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Best Practices/For People to Read and Machines To Process
Share-PSI 2.0 Best Practice
For People to Read and Machines To Process
Source:
- Best Practices/Human Readability and Machine Processing
- Best Practices/Make the data available in the language people want it
- Best Practices/Optimization for Search Engines
- Best Practices/Publication with Common Metadata
Contents
Outline
When publishing information ensure that it can be read by people and also processed by computers. Also ensure that the information is accessible in languages that are suitable for the people who might want to find/use this information.
Management summary
Challenge
Public sector organisations often only consider either the human-readable form of the information that they publish, or the data download intended for computer processing. Equally, they don't necessarily consider the potential benefit of making their information discoverable to people who speak other languages. When the information is in an appropriate format for people to read and machines to process it still needs to be made more discoverable through search engines.
Solution
Publishers should consider whether their information will be read directly by people as well as being processed by computers, or just processed by computers alone. All information should be published using open formats and the information that is for people to read should be styled for easy reading. It can be available in parallel versions in different languages. Discoverability will be enhanced by the addition of labels, tags and other forms of metadata that come from standard and perhaps multi-lingual vocabularies and thesauri, such as EUROVOC. Search engine performance can be enhanced by cross-referencing with hyperlinks and specifically submitting hyperlinks to search engines.
Best Practice identification
Why is this a Best Practice? What’s the impact of the Best Practice
Information needs to be discovered in order to be used. Improvements to the discoverability of information improve the chances that it will be reused.
Links to the PSI Directive
Why is there a need for this Best Practice?
A core requirement of the PSI Directive is that information which is published for people to read should also be available in open, machine-processable formats for others to re-use.
What do you need for this Best Practice?
- Ability to publish information in open formats
- Use of multi-lingual thesauri such as EUROVOC
- Hyperlinks from other information resources to the information resource in question
- Submission of the hyperlink to the information resource to search engines