurchaseOrders/IDXXX

Open Standards Policies

• Governments should not require people to purchase particular software to access information
• Promote longevity of information
• Openness helps to maximize reuse of knowledge
  • colleagues, departments, agencies, citizens, companies, other governments, other partners

• Open standards promote research

... and then...

“application must be conformant with W3C standards”

What W3C offers

Open Standards: challenges

• What’s the best way to enable a given policy goal?
  • What’s the right tool for the job?
  • How should I use X plus Y?

• Suite of open standards to solve the Web-related issues

Participation and Transparency

Users are going away...

How do citizens search?

• They often use a search engine
  • very few go to the one-stop shop
  • even less to the given agency Web site

• They get a pointer to Wikipedia
  (or similar)
• Happy with what they get

Not convinced yet?

• In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, which will rank higher?
  • Weblogs
  • New York Times' Web site

Inversion of Authority

See http://www.longbets.org/2

Sophistication is there...

Benefits from eGovernment projects at different levels of sophistication to a mid-size OECD country
Source: OECD through The Economist

...but it's not enough

Source: Deloitte Research (2005) through The Economist

Organizational change is also a must!

• Fires in California (late 2007)

We can no longer afford to work at the speed of government. We have responsibilities to the public to move the information as quickly as possible … so that they can make key decisions.

Brian Humphrey and Ron Myers (LAFD)

P A R T I C I P A T I O N

• Yes, in upper case!
• Find ways to engage the users
  • Collaborative Tools

• Change, Innovate
  • if not, others will do it for you
    (e.g. third party services)

Put the information where needed

• Examples:
  • US Library of Congress + Flickr = Commons
  • USPTO: Peer Reviewed Prior Art Patent
  • Third Party Services:

    FixMyStreet, Follow the Money, MapLight, OpenCongress, GovTrack, TheyWorkForYou

Risky? challenging... fun!

• Reliable source of information?
• To mix or not mix
• What happens to the authoritative source of information that the government is?
• ...but also
  • from Chicago Crime through London Metro Police up to Show Us a Better Way

Transparency has many faces

• Accessible Web site
• Open Government Information

Granularity and Provenance

Avoid Obscurity by Default

Participation and Transparency Challenges

• Use collaborative tools
  • balance risks
  • design a contingency plan

• Identify provenance of information
• Release as much as possible
  • balance with restrictions

Data Integration

Why XML is not always enough?

Semantic Technologies

• Example: reducing the cost of road excavations
• Geographic Referencing Framework

• ...many more SWEO cases

Linked Data

• No more scraping
  • cost, maintenance

• Start simple
  • RSS,  Atom, Microformats, GRDDL, RDFa

• No need to throw away your existing systems, build on top
• Metadata are the goal (data mashups)
  • Linking Open Data project

• Open Government Data Principles

A Word of Advice

• Authoritative source
• Trust
• Provenance
• Security
• Integrity

Data Integration: challenges

Linked Data (maximize data integration and re-use)

• Increase metadata
• Roadmap for transitioning from existing systems
  • Don’t throw away, build on top
• Metadata use policies
• Trust-related challenges

Mobile Phones

(Photo Source: NY Times )

What services to prioritize? How? Where? Mobile Web for Social Development W3C Goal: to make the Web accessible, relevant, usable and useful for under-privileged populations and rural communities

eGovernment at W3C

• Interest Group: forum for discussion
  • Collective effort
  • Governments, Industry, Citizens, Civil Societies, other International Bodies

• Identification and description of existing challenges and propose ways to address them
• Three Task Forces: Usage of Web Standards, Transparency and Participation and Seamless Integration of Data
• Outcome:
  • Creation of an interdisciplinary forum
  • Identification and documentation of challenges and propose good practices to tackle them (Group Notes)

Removing the "e" from eGovernment

• Online services not just an alternative
• Becoming “the” public services
• More important than ever to solve problems

Thanks and Q&A

• José M. Alonso <josema@w3.org>
• Slides at: http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/0926-Corfu-JA/
• eGovernment at W3C: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/