putting government data online

[rick]

For folks that haven't already seen it, Tim Berners-Lee has released a
new Internet Design Issues note called Putting Government Data Online.

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData.html

--
Rick

cell: 703-201-9129
web: http://www.rickmurphy.org
blog: http://phaneron.rickmurphy.org

[Eric Mill]

The most important point in the document, in my mind, is to just do
something now and not overplan:

"Do NOT wait until you have a complete schema or ontology to publish data."

And similarly said, earlier in the document:

"If you have existing data in XML, first, put that XML up on the web
while you think."

-- Eric

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Eric Mill<er...@sunlightfoundation.com> wrote:
> The most important point in the document, in my mind, is to just do
> something now and not overplan:
>
> "Do NOT wait until you have a complete schema or ontology to publish data."
>
> And similarly said, earlier in the document:
>
> "If you have existing data in XML, first, put that XML up on the web
> while you think."
>
> -- Eric

[rick]

Eric & All:

I agree that this is very good advice and an approach that I personally
support. But as in skydiving, when we go into a free fall we'd like to
have a pretty good idea of how to use our parachute to execute a safe
landing.

I had a chance to closely study what Tim's recommending in this Design
Issues Note while doing some work on recovery.gov recently and captured
some thoughts in this post.

http://phaneron.rickmurphy.org/?p=34

Rick

[Erik Wilde]

hello.

rick wrote:
> http://phaneron.rickmurphy.org/?p=34

just commenting on that post, TimBL's recent statements, and the general
fuzziness of the "linked open data" buzzword: linked open data is about
links and data, and XML is excelling at both, plus it is supported on
every conceivable platform. so while i am supporting the idea of "linked
open data", please let's not jump to any conclusions about how to
implement it, and let's look at the maturity and ubiquity of the chosen
implementation method as important factors for making the decision. the
semantic web community (which is now rebranding itself as "linked open
data") has a habit of looking at others in that community and concluding
from that that many people use these technologies. i know that they are
catching on (last week's http://www.semantic-conference.com/ is a good
indicator for that), but in terms of deployment, it's still nothing
compared to plain web technologies; many more citizen hackers know how
handle XML data, while RDF still is not all that popular and tools are
mostly java-based, limited to major platforms, and are mostly
circulating within the research community (i guess the quest for a
robust and scalable RDF triple store, for example, is still open). i
really think the onus is on the more complex technology to prove why it
should it be chosen over a simpler, more widely deployed, and equally
capable technology such as XML. even if TimBL does promote something, it
does not necessarily mean it's the only or the best way to proceed.

http://dret.net/netdret/docs/wilde-cacm2008-xml-fever.html#advanced

cheers,

erik wilde tel:+1-510-6432253 - fax:+1-510-6425814
dr...@berkeley.edu - http://dret.net/netdret
UC Berkeley - School of Information (ISchool)