What do we offer?

What do governments need?

• Integrated solution for their common problems
  • interoperability, inclusion, data integration, improvement of citizen-centric government...
• They struggle on what to use and when to use it
• Need of an integrated view across specifications and bodies
  • What is the right tool for the job and how should I use it?
  • eg. "my service needs to be delivered in an inclusive and multichannel way"

Open Standards and Technical Specifications

• "...the term “standard” [refers] to a document, established and approved by a national, EU or International recognized body (CEN, CENELEC, ETSI, ISO,…) whereas the term “technical specification” covers also specifications issued by stakeholder fora or industry consortia such as W3C, IETF, …"
• "Public Administrations, especially in the PEGS context, need common standards or technical specifications to implement the interoperability of their processes, organisations and systems;"

from EIF 2.0 consultation document (chapter 8)

Why Openness?

• "Openness of standards or technical specifications is important for public administrations because of its relationship with interoperability, freedom and choice:
  • openness lowers barriers to market entry, thereby widening the field to competition - leading to more choice, better quality and lower prices;
  • openness spurs innovation by allowing more talent to contribute ideas and advance the state-of-the-art;
  • openness strengthens the position of consumers vis-à-vis their suppliers;
  • openness enables consumers to combine off-the-shelf products with custom-built products and turn-key systems;
  • openness facilitates interoperability through transparency;
  • openness enhances security through transparency;
  • openness ensure access to information and services, now and in the future, as it avoids lock-in situations, making such access dependent from specific products;"

also from EIF 2.0 consultation document (chapter 8)

Why eGovernment at W3C?

Mission: improving access to government through better use of the Web

• Previous experience (eg. PICS, P3P)
• Open Web Standards as enablers to achieve policy goals
• Massive use of Web technology in eGovernment
• Need to better speak in government terms
• Identify government needs, perceived gaps in standards and bridge them
  

Governments have some unique requirements and we want those requirements to be reflected in the standards we produce to better serve the community (charter)

Main topics on eGov IG

• Web Guidelines for Government Web Sites and Applications
• Open Standards Policies
• Participation
• Transparency
• Data Integration
• mGovernment

also other related topics at W3C: Policy Languages (PLING), Security (in browsers, XML Signature...), Identity, i18n...

Ex. some challenges in Participation and Transparency

• How to improve accountablity while preserving privacy?
• How to improve granularity?
• How to identify provenance of data?
• How to compare the authoritative information the government has with that of users?
• How to integrate the information in terms of users' needs?

Ex. Semantic Interoperability

• Sharing interoperability assets is good, building them together is even better
• Why use Open Web Standards and Semantic Web in particular?
  • makes integrating heterogeneous sources easier

W3C/OASIS on eGov

• Why are our charters so similar?
  • We've been hearing the same issues from governments for quite some time
  • We are trying to address them
• Working together
  • something we also heard from government
  • something we are already doing (even talking about joint events)

Thanks and Q&A

• José M. Alonso <josema@w3.org>
• Slides at: http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/1002-london-JA/
• eGovernment at W3C: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/
• eGovernment Interest Group (eGov IG): http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/
• eGov IG Wiki: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/

cover photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nonanet/107379725/