Charter Extension

Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group: Charter Extension Request

Summary

The Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group was initially chartered for 24 months, running June 2011 through the end of May 2013. The charter was ambitious and asked the group to produce:

• A "Community Directory" gathering deployments, vendors, and applications
• Best Practices in six different areas (Rec Track)
• Four vocabulary specifications (with an optional fifth) (Rec Track)

Largely due to government budget cuts around the world, key participants became unavailable and travel for most remaining participants was restricted. In response, the group decided to focus its work on three of the vocabularies, keeping those on the Rec Track, and producing WG Notes to cover most of the other deliverables.

At this point, two of these three Rec-Track deliverables are Candidate Recommendations and the other is in Last Call. The group is requesting an extension the end of 2013 to see these documents through to REC and complete its planned WG Notes.

Participation

The group has a healthy membership with 15-20 participants attending weekly meetings and using the WG mailing list. Over the last six months (Jan to June 2013) that list averaged 115 messages/month while the public comments list has averaged 30. The group has closed 65 issues and has none open.

The major source of delays for this group has been the lack of availability of key people, primarily due to government funding cuts, but also for personal reasons. The group was chartered expecting significant participation from certain global trailblazers in this field, but shifting government priorities and austerity measures meant they were unable to participate. Additionally, this WG's initial co-chair, George Thomas (US HHS) had to resign.

The following people been participating and given indications they intend to continue:

1. Hadley Beeman (co-chair)
2. Bernadette Hyland (co-chair)
3. Sandro Hawke (W3C)
4. Phil Archer (W3C)
5. Joao Paulo Almeida (Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo)
6. Ghislain Auguste Atemezing (Institut Telecom)
7. Makx Dekkers (Invited Expert)
8. John Erickson (RPI)
9. Christophe Gueret (VU)
10. Benedikt Kaempgen (FZI)
11. Deirdre Lee (DERI)
12. Fadi Maali (DERI)
13. Marios Meimaris (Invited Expert, NTU Athena)
14. Dave Reynolds (Invited Expert, Epimorphics)
15. Biplav Srivastava (IBM)
16. Bart van Leeuwen (netage.nl)
17. Boris Villazón-Terrazas (Invited Expert)
18. Ted Thibodeau (OpenLink)
19. Mike Pendleton (US EPA)
20. Martín Álvarez (CTIC)

Additionally, the following people attended one or more recent meeting:

1. Yigal Arens (Invited Expert, USC ISI)
2. Tina Gheen (US Library of Congress)
3. James McKinney (Invited Expert)
4. Tope Omitola (University of Southampton)

Deliverables

Community Directory

In March 2012, on behalf of the group, 3 Round Stones released the community directory at http://dir.w3.org. Since then, the directory has been iteratively improved, and it is now being transitioned to being run by the Open Data Directory Community Group.

Best Practices

The group intends to review the editors draft and publish it as a WG Note in the coming weeks. The group intends to drop any non-consensus items rather than spend significant time on them.

The group published Linked Data Cookbook on the W3C wiki.

Additionally, the group published Linked Data Glossary as a WG Note.

Metadata Vocabulary

The group decided to adopt and standardize the DCAT Data Catalog vocabulary. In response to the March 2013 Last Call WD, some substantive changes were made, and a Second Last Call is being published this week.

Additional items:

• the group has published the related Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) as a WG Note.
• the group intends to publish Use Cases and Requirements for the Data Catalog Vocabulary as a WG Note shortly.

Statistical "Cube" Data

The group decided to adopt and standardize the RDF Data Cube Vocabulary. After extensive discussion with the Director concerning how to establish exit criteria for this, a Candidate Recommendation was published. The group is maintaining a validator and collecting implementation reports.

Additional items:

• The group is publishing Use Cases and Lessons for the Data Cube Vocabulary as a WG Note, this week.

People

In April 2012, the group published Terms for describing people, but there was no significant community response or interest within the group for continuing this work, so the group decided to stop work in this area.

Organizational Structures

The group decided to adopt and standardize the ORG Ontology. After extensive discussion with the Director concerning how to establish exit criteria for this, a Candidate Recommendation was published. The group is maintaining a validator and collecting implementation reports.

Additional items:

• the group has published the Registered Organization Vocabulary, which is closely related, as a WG Note.

Timeline for Remaining Work