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Linked Data

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Linked Data for Open Government

In Progress - Note that this page is not complete and contains empty links to future content

The Linked Data standards, techniques and technologies allow information to be published in a open and standard format with common web based access methods. This standard web-based data format that allows data of various kinds, vocabularies, sources, semantics and authors to be federated, queried and analyzed. It is based on the “Resource Description Framework” (RDF) – a very open and general way to publish data. There are existing standards as well as open source and commercial implementations of these technologies. An informative video is available here: Tim Berners-Lee: [next Web of open, linked data]


Publishing all information as linked open data does not preclude other formats – where there are accepted or more efficient mechanisms for some kind of information, the same information can also be made available via that mechanism. Technology already exists to have the same information available in multiple formats and expose existing information, say in a SQL DBMS, as open linked data. The data published as open linked data should be very inclusive – everything from the safety ratings of nuclear reactors to the business process OMB uses to approve a budget to the vocabularies to define the data itself.


Information published in this way would not be used directly by a user, other open, government and commercial web sites would be able to consume this information and provide various views of it for citizens. Of course the publishing agency would also provide simple web pages to access the information. So “many flowers will bloom” to consume, analyze and present this data once it is made available by the government.

This site is intended to provide the information required to help government transform using linked data. This page is an in-progress work item of the eGovernment interest group and does not reflect a standard of the W3C.


W3C Government Linked Data Resources

W3C eGovernment Activities


Other Linked Data Resources