OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Why just limit this to patents? It would be useful for a number of agencies.

- CBO

- Treasury

- Congress

etc.etc.

Absolutely. Today, I had a visit with a new IP-focused Venture fund that absolutely needs this capability. RDFa can be used throughout the entire process, deep into the business processes and across the portfolio. But for their current strategy having RDFa applied to patents RIGHT NOW is core and could provide them a significant lift in funding more companies, growing more jobs faster.

In terms of ROI, patents represent a clear valuable IP asset that can be implemented in RDFa and monetized very quickly. Pitching other organizations: CBO, Treasury, Congress, figuring out their process, getting their data, getting agreement on what to do with it - is a very laborious expensive process that will inevitably result in bureaucratic delays.

Patents are much easier to manage from a sales and logistics standpoint. Tagging these assets with a the new semantic standard will send the right message to industry. Patents are just one category of data items that are of very high value with a lower bureaucracy factor, and fasted time to implementation - yielding the highest ROI for taxpayer dollar invested.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an unAmerican, intrusive, invasive plan! It isn't anyone's business what we do medically or how we pay for services. I don't want to be searched, analyzed or segmented!

Your comments are completely off topic as you clearly have not read the URLs associated with the WC3, worldwide web internet standards body who agrees with this approach. There is nothing intrusive whatsoever about this proposal. I have flagged as abuse.

Info, we clearly don't share the same opinion. I find your intended censorship of my views offensive. Therefore, I have flagged you in retaliation. I really don't care that the URL agrees with this approach, I don't agree!

Keeping this professional would begin by not using words like "un-American" and "intrusive" to express your thoughts. You are clearly upset about something. That is why I flagged you. And now that everyone is aware of your abrasive style, hopefully the censors will monitor your posts more closely.

This recommendation stands on a very firm foundation, if you simply read and try to understand the point of view from the W3C's International board of esteemed experts on the topic including the inventor of the Internet - Tim Berners Lee - who have already endorsed this approach to Congress for other applications.

"Intrusive" offends your sensibility but "abrasive" doesn't!? I was describing how I feel about the idea that you posted. I didn't relize that you were in charge of vernacular and this wasn't a personal attack.

The United Kingdom has announced that they are making all government information available as linked open data -- using RDFa. The US government should do the same, and do it NOW!

1. Exposing the concepts, and structure of web pages, documents, files and structured data sources is relatively easy. Free, open source tools exist for express the schemas of databases, or the structure of xml documents as RDFa. Same for PDFs and SVG files.

2. There are tools that end users can use -- for example, from Cambridge Semantics, Silicon Discovery, Zepheira, and others. These tools: (a) let users work with desktop tools they know such as excel, (b) or on the web, (c) combine selected data (aka mashups) with data from other sources including spreadsheets, databases, forms, etc., and (d) present data of interest using various lenses and web services for rendering information graphics (charts, maps, etc.)

3. Linked open data is a gift that keeps on giving. Web 2.0 methods for doing similar things are essentially one-off concoctions. Each one you do, you start over again. Like rebuilding the database when the schema changes. Not with linked open data. Web 3.0 methods based on RDFa are essentially recombinant. This means agile when it comes to analysis. Doing something different. Adding different data. Trying a different visualization. These all get easier with RDFa.

4. The major internet providers are backing RDFa. So simply exposing web page content, document concepts, and structured data with RDFa gives you benefits right out of the box. YAHOO! and GOOGLE now have services that can take advantage of linked open data and other semantic annotation formats to improve the relevance, and impact of search results. Microsoft too.

5. Getting Federal agencies and programs started and up to speed with RDFa and linked open data is not hard. In fact, it's easy. It can happen fast. And, it will cost very little. Sufficient qualified service providers already exist. If agencies and programs follow simple Jump Start program, the entire federal government could be well on its way to exploiting the benefits of linked open data by the end of FY 2009.

6. What should be part of a linked open data (LOD) jump start program for Federal agencies and Programs? The goal should be to have every agency and program fully up and running by September with respect to implementing Obama administration directives for recovery.gov, data.gov. and open government initiatives.

The jump start program scope includes the following steps:

(a) LOD enable the agency (agency ontology + Good Relations)

(b) LOD enable a website, a data set, and a document. -- plus supporting documentation

(c) LOD training -- teaching the agency / program how to do it, how to use it, show cool things with searching, browsing, reporting, analyzing, harvesting from web, etc.

(d) Program costs should not exceed $25K USD per agency or program, and thus do not require competitive bid cycle

Here is a link to a presentation describing the role of cloud computing, web 2.0 and web 3.0 semantic technologies for implementing transparency, openness, collaboration, and citizen participation in e-goverment.

http://tinyurl.com/pqsk8p