Data Integration and Transparency

This talk

• How to get extra value from data
• Transparency and Openness
• Tradeoffs in building linked data

Unexpected Re-use

The added value from sharing on the web

• By the public
• By colleagues
• By other agencies
• By partner organizations & companies
• For research
• By executive management
• In an emergency

How to plan for the unexpected?

Sharing data

• More potential for re-use than sharing HTML
• Others can re-work and re-present data on 'web 2.0' sites
• Data will be merged by others with that from:
  • other departments
  • other contries
  • other sectors
  • enterprise and personal data
• Re-use may well oustrip primary use

Data mixing: Term by term

One item may involve data from many ontologies

The tradeoff

Semantic Web optimizes the tradeoff

• Mixing of ontologies in each application
• Tradeoff choice term by term not project by project
• Retrospective connections between ontologies
• Widest interoperability with limited subset of data
• Understands overlapping communities

Data owners should

1. Take inventory
2. Decide priorities, most likely benefits
3. Look for existing ontologies
4. Don't change the way data is managed
5. Set up standard (RDF, SPARQL) portals onto existing data
6. Where necessary, adapt or write new ontology bits

Forms of openness

• Use of open standards
• Linking out
• Open access control
• Transparency about decisions

Linking out

• Using URIs to identify things
• Serving useful data about those things
• Using URIs on other people's systems
• Allows data discovery.

Incentive: kudos

Limitations of access control

• One person, many uses
• Leaks
• Frustration

Track provenance of data

• Agency responsible
• Acceptable uses
• License -- E.G. Creative Commons
• Trustworthiness
• Combination with other data
• Anonymisation
• Data about this expressed in same standards as data.

Most semantic web processing systems are aware of provenance

Conclusion

• Next steps should all be Semantic Web standards compatible.
• Don't upset existing systems
• Don't make new ontologies unless you have to
• Government agencies should be transparent and accountable
• We have the technology
• Plan for unexpected re-use