eGov Interest Group

<Jeanne_Holm> http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/Main_Page#Upcoming_Meetings for the agenda and minutes of past meetings

Jeanne_Holm: Introduces meeting
... This is the 10th meeting on open data
... we began with a bunch of questions we wanted to answer. Tomasz has done a lot of work to pull together what we've heard

http://www.w3.org/2013/04/odw/

<LarsG> See you there

<Jeanne_Holm> Huge amount of activities going on in London and other cities April 23 and 24 on open data

http://www.w3.org/2013/04/odw/evening

<Jeanne_Holm> "Big Data Week"

<HadleyBeeman> Looking forward to it

Martin Murillo

<Jeanne_Holm> http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/images/4/4f/EIT_-_Martin_Murillo_-_eGov_IG_Presentation.pdf for presentation

Martin: Slide 2 - the government loop

slide 3 Recentresearch[1]hasfoundthattransparencyisnotenoughforthereductionofcorruption.Importantnecessaryconditions,publicityandaccountability,mustalsobepresent:

oops - copying from the PDF isn't good :-(

Martin: Citiznes need to receive and understand the info - govs need to be accountable

slide 4 - agent-principal framework

Martin: 2 types of transparency, agent controlled and non-agent controlled
... non agent controlled often represented by a free press
... points to measures of transparency
... slide 5

MartinMurillo: slide 7
... various tools we could use to measure transparency
... not a statistical study but is qualitative

scribe note - it's hard to hear Martin but we're doing our best to hear what he's saying

Jeanne_Holm: Picks up at slide 11
... Correlation between institutional transparency and the effect that it has
... civil society, advocacy groups etc. making requests does have an effect
... On slide 12 Martin notes that we're not as able as we'd like to get machine readable data out there. TimBL's 5 stars are hard to climb

<Hatem> sorry :) muted myself

Slides are pretty detailed in terms of conclusions

<Martin_Murillo> Thanks Phil. Sorry connection problems.

Jeanne_Holm: Martin talked about digital divide, tech capability etc.

it happens Martin_Murillo - no one's fault. Jeanne_Holm is working through the remainder of your slide deck

please add to IRC if you can

<Martin_Murillo> Thanks Jeanne!

Jeanne_Holm: hypercharged version of the ?unstransparent? and knowledge/empowerment divided real world
... Summarising - Martin_Murillo notes that there are many aspects to the digital divide. It's not just access to expensive equipment (scribe summary, not ther words used)

<Jeanne_Holm> Are there any question for Marin?

Martin_Murillo: Thanks Jeanne for doing that. I'm happy to answer questions on IRC or by mail

Final quote - A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing ability without a pencil is no particular advantage

<Gwyn_S> great topic. will have to read over more carefully

<Gwyn_S> thanks martin

<Gwyn_S> I feel like martin said something interesting, but I couldn't hear it

Martin_Murillo: (I think) talking about an empowerment divide cf. 'simple' digital divide

Jeanne_Holm: And I think he also talked about a data divide

<Martin_Murillo> Africa's Internet connectividy (broadband) is 17%; by 2020, it will be only 25%!

<Martin_Murillo> thus all audiences must be included in any initiative.

PhilA: Notes that 50% of EU citizens of never been online so Africa isn't *that* far behind

<Gwyn_S> but 3G in africa by 2015 will be like eastern europe

<Jeanne_Holm> Wow, Phil. 50% of EU citizens? That's enlightening.

GannonDick: That point about hypercharged... is thet effect convergent in time or something that will be forever divergent/parallel, meaning that if we do something today to...
... to increase/identify transparency that it will ahve a convergent effect, making the digital divide go away

Martin_Murillo: Historically, it's the same as the industrial revolution - it affects people differntly (scribe being liberal with re-wording probably inaccurate)

<Jeanne_Holm> ...important to consider cultural, religion, and other issues that are important in understanding the different views

PhilA: Figure varies. UK it's 15%, Jeanne_Holm

Martin_Murillo: Africa has been labelled as a 'mobile only' continent
... think black and white only, text only

PhilA: really? Martin_Murillo?? I thought even cheap phones were more powerful, no?

Martin_Murillo: People fear that the Internet will be Balkanised as a response to cyber attacks
... Lots of issues to consider.

PhilA: Apologises to Martin_Murillo for only getting some of what you're saying and probably recording what I do hear inaccurately

Jeanne_Holm: Thanks Martin_Murillo
... appreciate your struggling with the digital divide today!

Martin_Murillo: Once I'm back in Canada I'll be able to have a better connection

<Martin_Murillo> Thank you all!

data.gov and the US efforts

Jeanne_Holm: I realised I'd not talked about this so I wanted to briefly highlight some changes that are coming

<GannonDick> slides or it never happened

Jeanne_Holm: A lot of you know what we're doing
... slides at http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/images/8/8f/DataGov_April_2013.pdf
... Brief summary. data.gov is the US gov initiative, from the CIO in the White House
... we get very high level support
... Also get support from the World Bank and others
... separates federal and state level government (and cities)
... means that developers at hackathons can't get to data from different gov levels typically
... launched cities.data.gov and .... ?? missed it

<Martin_Murillo> Africa as a "mobile-only" continent: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opinion

Jeanne_Holm: Slide 3
... Having a site that just does open data separately from anything else is hard to maintain/justify. So it's now part of something bigger, part of hte core mission
... calls for significant changes in our infrastructure
... needed a more agile architecture
... so hence the move from Socrata to CKAN
... We want to provide access to the data anda context for it

alpha.data.gov is the story around the data

The stories around what happens to a data set and how it helps are embedded in the new site

scribe: lots of examples of economic benefit, and how it sometimes literally saves lives

Jeanne_Holm: Our Communities also create context
... policies, events etc. that help to make sense of the data
... our energy and safety communities are really strong at the mo - see slide 13
... Talking about New Horizons oil spill and its impact
... created data sets around that. Did similar following the japanese earthquake
... Now we're on slide 16
... recently had a big storm on the east coast (Sandy)
... People were still trying to get around of course, even with flooded tunnels etc.
... visualisations helped direct people
... developers worked with the transportation folks to visualise what the options were
... over 700K downloads on the first vweekend
... agile infrastructure was important
... can modify data presentation easily
... Skip to slide 20
... code for OGPL is open source (on Github)
... being used in India, talking to Canada and Rwanda
... There's a fork to include CKAN and other forks
... Slide 21 - where we've been and where we're headed
... We're focused on APIs - trying to provide APIs for most data sets
... US spends a ton on research that produces data that isn't always accessible - working on that, making it all accessible
... So that's what we're doing and felt that I needed to make sure the US was covered

<Jeanne_Holm> Any questions?

PhilA: Any push back on the use of URIs as identifiers for things?

Jeanne_Holm: Not really. People see we need persistent methodologies
... there are some tech issues on the implementation
... may be related to moving to CKAN/Drupal
... some messy details right now
... but it will be resolved
... agreement has gone from people not knowing what a URI was to being very supportive
... Looking at DCAT and schema.org

bhyland: we're at last call for the 3 Rec Track covabularies - ORG, DCAT and QB
... We've sent out a lot of mail about this :-)

<bdhandspicker> Jeanne, Phil, I can take over scribing if you need...

bhyland: next face to face meeting is next week in Dublin

<Jeanne_Holm> Brian, thank you!!!

<scribe> scribe: bdhandspicker

<scribe> scribeNick: bdhandspicker

<bhyland> Open Data Policy from the US White House has a lot of details about publication of government open data

Jeanne: There are two areas being announced - schema.org and open data policy of white house

<bhyland> Jeanne: Schema.org and Open Data Policy (in review a long time) is forthcoming.

Jeanne: A lot of public comments on the draft version, so some interesting changes coming

Presentation by Lisa and Thomas summarizing meetings on Open Goverment Data

<Brand_Niemann> Yesterday's Third Annual Government Big Data Forum: Big Data in the Age of Analytics: From Infrastructure to Sense Making: http://semanticommunity.info/Third_Annual_Government_Big_Data_Forum#Story for new strategy for making OGD Big Data

It is a work in progress, missing last couple of meetings but can be added to by community

<Jeanne_Holm> http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/images/5/5b/Open_government_data_5.pdf is the presentation

Intend is to create a formal paper based on our joint work

<bhyland> scribe: bhyland

<bdhandspicker> Test...

<bdhandspicker> OK, I"m back

<Brand_Niemann> Example of OMB Dominic Sale's new Digital Government Strategy for OGD applied to Todd Park's Health Data Palooza IV and Redesigning Data's Innovation Challenge: http://semanticommunity.info/Health_Datapalooza_IV#Story

<scribe> scribe: bdhanspicker

<bdhandspicker> Slide 6 - Where eGov is deployed... local, national, global

<bdhandspicker> Slide 6 - What is eGov and what are good exemplars

<bdhandspicker> Slide 6 - Themes across all the presentations

<bdhandspicker> Slide 10 - Summarizes the cases presented by various participants over the course of the group meetings

<bdhandspicker> Each of 20 cases are evaluated based on how they address the questions "What", "Why", "How", and "Where"

<bdhandspicker> Slide 33 - Conclusions Overview: The dimensions of the questions what, why, how, where

<bdhandspicker> Slide 35: The characteristics of the What Dimension

<bdhandspicker> Slide 36-37: The characteristics of the Why Dimension

<bdhandspicker_> Slide 38-39: The characteristics of the How Dimension

<bdhandspicker_> S;ide 40-41: The characteristics of the Where Dimension

<bdhandspicker_> Slide 42: Conclusion

<bdhandspicker_> bhyland: Question: How to articulate our open data publishing efforts (breaking up)

<Jeanne_Holm> bhyland: Are you planning to articulate the ROI or greater value proposition of broader initiatives on innovation?

<Owen> Sandro noted the eGov IG's charter is nearing its expiration date and that folks should consider joining the new communities. What are the plans for the IG?

<bdhandspicker> Jeanne: we are hoping for more government researchers to present on the resulting value proposition associated with their use cases.

<bdhandspicker> Gannon: Make clear that GIS stands for Government Information Systems not Geography... Geometry... etc.

TLA's are not unique to the government. All organizations use them, from the military to private sector

<bdhandspicker> Brand: Big Data meetings happening... see comments above with links to results of meetings/conferences

<bdhandspicker> Make all government data "big data"

<bdhandspicker> Jeanne: Not a lot of our discussions have been specific to "big data", perhaps because of our timing and the ongoing maturing of the big data concept

@Jeanne, @Martin, et al. Thank you for sharing your respective updates today. Must leave for another call.

<bdhandspicker> Brand: Would be interesting to work with data across multiple data sets to identify new relationships between the data sets

<bdhandspicker> Brand: the real interesting results come from adding new relationships between data sets, making it "big data", then adding even more data set relationships

<bdhandspicker> Brand: Recommend that the government have a Chief Data Officer with a team of Data Scientists to work on interesting problems across multiple government data sets

<bdhandspicker> Brand: In some cases the laws don't allow creating relationships between some data sets, e.g. census, tax, etc.

<bdhandspicker> Brand: Broader transparency efforts now have a mandate in the hurricane relief domain to identify both opportunities and fraud, waste and abuse

<bdhandspicker> Thomas will put out an upcoming agenda ideas for review by the group

<bdhandspicker> The charter is coming up for review and we may be retitle a community group rather than an interest group

<bdhandspicker> Thank you all

<GannonDick> bye, thanks