The Future of the World Wide Web

(followup to Sir Tim Berners-Lee's speech)

The Web has become the main channel for Governments to deliver services to citizens
Web technologies play a crucial role in the relationships between Governments, and between Governments and Industry
Use of W3C Technologies in eGovernment is constantly increasing
- W3C standards have started to be named in laws all over the world (e.g. Web Accessibility)

Series of discussions to better understand the needs of Government in deploying current Web standards and the directions that future Web standards should take to best address delivery of Government services.
Two workshops so far:
- European Symposium on eGovernment, Gijón, Spain, 1-2 February 2007
- Toward More Transparent Government: Workshop on eGovernment and the Web, Washington DC, USA, 18-19 June 2007

eGovernment
- “the use of ICTs, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government”
- The Web is the main channel to deliver eGovernment services
  - Forget the paper-based procedures
  - change is not an option, just do it!

Open Standards increase innovation and competition
Increase citizens and market trust
- not tied to proprietary solutions
- avoid vendor lock-in

The development of standards-based interoperable frameworks is important to improving efficiencies and increasing the value of IT investments
Foundational technologies based on Web standards, together with best practices for deployment, is the focus of the World Wide Web Consortium's work
Accessibility as an example:
- adherence to standards makes it easier for the content providers to serve browser-independent content
- Government leadership is important in getting the technology vendors and the content providers to do the right thing for all citizens

What about Web pages that can only be accessed using a given browser?
New technologies, old problems, e.g.:
- mobile phones as enablers of Government services (e.g. in developing countries)
- difficult to build an interoperable solution (too many devices, browsers...), see the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) work

Lots of initiatives and interoperability frameworks built or in the works
- usually work only in a given context (national, regional...), hard to interoperate between them yet

Use Semantic Web technologies
- allows mixing data from very different sources
- no need to thrown away your existing data or systems, just build on top
- share, publish, use standards (RDF, OWL, SPARQL...), plan for unexpected reuse
- use IDs (URIs)

Opacity is not the solution, transparency is the way to go
- use the data for the purpose it was collected

eGovernment Services increasing sophistication, but “good old problems” not solved yet, e.g., interoperability, data sharing and integration...
The use of Open Standards can help
Need cooperation and skip reinventing the wheel, e.g., use cases and best practices
W3C has a role to play, but we cannot do it alone
Governments should be involved in development of open standards
eGovernment should be accessible to all
Remember: “change is not an option, just do it!”

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an International Consortium where Member and External organizations, a full-time technical staff, and the public work together to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing Web standards such as protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.
Goals: Interoperability, Universality, Functionalities
Neutral/not-for-profit, consensus based, open participation, open results
~450 members, ~70 staff,
~50 Working Groups, ~20 Coordination Groups and Interest Groups
Hosting: MIT (America), ERCIM (Europe) and Keio University (Japan) + 17 Offices
>Advisory Board, Technical Architecture Group
Liaisons with 40+ other standards bodies, Accountable to the global Public
Find more about W3C at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/