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								<h1 style="clear: both;" id="title">Improving Access to Government through

								Better Use of the Web</h1>


								<h2 id="W3C-doctype">W3C Interest Group Note 12 May 2009</h2>

								<dl>

								  <dt>This version:</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-egov-improving-20090512/">http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-egov-improving-20090512/</a></dd>

								  <dt>Latest version:</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/egov-improving/">http://www.w3.org/TR/egov-improving/</a></dd>

								  <dt>Previous version:</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-egov-improving-20090310/">http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-egov-improving-20090310/</a></dd>

								</dl>

								<dl>

								  <dt id="editors">Editors:</dt>

								    <dd>Suzanne Acar (Invited Expert)</dd>

								    <dd>Jose M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC)</dd>

								    <dd>Kevin Novak (The American Institute of Architects)</dd>

								  <dt id="authors">Authors:</dt>

								    <dd>José M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC)</dd>

								    <dd>Owen Ambur (Invited Expert)</dd>

								    <dd>Miguel A. Amutio (Ministerio de Administraciones Públicas)</dd>

								    <dd>Oscar Azañón (Gobierno del Principado de Asturias)</dd>

								    <dd>Daniel Bennett (Invited Expert)</dd>

								    <dd>Rachel Flagg (Invited Expert)</dd>

								    <dd>Dave McAllister (Adobe Systems Inc.)</dd>

								    <dd>Kevin Novak (The American Institute of Architects)</dd>

								    <dd>Sharron Rush (Invited Expert)</dd>

								    <dd>John Sheridan (The National Archives)</dd>

								    <dd><a href="#ack">more authors</a></dd>

								</dl>


								<p>Please refer to the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2009/05/egov-improving-errata">errata</a> and <a

								href="#GLOSSARY">glossary</a> for this document.</p>


								<p class="copyright"><a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice#Copyright">Copyright</a> ©

								2009 <a href="http://www.w3.org/"><acronym

								title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</acronym></a><sup>®</sup> (<a

								href="http://www.csail.mit.edu/"><acronym

								title="Massachusetts Institute of Technology">MIT</acronym></a>, <a

								href="http://www.ercim.org/"><acronym

								title="European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics">ERCIM</acronym></a>,

								<a href="http://www.keio.ac.jp/">Keio</a>), All Rights Reserved. W3C <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice#Legal_Disclaimer">liability</a>,

								<a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice#W3C_Trademarks">trademark</a>

								and <a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-documents">document

								use</a> rules apply.</p>

								<hr />

								</div>


								<h2 id="abstract">Abstract</h2>


								<p>Current Web technology allows governments to share with the public a variety

								of information in unlimited quantities on demand. Technology is also available

								to allow citizens to bring issues of concern to the attention of local,

								regional and national governments. However, exploiting these capabilities

								within government systems is a challenge that encompasses environmental,

								policy, legal, and cultural issues. Establishing effective eGovernment requires

								openness, transparency, collaboration and skill in taking advantage of the

								capabilities of the World Wide Web. The rich potential for two-way dialogue

								between citizens and government creates a need for global leadership. The W3C

								has an opportunity to provide guidance in support of eGovernment objectives by

								promoting existing open Web standards and noting the challenges external to the

								Web and technology. There is also role for the W3C to facilitate the

								development and vetting of new open Web standards needed by governments in

								context.</p>


								<p>This document is an attempt to describe, but not yet solve, the variety of

								issues and challenges faced by governments in their efforts to apply

								21<sup>st</sup> century capabilities to eGovernment initiatives. Detail and

								useful examples of existing, applicable open Web standards are provided. Where

								government needs in the development of eGovernment services are not currently

								met by existing standards, those gaps are noted.</p>


								<h2 id="status">Status of this document</h2>


								<p><em>This section describes the status of this document at the time of its

								publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C

								publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in

								the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/">W3C technical reports index</a> at

								http://www.w3.org/TR/.</em></p>


								<p>This is a public Interest Group Note produced by the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/">eGovernment Interest Group</a>, which is

								part of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/">eGovernment Activity</a>.

								This publication as an Interest Group Note represents the culmination of the

								first year of group work. The contents of this document may be subject to

								further iteration and development. It incorporates comments received since the

								publication of a draft of this document released on <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-egov-improving-20090310/">10 March 2009</a>.

								Please send further comments to <a

								href="mailto:public-egov-ig@w3.org">public-egov-ig@w3.org</a> (with <a

								href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-egov-ig/">public

								archive</a>).</p>


								<p>Publication as an Interest Group Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C

								Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted

								by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as

								other than work in progress. </p>


								<p>This document was produced by a group operating under the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/">5 February 2004 W3C

								Patent Policy</a>. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C

								Recommendation. W3C maintains a <a rel="disclosure"

								href="http://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/42481/status">public list of any patent

								disclosures</a> made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that

								page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has

								actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#def-essential">Essential

								Claim(s)</a> must disclose the information in accordance with <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Disclosure">section

								6 of the W3C Patent Policy</a>.</p>


								<p>The disclosure obligations of the Participants of this group are described

								in the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2008/02/eGov/ig-charter#patentpolicy">charter</a>.</p>


								<h2 id="toc">Table of Contents</h2>


								<div class="toc">

								<ol>

								  <li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a>

								    <ul>

								      <li><a href="#intro.back">Background</a>

								        <ul>

								          <li><a href="#intro.back.activities">Charter and Activities</a>

								            <ul>

								              <li><a href="#intro.back.activities.use">Usage of Web

								                Standards</a></li>

								              <li><a href="#intro.back.activities.t_p">Transparency and

								                Participation</a></li>

								              <li><a href="#intro.back.activities.integration">Seamless

								                Integration of Data</a></li>

								              <li><a href="#intro.back.activities.rel">Relationships and

								                Collaborations</a></li>

								            </ul>

								          </li>

								        </ul>

								      </li>

								    </ul>

								  </li>

								  <li><a href="#definitions">Definitions</a></li>

								  <li><a href="#modalities">Trends and Modalities of the Web and the

								    Information Consumer</a></li>

								  <li><a href="#issues">eGovernment Issues</a>

								    <ul>

								      <li><a href="#pe">Participation and Engagement</a>

								        <ul>

								          <li><a href="#pe.accessibility">Accessibility</a></li>

								        </ul>

								      </li>

								      <li><a href="#OGD">Open Government Data</a></li>

								      <li><a href="#interop">Interoperability</a></li>

								      <li><a href="#multi-channel">Multi-Channel Delivery</a></li>

								      <li><a href="#idauth">Identification and Authentication</a></li>

								    </ul>

								  </li>

								  <li><a href="#next">Next Steps</a></li>

								  <li><a href="#ack">Acknowledgements</a></li>

								  <li><a href="#refs">References</a></li>

								</ol>

								</div>


								<h2 id="intro">1. Introduction</h2>


								<p>Governments have been striving since the late 1990's to find better ways to

								connect with their constituents via the Web. By putting government information

								online, and making it easily findable, readily available, accessible,

								understandable, and usable, people can now interact with their government in

								ways never before imagined.</p>


								<p>This concept is dubbed "electronic government", or eGovernment. The promise

								of eGovernment allows citizens to access government information and services on

								their terms. Sharing government data and information with the public provides

								openness and transparency with citizens, and can improve operations within and

								between governments.</p>


								<p>Unfortunately, effective eGovernment has not been easy to accomplish, given

								the unique challenges that governments face in collecting, managing, and making

								information and services available electronically. These challenges include

								outdated policies, budgetary and personnel constraints, and a slow-moving,

								bureaucratic culture. Web 2.0 and social media have only added to these

								challenges, and governments have been slow to adjust to these new paradigms of

								openness, interaction, and influence. A further challenge is the proliferation

								of mobile devices, where and when they are an access point to government

								services and also where and when they are the only access point available to

								constituents given the lack of adequate physical infrastructure. Lastly, the

								issue of accessibility, where data and Web pages and services are available or

								not to those with disabilities further compounds the challenges of

								eGovernment.</p>


								<p>We are facing many questions now, such as how can governments leverage Web

								2.0 tools without violating existing laws, regulations, and policies? How can

								governments ensure the authenticity of their information when it is opened for

								public use? What is the best way to include electronic communications into the

								"official record"? How can new technologies be integrated into legacy systems?

								How do we effectively reach all citizens, including those who access the Web

								via mobile devices, those with disabilities, or those without any access to the

								Web?</p>


								<p>These questions are not easy to answer. The W3C eGovernment Interest Group

								(eGov IG) offers this Note to help governments formulate their eGovernment

								vision. This paper describes, but does not yet solve, many of the issues and

								challenges faced by governments. The use cases and explanations focus on

								current technical standards, and provide context for the challenges and issues

								we must overcome.</p>


								<h3 id="intro.back">Background</h3>


								<p>Governments have strived for over a decade to provide more information and

								services to their constituents including the public, businesses, and other

								governments. Through their efforts there have been struggles given policy,

								resources, technology, capability, and other issues which have provided

								significant challenges and roadblocks to conceptualizing or achieving the

								desired goals and results. The explosion and development of the Web, related

								technologies, and practices have offered governments perhaps the best

								opportunity to realize their goals in providing information and services while

								meeting the demand for increasingly more contribution and interaction.</p>


								<p>The idea of government use of the Web and related technologies was born in

								the late 1990's and culminated in early 2000 as an extension of everything "e".

								At the time, the Web was in its infancy and still very much acting and

								facilitating a wild-wild west frontier. eCommerce, eKnowledge, B2B, B2C,

								eService and many other terms floated around and sought to be defined to enable

								and leverage the promise of the Web. Terms were publicized and communicated in

								the hopes of creating interest and ultimately business via this new and

								exciting medium. During this period, governments realized there were also

								opportunities internal to their organization and activities seeking the same

								efficiencies and approaches used by others to improve and make electronically

								available information and services. This concept and opportunity was dubbed

								"electronic government" or eGovernment, eGov for short.</p>


								<p>The promise of eGovernment then and continuing now offers governments the

								opportunity to open their doors to citizens, helping expose the secrecy of

								government, opening doors to the inner workings while aiding understanding and

								explanation, informing and making available large quantities and types of

								information for use, interest, and comprehension, delivering services where and

								when and at times citizens and constituents need them, and creating internal

								and external operating efficiencies that improve the operations and

								interchanges within and between governments.</p>


								<p>The promise, progress, and efforts have been stymied given the many unique

								needs, requirements, and challenges that governments face in collecting,

								managing, and making available information and services. The unique issues

								include policies which control, at times in specific and procedural detail, how

								information must be handled, who has access, and if or not it can be

								distributed, and if it can, when. Other issues relate to budgetary and

								personnel resources that prohibit innovation, ability and execution of

								electronic government related activities. Governments are challenged to always

								do more with less being mindful of spending tax income. Governments are

								challenged in recruiting and retaining the qualified and skilled resources

								needed to develop innovative applications and approaches. Governments are

								challenged with being able to adeptly and quickly maneuver and adjust policies

								and procedures to facilitate a forward direction in electronic government.</p>


								<p>Another challenge comes from the government and its role and contribution to

								society. Governments have looked to, used, and implemented technologies well

								after technologies and related approaches have been tested and proven in

								private industry. Governments, who are the champions of innovation and at times

								the financial resource for the private sector, cannot readily adapt to being an

								innovator which places them far behind what is viewed as the norm and current

								technological environment.</p>


								<p>The host of issues cited and many more create challenges for governments

								considering or moving forward with electronic government.</p>


								<p>The new ideas, applications, and promises of the so called Web 2.0 have only

								furthered and made more complex the issues and challenges that governments face

								in achieving the promises of electronic government. Web 2.0 and particularly

								social media, social networking, and the new paradigms of openness,

								interaction, and influence have confounded governments as to how they can take

								advantage of Web 2.0 and meet the demands of their constituencies. Many

								questions have been brought forth and with only partial answers to some. How

								can policies, practices, and laws be amended to allow for electronic

								participation? How can operations be altered to operate on and in real time to

								leverage the interest and desired level of participation? How can governments

								ensure the authority and primary nature of the information is maintained? What

								can and is a part of the official record of government and its activity? Can

								electronically derived and received comments be considered part of the official

								record? How are they responded to or addressed? How can governments use and

								incorporate new technologies within their older systems and infrastructure? Are

								there way to expose data from the older systems and infrastructures via the

								Web?</p>


								<p>Additional issues and challenges come forth on who and what percentage of

								their constituencies have access to the Web, electronic tools and applications

								which would allow for the provision of information and service, the

								interaction, and the contribution. How and what must governments do to ensure

								the majority have access to the information and services now available from the

								fruits of their labor? The issue of access confounds and challenges both

								developed and developing countries and regions of the World. The wide adoption

								of mobile devices has furthered even greater complexity to the access issue.

								The citizens of some countries and regions (Japan, India, Latin America) have

								adopted mobile devices as their primary interface to the Web and are demanding

								more and more mobile access to government information, service, and

								interaction. For many in developing countries, mobile delivery and retrieval

								are their only opportunity and method for access given the lack of adequate

								telecommunications and networking infrastructures needed to connect and

								communicate by other means.</p>


								<p>The further challenge and complexity of the access issue comes from cost.

								Computers and connection points are still economically out of range for a

								majority of people around the world. Cost and the lack of infrastructure limit

								the opportunities for many and their related governments in achieving and

								benefiting from the promise of electronic government.</p>


								<p>One last challenge to document, although not in any way seeking to be

								conclusive of all the issues and hurdles that exist, is the understanding and

								definition of what the openness and transparency movement and demand is. How do

								or should different governments define or consider openness and transparency?

								How does each address the structure of government and cultural norms? Many of

								these questions will take considerable time to find their answers and

								explanations. Consensus of and on the answers are not yet clear nor do

								governments yet fully understand the impact and opportunity and how to

								operationally incorporate and accommodate.</p>


								<p>Once the questions are answered, policies evaluated, and challenges are met,

								technical standards and particularly standards related to open source, data,

								and Web standards can aid governments and others with achieving and realizing

								the promise and benefits of electronic government.</p>


								<p>Standards work across many groups, governments, and organizations continues

								to aid governments. Many have committed time and resources to develop XML,

								Authentication, and other data standards to promote and aid information to be

								free flowing and available. Others have sought to address and understand how to

								aid in developing standards for interoperability and interchange of data while

								others have sought to create or identify Web presentation layer, application,

								and browser based standards to aid governments in their efforts.</p>


								<p>The W3C eGovernment Interest Group (eGov IG) seeks and aspires to become a

								critical link in assisting governments with the promise of electronic

								government. The Interest Group realizes that one group, government, nor

								organization needs to own or create everything needed to assist governments.

								Innovations, new opportunities, and work are occurring worldwide creating

								example applications, creating and vetting new standards, manipulating or

								customizing existing standards, and experimenting with and addressing the

								policy and procedural challenges seeking solutions to these and many of the

								other existing challenges and issues.</p>


								<p>The eGov IG, therefore, acts as the validation and aggregation point of the

								representative use cases, standards, approaches, and opportunities while being

								the connector and enabler in the electronic government space. The IG efforts

								and products will be freely available and adoptable by governments

								worldwide.</p>


								<h4 id="intro.back.activities">Charter and Activities</h4>


								<p>The eGov IG focuses its efforts to fill a distinct gap in the Web and

								technology standards space focusing on the unique and diverse needs and issues

								that governments throughout the developed and developing World face in enabling

								electronic service and information delivery and providing opportunities for

								discovery, interaction and participation.</p>


								<p>The eGov IG is in its first year of existence and is through this Note, an

								issues paper, and future work attempting to meet and execute its <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2008/02/eGov/ig-charter">charter</a> [<a

								href="#EGOVIG">EGOVIG</a>] and mission for the W3C and specifically for serving

								its purpose and intent to assist governments throughout the World in realizing

								the promise of electronic government.</p>


								<p>The IG is designed as a forum to support researchers, developers, solution

								providers, and users of government services that use the Web as the delivery

								channel. The Interest Group uses email discussions, scheduled IRC topic chats

								and other collaborative tools as a forum to enable broader collaboration across

								eGov practitioners.</p>


								<p>The following activities are in the scope of the eGov IG and three interest

								areas have been formed to achieve the Group's mission:</p>


								<h5 id="intro.back.activities.use">Usage of Web Standards</h5>


								<p><em>Gather information about the areas where best practice guidelines are

								needed</em>: best practices will be drawn from the successes (and failures) of

								efforts at opening, sharing, and re-using knowledge about the use of standards

								and specifications by government applications that could be collected into a

								set of best practices with the intent of identifying productive technical paths

								toward better public services.</p>


								<p><em>Provide input to help governments comply with standards</em>: for

								example, standards bodies could provide training and outreach materials on best

								practices and tools, and improve the packaging and promotion of existing

								material. The work of W3C's <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/">Web Accessibility

								Initiative (WAI)</a> [<a href="#WAI">WAI</a>] is an example of a successful

								education and outreach program that helps governments achieve compliance

								goals.</p>


								<h5 id="intro.back.activities.t_p">Transparency and Participation</h5>


								<p><em>Identify ways to improve government transparency and openness</em>:

								identify any gaps to be filled in creating a complete suite of standards to

								enable open government information and ease the goal of linkable Public Sector

								Information.</p>


								<p><em>Identify ways to increase citizenship participation</em>: recognize new

								channels, ways to get the information to the citizens where the citizens are

								looking for it, and make better use of tools as means to increase citizenry

								awareness and participation while supporting champions, i.e. acknowledge and

								help active citizens and public servants.</p>


								<p><em>Identify ways to increase citizens and businesses use of eGovernment

								services</em>: get information on benefits of Web use for government services,

								identify main factors that are important for people and businesses to use

								eGovernment services such as time and money savings, simplicity, and identify

								ways to improve them.</p>


								<h5 id="intro.back.activities.integration">Seamless Integration of Data</h5>


								<p><em>Identify how to advance the state-of-the-art in data integration

								strategies</em>: identify ways for governments and computer science researchers

								to continue working together to advance the state-of-the-art in data

								integration and build useful, deployable proof-of-concept demos that use actual

								government information and demonstrate real benefit from linked data

								integration. These proof-of-concept tools ought to be targeted to applications

								that will show real improvement in areas that elected officials, government

								officers and citizens actually need. This area would include addressing the

								needs of business cases through the use of XML, SOA, and Semantic Web

								technologies.</p>


								<h5 id="intro.back.activities.rel">Relationships and Collaborations</h5>


								<p>The eGov IG is currently working with, forming relationships, or

								collaborating with governments and other organizations (The World Bank, <abbr

								title="European Commission">EC</abbr>, <abbr

								title="Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development">OECD</abbr>,

								<abbr title="Organization of American States">OAS</abbr>, <span

								title="International Council for Information Technology in Government Administration">ICA</span>,

								<abbr title="European Committee for Standardization">CEN</abbr> and <abbr

								title="Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards">OASIS</abbr>).

								Activities throughout the World on the issues, challenges, and work required to

								aid governments in achieving the eGovernment vision is consistently recognized

								by the eGov IG and its partners.</p>


								<h2 id="definitions">2. Definitions</h2>


								<p>Description terms are used to highlight and describe the various types of

								interaction points and relationships that governments have to their various

								constituencies. A few of the major and known terms are below:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><em>G2C: Government to Citizen</em>: Governments providing Web based

								    information and services to their public constituencies.</li>

								  <li><em>G2B: Government to Business</em>: Governments providing Web based

								    information and services to companies and others in the private sector

								    (Financial, Retail, as examples)</li>

								  <li><em>G2G: Government to Government</em>: Connections and communications

								    between, state, local, regional, territories, Federal depending on Country

								    and political structure.</li>

								  <li>C2G: Citizen to Government: A new term resulting from the demand for more

								    opportunities of participation and interaction</li>

								  <li><em>B2G: Business-to-Government:</em> Companies and other organizations

								    supply information requested or required by government agencies for

								    regulatory or other purposes.</li>

								</ul>


								<h2 id="modalities">3. Trends and Modalities of the Web and the Information

								Consumer</h2>


								<p>The Web working groups are currently processing and addressing several

								trends and activities requiring evolution of tools, thoughts, and strategies.

								Five key trend areas must be accounted for and noted in strategies being

								discussed, developed, and implemented:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Global</strong>: Issues related to content, information, and

								    services that are tailored to the individual's needs and consumption to <a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/International/">include multilingual formats and

								    take into account cultural sensitivities</a> [<a

								  href="#I18N">I18N</a>].</li>

								  <li><strong>Connected</strong>: User and community connectivity resulting in

								    content/information available via <abbr

								    title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>s and desktops (without

								    browsers) and content/information that centers on online communities and is

								    distributed across many sites, platforms, and repositories. Content and

								    information should be able to be shared, manipulated, and packaged as the

								    user or groups of users see fit honoring all rights and restrictions and

								    where they interact and spend their time.</li>

								  <li><strong>On the Go</strong>: Content/information availability via <a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/Mobile/">mobile devices</a> [<a

								    href="#MWI">MWI</a>] that takes into account a variety of delivery methods

								    and accepted practices, industry standards and applications.</li>

								  <li><strong>Accessible:</strong> Content that conforms to <a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech">W3C accessibility guidelines</a> [<a

								    href="#WAI-GUIDES">WAI-GUIDES</a>] so that all people, including people

								    with disabilities and senior citizens, can find the same information and

								    perform the same functions as other users. Information architectures and

								    navigation are relevant to and usable by a diverse worldwide audience.</li>

								  <li><strong>Readily available:</strong> Content and information that are

								    available and discoverable; searchable via quick and simple applications;

								    complete and relevant to promote an experiential gain of knowledge and

								    growth; and is presented to allow programmatic combinations (mash-ups) for

								    a hyper-personalized experience.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Globalization is now a major factor throughout the World. Localization is

								still critically important, however, all content and interaction crosses

								continents and oceans despite the original intent. With the advent of

								globalization, one can no longer say that an organization can focus only on a

								particular geographic area. All organizations must recognize that the content,

								actions, and communications are available, reviewed, watched, and potentially

								used by other information consumers around the globe. This global reach has

								furthered the concept of communities where people from a variety of geographic

								regions can meet, interact, share, and consume information and services. People

								want to be connected in ways that are tailored and customized to how and where

								they want to meet, interact, share, and consume. This "on demand and

								customized" desire for information, services, and interaction, requires the

								recognition that all or most participants must be available via mobile devices

								and applications. In today's hyper busy world with "on demand" expectations,

								the concept of "on the go" becomes a necessary part of daily work life. The

								activity, connectivity, and growth of information and services on the Web has

								caused exponential growth of information in volumes requiring more complex and

								faster ways to access, mine, categorize, and deliver.</p>


								<p>These new demands and requirements are currently pushing technological

								limits and are resulting in very complex systems comprised of many different

								parts and interactions both on a consumer and systems level. Therefore, the

								strategies must be able to account for the dynamism that is occurring today and

								ensure that tomorrow's demands, requirements, and trends can be easily met in a

								global audience construct.</p>


								<p>These five key trends with the recognition that the Web space is both local

								and global must result in governments thinking and defining their role in the

								context of modalities.</p>


								<p>Within the key trends there are three modalities that exist for governments'

								use of the Web by governments:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>to deliver public services, to citizens,businesses, and other governments

								    and levels of government (providing information or transactional

								  services)</li>

								  <li>to engage with citizens through the use of social media on government Web

								    sites or through engagement with online communities elsewhere on the

								  Web.</li>

								  <li>as infrastructure, to enable others to retrieve and manipulate government

								    provided data.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>These modalities can be loosely characterized as <strong>provide</strong>,

								<strong>engage</strong> and <strong>enable</strong>. The extent to which a

								government chooses to fulfill any or all of these roles on the Web is a

								socio-political question, tightly connected to levels of public funding and the

								more general development of public services.</p>


								<p>A number of general observations can be made when characterizing

								governments' current use of the Web. While increasingly cognizant of the

								opportunities afforded by social media, typically governments are still

								operating a broadcasting paradigm. Web sites are a vehicle for mass

								communication and for the delivery of transactional services. In this

								environment statistics showing the scale of usage are celebrated as indicators

								of success in themselves. The structure of a government Web estate is often

								organizationally driven. This is problematic as the structures of government

								continually change, resulting in significant disruption to the presentation of

								government on the Web. Government departments can be surprisingly transient

								entities. Transposed to namespaces and <abbr

								title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s this is quick sand on which to

								build an essential information infrastructure using the Web.</p>


								<p>To give an example of the consequences of this churn, governments have

								difficulty maintaining persistent <abbr

								title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s even to documents. Increasing

								volumes of official reports and documents are published on the Web alone making

								the long term availability of those resources an important issue. In this

								context 'link rot' is not just an inconvenience of the information consumer, it

								undermines public accountability as documents cease to be available. Inability

								to persist resources and manage URLs inhibits willingness to link between

								government agencies. This is a loss for information consumers who want a

								seamless government Web site experience and do not care which government agency

								hosts the information they seek. Government departments need to deep link more

								and with minimal risk consideration.</p>


								<p>Firmly in the provide mode many governments have devised a channels strategy

								for their Web estate. This has been developed primarily from a communications

								perspective. What is more generally absent is a data strategy from a Web

								engineering perspective. It is rare in government to think about Web site

								development as the engineering of basic information infrastructure.</p>


								<p>Underlying these issues is one of particular interest to the W3C as a

								technology standards organization, not just about adoption and usage of its

								standards, but about the understanding of them. As a supplier and provenance

								source of information on the Web, governments have an important role to play.

								There is potential for significant social and commercial innovation using

								public sector information made available using the Web.</p>


								<p>The reality is that not many officials responsible for commissioning or

								managing government Web sites are familiar with the basic principles of the

								Web‚ for example <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/">Architecture of the

								World Wide Web</a> [<a href="#WEBARCH">WEBARCH</a>]. Unfortunately, lacking a

								government context and being aimed at a more expert audience, the W3C

								guidelines and specifications are almost impenetrable to many Web decision

								makers in government.</p>


								<h2 id="issues">4. eGovernment Issues</h2>


								<p>A number of eGovernment issues and challenges need to be managed by any

								government working towards openness, participation, and collaboration. The

								technical community who are creating, developing, and making available tools

								and technologies that can assist governments also have challenges to overcome.

								The eGov IG recognizes the need to document and publish the complexities of the

								environment, the myriad of issues, ideas for solutions, and opportunities to

								assist governments.</p>


								<p>The eGov IG believes the following topics are the most pressing for

								governments in the context of the current constituency demands and the trends

								related to Web 2.0. transparency, and participation. Potential future work of

								the eGov IG will begin to structure, prioritize, and address many of the other

								issues impacting eGovernment while continuing to mature those found below.</p>


								<h3 id="pe">Participation and Engagement</h3>


								<h4 id="pe.what">What Is Participation and Engagement?</h4>


								<p>In an increasing number of developed countries the level of domestic

								broadband access has reached and surpassed critical mass. The Web is the first

								port of call for information and advice - from breaking news to fact finding

								about an illness. Increasingly human relationships are being created and

								sustained on the Web through social networking sites. Large numbers of people

								are using social media tools to keep in touch with their friends and

								colleagues. These are important trends that are opening new opportunities for

								governments and citizens to interact. Increasingly the default means for

								government to communicate its message and to provide public services is using

								the Web.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.what.participation">Participation</h5>


								<p>The Web provides a transformative platform for the public sphere, the

								process of social communication where opinions are expressed, synthesized and

								coalesced. There are many types of public spheres operating across many

								different platforms, including the traditional mass media of television, radio

								and newspapers. The Web is transformative simply because it allows anyone to be

								a publisher. This changes the power relationships in the public sphere in

								profound ways. It affords political leaders new routes to power, crowd sourcing

								both finance and campaign teams. It affords citizens new ways to have their

								say. Either marginalized or extreme voices can now be heard making the public

								sphere increasingly rich and diverse. In turn this changes the nature of

								politics, news and journalism and how they contribute to the public sphere.

								What is clear is that people's use of the Web is shifting the relationship

								between the citizen and the state. The nature of these changes varies by

								culture and system of government but the impact is being felt everywhere.</p>


								<p>The growth of political <a

								href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blog&amp;oldid=272910644">blog</a>

								[<a href="#BLOG">BLOG</a>] illustrates the Web's use for conversations about

								the direction of public policy. Outside of traditional political processes,

								campaign Web sites provide the means for people to group together to press for

								political change. This may be through lobbying or by seeking elected office or

								from new forms of campaign such as crowd sourcing a flash mob. And

								communications to elected representatives, whether as part of a petition or an

								individual message, the amount of correspondence has increased in many places

								due to the access to the Internet. This is about using the Web for

								participation, to shape, direct or change public policy.</p>


								<p>Both politicians and political parties are increasingly using social

								networking tools as part of their political campaigning with the most striking

								example being the Obama campaign in the United States. Supporters who have

								grown up with a candidate engaging in a two-way dialogue during the campaign

								feel they have a strong stake in what that candidate does once they have been

								elected. For example, there is evidence with the Obama administration that

								supporters are insisting on maintaining the dialogue from the campaign into

								office, "<a

								href="http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/ObamaDamu/gGxZDG">Holding

								Obama-Biden Administration Accountable</a>" [<a

								href="#US-OBACCO">US-OBACCO</a>]. This is the introduction of a new type of

								check and balance into the political system, what some, such as William Dutton,

								call <a

								href="http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/2008/11/01/the-fifth-estate-association-of-internet-researchers/">the

								fifth estate</a> [<a href="#FIFTH-ESTATE">FIFTH-ESTATE</a>]. We see the

								phenomenon elsewhere where online communities seek to enforce a degree of

								accountability. Social network Facebook's response to pressure over changes to

								the service's terms and conditions, which <a

								href="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130">led to a return to

								the original</a> [<a href="#FB-TOS">FB-TOS</a>] is an example of such community

								power.</p>


								<p>Others are using the disintermediation of traditional media to push forwards

								transparency and democratic accountability. On the premise that in order to

								participate effectively in the political process you need access to information

								about what is happening, organizations like <a

								href="http://www.mysociety.org/">MySociety</a> [<a

								href="#UK-MYSOCIETY">UK-MYSOCIETY</a>] in the <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> and the <a

								href="http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/">Sunlight Foundation</a> [<a

								href="#US-SUN">US-SUN</a>] in the United States have developed innovative

								services that open up information from legislative and governmental decision

								making processes.</p>


								<p>David Weinberger, one of the co-authors of <a

								href="http://openlibrary.org/b/OL7899440M">The Cluetrain Manifesto</a> [<a

								href="#CLUETRAIN">CLUETRAIN</a>], observes that, “there is an inverse

								relationship between control and trust”. If true that has profound

								implications for government. Governments may seek to trade a loss of control

								through greater transparency and openness in return for an anticipated increase

								in public trust. The <a

								href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/">Obama

								administration's memo on Transparency and Open Government</a> [<a

								href="#US-OBMEMO">US-OBMEMO</a>] could be seen in that light.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.what.engagement">Engagement</h5>


								<p>A government is a complex entity, consisting of many institutions that grow

								and develop over time. People engage in conversations. Sometimes they do so

								representing an institution. For government, the use of the Web for online

								engagement means individual public servants engaging in online conversations,

								in an official capacity.</p>


								<p>Just as the Web enables anyone to be a publisher, it raises the possibility

								of anyone as public servant to become a communicator and a representative of

								government. Increasing numbers of public servants are blogging about their work

								or discussing work related issues using <a

								href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Micro-blogging&amp;oldid=273886247">micro-blogging</a>

								[<a href="#MBLOG">MBLOG</a>] tools. These activities are directed at engagement

								rather than effecting political change.</p>


								<p>The use of the Web for engagement is significant in that it opens up new

								ways to talk to government but these conversations are complex because the

								boundaries between participation and engagement are sometimes blurred. Some

								contributors to a topic in an online discussion forum may be participating,

								putting political points into the public sphere, while public servants may

								simultaneously be engaging - openly gathering and presenting evidence or

								discussing policy options. It is the role of the contributor that determines

								whether they are participating or engaging, when such discussions take

								place.</p>


								<p>There are a number of different types of Web enabled engagement:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Policy related government to citizen interaction</strong>, public

								    employees using the Web to directly engage in dialogue with citizens about

								    issues of public policy, on behalf of a political administration. Typically

								    the government does this by allowing comments on proposals, in a similar

								    way to that in operation on many blogs. Blogging platforms are often used

								    to underpin these services.</li>

								  <li><strong>Policy related engagement in citizen to citizen

								    conversations</strong>, policy makers directly engage in online dialogue

								    between citizens about matters of public policy, on other Web sites. This

								    may be to highlight evidence, explain aspects of public policy, correct

								    misleading statements, or to engage in open discussion about policy options

								    and priorities. Policy makers are beginning to come to online communities

								    and say "we want to solve this problem, how should we go about doing

								  that?".</li>

								  <li><strong>Advice related government to citizen or business

								    interaction</strong>. This is about public employees using the Web to

								    directly engage with citizens or businesses about particularly problems or

								    issues that they may have, in a public conversion.</li>

								  <li><strong>Advice related citizen to citizen interaction</strong>, people

								    talking to each other about public policy issues ("where should I send my

								    child to school?" "Is what I've been told by my doctor right?"). Government

								    involvement in such forums may add huge value, delivering expert advice to

								    groups who need it. Such engagement with citizens may be unwanted however -

								    people don't want the government in every part of their lives. The

								    tolerance for such engagement needs to be carefully ascertained. It will

								    vary from community to community and area to area.</li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="pe.policy">What Public Policy Outcomes Are Related to Participation and

								Engagement?</h4>


								<p>Governments generally operate in five spheres: social policy, economic

								policy, security policy, regulatory and legal policy and international

								relations. Some issues, such as the credit crunch or climate change cut across

								these boundaries, requiring economic, social and regulatory action in a

								coordinated multilateral way. People are using the Web to facilitate their

								participation in each of these policy areas - all are matters of public

								discourse and political debate.</p>


								<p>In practice, the importance of the Web as a tool for engagement has come

								most to the fore in the social policy arena - not least because this covers the

								issues that most directly impinge on individuals' lives. There are wide

								variations between states in how social policy is delivered - in some countries

								the state is the direct provider of services such as health, in others such

								services are delivered almost entirely by the third and private sector.

								Attitudes and expectations from public services are changing in part because of

								the experience people have from using online services and governments have

								already started to <a

								href="http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/SocialMediaFed%20Govt_BarriersPotentialSolutions.pdf">evaluate

								the impact, benefits and challenges of these new ways of interaction</a> [<a

								href="#US-SOCMED">US-SOCMED</a>].</p>


								<p>There are three areas of public policy outcome where online engagement can

								play an important role.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.policy.choice">Enabling Citizen Choice and Improving Public

								Services</h5>


								<p>Encouraging citizens to discuss their impressions and experience of the

								public services they use, potentially star rating those services, can

								facilitates citizen choice and introduces a new incentive mechanism for

								improving public services. For example, if parents are given a choice about

								which state school to send their child to, they can make their selection based

								on the views of parents with children already at that school.</p>


								<p>In the <abbr title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr>, the government has launched

								an online service called "<a href="http://www.nhs.uk/"><abbr

								title="National Health Service">NHS</abbr> Choices</a>" [<a

								href="#UK-NHSC">UK-NHSC</a>], which supports citizens to make a healthcare

								provider choice from amongst various public healthcare providers. Those using

								the services are encouraged to rate and comment on their experiences using a

								particular provider. This is an example of government providing a forum for

								citizen to citizen interaction, with a view to supporting choice and raises

								quality of provision. A similar but independently service is provided by <a

								href="http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/">Patient Opinion</a> [<a

								href="#UK-PATIENTO">UK-PATIENTO</a>].</p>


								<h5 id="pe.policy.support">Providing Advice and Support to Citizens to Achieve

								Public Policy Outcomes</h5>


								<p>Citizens are helping each other in discussion forums in ways that achieve

								public service outcomes. At the time of writing, many countries are in or about

								to enter a recession. This is the first global economic crisis to happen in an

								era of widespread availability of the internet and the use of social media

								tools. After prolonged periods of relatively high and stable levels of

								employment a significant number of people, many of them highly qualified and

								skilled, will find themselves out of work, perhaps for a prolonged period of

								time.</p>


								<p>Governments are announcing various initiatives to help families cope with

								the change in the economic climate, for example promising protection against

								foreclosure. There is evidence that people are confused and fearful. It is

								reasonable to anticipate that they will turn to online communities for help,

								advice and support. In these forums public servants can add value by giving

								advice and guidance about what support from the government is available or how

								the system is supposed to work. This advice is instantly available, not only to

								the intended recipient but also the wider community.</p>


								<p>The incentive for government is to provide support that helps to achieve

								wider public policy objectives, particularly in areas of social policy. Other

								examples of relevant online communities for engagement by public servants

								include parents providing support to each other with raising their children,

								talking about childcare problems, illnesses or behavioral issues, through to

								college students discussing issues to do with their studies, financing their

								education or seeking work.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.policy.change">Changing Behaviors and Establishing New Social

								Norms</h5>


								<p>Many of the issues confronting governments today for example changing the

								pattern of energy consumption to combat climate change involve large numbers of

								people changing their behavior in some way. To achieve this, new social norms

								need to be fostered and established. It is insufficient simply to provide

								information about the impact of individual's choices. That information needs to

								be contextualized and humanized in the context of dialogues with people that

								encourage and support the development of new social norms.</p>


								<h4 id="pe.benefits">What Are the Main Benefits to Using the Web for

								Participation and Engagement?</h4>


								<p>People trust those places and services that they themselves control or have

								the impression of controlling. Engaging with people where they are means

								interacting on their terms. Provided this is done authentically anecdotal

								evidence suggests that people welcome the involvement of public servants in

								many different online community environments. This presents a more human face

								to government institutions, which is more approachable, more credible and more

								likely to be listened to and valued.</p>


								<p>Interestingly, those communities that governments would most like to engage

								with and support, because of their alignment with public policy objectives

								(such as parenting support groups) seem those most open to engagement by public

								servants and welcoming of the opportunity to directly engage. For example,

								members of <a href="http://www.netmums.com/">NetMums</a> [<a

								href="#UK-NETMUMS">UK-NETMUMS</a>] in the <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> welcomed the chance to help shape aspects of

								government policy for children and families and have pressed for advisors on

								benefits and tax to interact in the discussion forums.</p>


								<p>In the policy arena, engaging in discussion about policy options has

								resulted in some remarkably mature and considered input. Instead of going

								through a traditional consultation exercise, the Power of Information Task

								Force in the <abbr title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> issued its <a

								href="http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit">report "in beta"</a> [<a

								href="#UK-POIT">UK-POIT</a>] and allowed people to comment on it on a paragraph

								by paragraph basis. Hundreds of comments were posted including points of

								clarification from public servants. Open public discussions took place on all

								key topics and some important new ideas were introduced and developed through

								those discussions. The collaborative development of policy through public

								conversations involving public servants and others around a shared evidence

								base should lead to better public policy.</p>


								<p>Collaboratively developed policy is more likely to be consensual and less

								open to partisan attack or misrepresentation in the mass media.</p>


								<h4 id="pe.how">How Can Participation and Engagement Be Achieved?</h4>


								<p>The explosion of site, services, and opportunities has created many

								challenges for governments specific to the internal operations, policies,

								procedures and most importantly culture and cultural norms and perceptions that

								should be identified, managed and resolved. The following seeks to offer some

								guidance to governments while raising questions and comments that should be

								thought through and considered in achieving the goals of public participation

								and engagement.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.access">Access of Public Servants to Web Sites that Citizens Are

								Using</h5>


								<p>Public servants need to be given access to the Web sites that citizens are

								using in order for them to be able to engage. The “lock-down” culture that

								exists in many government IT departments often restricts access to the more

								interactive Web sites for security reasons. This badly hampers the effective

								engagement with online communities by public servants. Many governments are

								blocking employee access to Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and others where

								conversations occur, interaction is embraced, individuals align around similar

								goals, issues, and interests, and participatory and engaged communities are

								formed. Security issues, employee rights and misdeeds, and lack of familiarity

								with the tools are impacts that governments must content with, however, in

								taking time to do so limits the amount of participation, feedback, and

								interaction from constituents.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.rules">Clear and Simple Rules for Public Servants </h5>


								<p>Governments need to set clear and simple rules for public servants to follow

								so they can be confident about engaging online without risking their career.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.tsc">Training, Support and Cultural Change</h5>


								<p>There needs to be training and support for public servants in the use of

								appropriate tools and techniques to use the Web to engage, particularly for the

								development of public policy. Engaging with online communities over the

								development of public policy will involve significant culture change in

								government. To achieve it will require clear leadership at senior levels. As

								the use of the Web for engagement is so new in government there are few people

								with both the practical knowledge and the seniority and experience to provide

								this leadership.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.debates">Support Open Debates and Discussions</h5>


								<p>Many times citizens will self organize policy debates and discussions

								outside of government Web site. Governments should take a effort to recognize

								and point out forums that they are aware of on issues of concern. Governments

								should be mindful of these independent venues, both by openly showing interest

								in some of these external efforts.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.resources">Provide the Institutional Resources to Handle

								Incoming Correspondence</h5>


								<p>One of the aspects of electronic communication is the often sharp increase

								in electronic petitions and other electronic forms of correspondence.

								Governments should recognize the importance in fielding the resources to

								consider the messages. Also governments should use technology standards to help

								ease the burden of communicating on the part of citizens and on government

								civil servants. When possible, citizens should have access to a way to bundle

								their communications so that they can decrease the noise perceived with a

								deluge of the incoming messages.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.comments">Allow Comments on Policy Documents</h5>


								<p>Policy documents need to be presented in formats which allows for comment

								and discussion in a granular way. Fragments within such documents need to be

								directly addressable. In consultation documents for example, the relationship

								between the questions for discussion and the proposals to which those questions

								refer need to be made explicit. The <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/#id84428">RDFa</a>

								[<a href="#RDFA-PRIMER">RDFA-PRIMER</a>] based <a

								href="http://code.google.com/p/argot-hub/wiki/ArgotConsultation">ArgotConsultation

								</a><a

								href="http://code.google.com/p/argot-hub/wiki/ArgotConsultation">Consultation</a>

								[<a href="#UK-ARGOTC">UK-ARGOTC</a>] which was developed for the <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> government is an example of the type of

								technology required for publishing consultation documents in ways that enable

								engagement.</p>


								<p>Governments can also enable commenting on official documents by providing

								reliable electronic citations, for example as a <abbr

								title="Uniform Resource Locator">URL</abbr> that points to an official or

								authentic version of the document and make specific fragments of the document

								addressable.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.how.standards">Promote Use of Lightweight Standards for Metadata and

								Communication</h5>


								<p>Government can publish standards that it may already being used for internal

								systems of data storage and communication. Government can also create easy,

								cheap and quick methods of communication that make it possible for more people

								to be heard by their government. And the standards should include ways to

								classify or tag information correctly and in ways to allow tabulation and

								closer consideration of issues. Those same standards can also be used by

								everyone for their own system of publishing.</p>


								<h4 id="pe.issues">What Are the Main Issues with Using the Web for

								Participation and Engagement?</h4>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.boundaries">Representation Boundaries</h5>


								<p>The boundaries are shifting between public and private, personal and

								professional. This blurring of distinctions between individuals and their roles

								gives rise to particular set of problems for public servants because

								governments operate in a political environment. When an official posts a

								message to a W3C email list or a social media group are they doing so as an

								individual, or as a representative of the institution for which they work?

								Services such as micro-blogs (e.g. Twitter or Identi.ca) that mix personal and

								professional messages exacerbate this dilemma.</p>


								<p>Do the participants of such communities expect to find public officials in

								their community? Is this the state as friend, or is it an overbearing intrusion

								into people's lives? How should public officials themselves engage -

								anonymously, with a pseudonym or authentically as themselves? How can others be

								sure the advice being given, for example about a tax matter, has come from a

								public servant? The provenance not just of the information, but also of people,

								starts to really matter.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.relations">Relationships</h5>


								<p>If a government department establishes a feed for new information using a

								micro-blog tool, and people chose to consume that information by following that

								channel, does the service provider "follow" in return? What does it mean to be

								followed by a user named "@legislation" or "@parliament"? Should the service

								provider only "follow" if they are willing to engage as well as broadcast?

								Neither citizen nor service provider are clear about what community norms

								should apply.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.thirds">Ownership and Use of Third Party Services</h5>


								<p>While free for citizens to use, many of the social networking services have

								been created on a commercial basis. It may be that an inappropriate reliance on

								third party services develops. By participating in an online community is the

								government endorsing it in some way? Does the implied endorsement stretch to

								the availability of the service, data protection issues (which may be sensitive

								if the service may be provided from a different jurisdiction) or security?</p>


								<p>Who owns the social networks and in whose interests are they being operated?

								If key public services are provided using social networking services (e.g.

								advice to parents, tax guidance), to what extent should government seek to

								control the services upon which it relies? The terms and conditions of the

								service are clearly vitally important.</p>


								<p>Several governments, including the US Federal Government have been

								successful with negotiating agreements with a variety of third party services

								which protects government information, meet the legal and policy needs of

								government, while allowing government to be a participant in the communities

								and tools offered by the third party services.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.inclusive">Inclusive Access to Information</h5>


								<p>How are the interests and rights of people with disabilities and people who

								are not yet on the Internet protected? Many government, social networking and

								community Web sites are not accessible to people with disabilities and older

								people, even where required by policies or laws. While people with disabilities

								use the web in ever-increasing numbers, they often encounter barriers to full

								participation as both consumers and producers of information. And there are

								other populations who do not yet use the Web at all. As governments pursue

								strategies of engagement through the Web, they must be mindful of keeping

								alternative channels of communications open for these citizens.</p>


								<p>Challenges exist for both developed and developing countries and regions of

								the World. The wide adoption of mobile devices has furthered even greater

								complexity to the access issue. The citizens of some countries and regions

								(Japan, India, and Latin America) have adopted mobile devices as their primary

								interface to the Web and are demanding more mobile access to government

								information, service, and interaction. For many constituents in developing

								countries, mobile delivery and retrieval are the only opportunity and method

								for access given the lack of needed telecommunications and networking

								infrastructures. The cost of access is also an issue since computers and

								connection points are still economically out of range for a majority of people

								around the world. Cost and the lack of infrastructure limit the opportunities

								for many constituents and their related governments to benefit from eGovernment

								opportunities.</p>


								<p>The eGov IG includes members of [<a href="#WAI">WAI</a>] Working Groups to

								ensure inclusion of disability issues and with digital divide activists to

								include the needs of those with low literacy and/or lack of technology

								access.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.author">Authoritative Sources</h5>


								<p>How does the government protect the authority of its information while

								allowing the conversations and communities to grow and flourish?</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.interop">Interoperability and Data Portability</h5>


								<p>Generally it is in governments' interests to support interoperable systems

								based on open standards, yet many social networks have been designed to be

								"walled gardens", locking people in to their service as much as they possibly

								can. Should governments participate in Web sites that lock people in, not

								allowing information consumers to move their data to another provider? How

								would such a stance relate to competition policy? With walled gardens the

								citizen has the inconvenience of multiple user accounts and login details as

								does the public servant. Can this be overcome, for example by the wider use of

								other de facto standards such as <a href="http://openid.net/">OpenID</a> [<a

								href="#OPENID">OPENID</a>]? Certain initiatives are currently ongoing to create

								vocabularies that could be used to annotate and thus interlink data locked in

								different systems. Examples include [<abbr title="Friend Of A Friend"><a

								href="#FOAF">FOAF</a></abbr>] which becomes a de facto standard for describing

								people and [<abbr title="Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities"><a

								href="#SIOC">SIOC</a></abbr>] which is at the time of writing <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Submission/2007/02/">a W3C submission for annotating

								discussions on the Web</a>. Improvement would most likely to happen if these

								were open standards development efforts happening . in transparent

								fora/consortia and/or standards organizations.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.archive">Archiving Challenges</h5>


								<p>If public policy is being developed in distributed collaborative ways, what

								are the public records and archival implications? How can the development of

								policy created through participative Web based tools be captured for posterity?

								The existing mechanisms for archiving “records of decisions” are poorly

								suited for the capture of distributed and fragmented information created on the

								Web.</p>


								<h5 id="pe.issues.metrics">Metrics</h5>


								<p>How can a government set clear measures and metrics to gage the success of

								fairly new and innovative practices and projects?</p>


								<h4 id="pe.accessibility">Accessibility</h4>


								<p>Web accessibility is essential for equal opportunity. The Web is an

								important medium for receiving information as well as providing information and

								interacting with society. Therefore it is essential that the Web be accessible

								in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to citizens with

								disabilities and older citizens. An accessible Web can also help citizens more

								effectively interact with government.</p>


								<p>Given that people with disabilities represent between ten and twenty percent

								of the population of most countries, ensuring accessibility of government Web

								sites is an important aspect of openness and transparency of government data.

								This need has been made more explicit by the 2008 passage of the <a

								href="http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?navid=12&amp;pid=150">United

								Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities</a> [<a

								href="#UN-ACC">UN-ACC</a>], which among other fundamental human rights includes

								the right of access to information.</p>


								<p>The Web is an opportunity for unprecedented access to information for people

								with disabilities. That is, the accessibility barriers to print, audio, and

								visual media can be much more easily overcome through Web technologies. The Web

								is also an opportunity for unprecedented <em>interaction</em> for people with

								disabilities.</p>


								<p>For example, the act of completing a government form once required going to

								a government office and completing the form on paper. That act presented

								significant barriers for many people with disabilities, including getting to

								the office, reading the form, and completing it in writing. When that same form

								is also available on the Web in an accessible format, it is significantly

								easier for many people to complete. Therefore, people with disabilities can

								have more effective and efficient access to government interaction through

								accessible Web sites - in some cases, where there was essentially no access to

								them before.</p>


								<p>An accessible Web expands opportunities for communication, interaction, and

								employment for people with disabilities throughout governments.</p>


								<h3 id="OGD">Open Government Data</h3>


								<h4 id="OGD.what">What is Open Government Data?</h4>


								<p>Public organizations produce, archive and distribute a wealth of information

								(e.g. legal, financial, bibliographic) in their daily operations. This Public

								Sector Information (PSI) is subject to certain laws and regulations (e.g.

								stating how/when it must be published or how it's licensed) that vary from

								country to country. Traditionally, <abbr

								title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> has been published in different

								ways and formats, from the early paper days to the early Web days in which

								information was being published online in whatever format was more convenient

								for the government organization in charge of publishing it and according to the

								normative at that time (e.g. <a

								href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/docs/pdfs/directive/psi_directive_en.pdf">the

								European Directive</a> [<a href="#EU-PSID">EU-PSID</a>]).</p>


								<p>Unfortunately, much PSI was and is still being published using proprietary

								formats or in ways that create barriers of use for various interested parties.

								Examples include device incompatibilities for those using mobile devices or

								older hardware, the lack of information available to those using computers

								without the required proprietary software, and accessibility barriers

								experienced by people with disabilities.</p>


								<p>Flourishing of Web applications and services using other types of

								information on the Web that are provided in open raw formats, as well as

								adapters built by third parties to reuse existing <abbr

								title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> on the Web, show that there is

								demand and potential in publishing PSI offering unobstructed access to the raw

								information.</p>


								<p>For the purposes of this Note, Government Data is the same as <abbr

								title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr>, while Open Government Data (OGD)

								means the publication of <abbr title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> in

								open raw formats and ways that make it accessible and readily available to all

								and allow reuse, such as the creation of data mashups (mashups defined as

								merging data from two or more different applications or data sources and

								producing comparative views of the combined information).</p>


								<p>Although there are <a

								href="http://razor.occams.info/pubdocs/2009-02-28_TCamp_Data_Standards.pdf">several

								definitions of Open Government Data</a> [<a href="#OGD-DEFS">OGD-DEFS</a>], a

								<a href="http://resource.org/8_principles.html">set of open government data

								principles</a> [<a href="#OGD-PRINCIPLES">OGD-PRINCIPLES</a>] developed by a

								group of Open Government Data advocates includes: <q

								cite="http://resource.org/8_principles.html">Open [government] data promotes

								increased civil discourse, improved public welfare, and a more efficient use of

								public resources;</q> in order to publish Open Government Data, there are three

								fundamental steps that need to be taken from a high level perspective: <q

								cite="http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/100">identify the data that one

								controls, represent that data in a way that people can use, and expose the data

								to the wider world.</q> [<a href="#JEN-OGD">JEN-OGD</a>]</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.what.data">What Data?</h5>


								<p>Whether is a health statistics, geospatial or legal information or some

								other kind of PSI, it's out of the scope of this Note to debate what datasets

								should be published, mainly because this is a policy issue, governed in several

								countries by laws such as the Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) that state

								what information should be published, when and how. The Report "<a

								href="http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/TopTenReport.pdf">Show Us the Data:

								Most Wanted Federal Documents</a>" [<a href="#US-FEDATA">US-FEDATA</a>] offer

								examples in the United States while the <a

								href="http://www.psinavigator.de/"><abbr

								title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> Navigator</a> [<a

								href="#EU-PSIN">EU-PSIN</a>] and the <a

								href="http://www.epsiplus.net/products">Directory of <abbr

								title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> Re-use Products and Services</a>

								[<a href="#EU-PSIDIR">EU-PSIDIR</a>] offer some European examples.</p>


								<p>Nonetheless, some of the examples and use cases discuss about specific data

								sets that could be of interest with the intention of giving some hints on how

								the return on investment of those policies can be improved when publishing Open

								Government Data. </p>


								<h4 id="OGD.policy">What Public Policy Outcomes are Related to Open Government

								Data?</h4>

								<ul>

								  <li id="OGD.policy.inclusion"><strong>Inclusion</strong>: providing data in

								    open standard and <a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/conformance.html#uc-accessibility-support-head">accessibility

								    supported</a> formats allows anyone to use numerous software tools to adapt

								    it to personal needs. For example, an <abbr

								    title="eXtensible Markup Language"><a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a></abbr> [<a href="#XML">XML</a>]

								    dataset or <abbr title="RDF Site Summary"><a

								    href="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS</a></abbr> [<a href="#RSS">RSS</a>]

								    feed could be transformed and properly available to various devices,

								    including <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users.html#at">assistive

								    technologies</a> used by people with disabilities.</li>

								  <li id="OGD.policy.transparency"><strong>Transparency</strong>: open and

								    unobtrusive <abbr title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> increases

								    transparency; interested parties can use <abbr

								    title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> in the most appropriate way to

								    achieve their purpose, getting a better picture of the government's work

								    and customize it for their particular needs.</li>

								  <li id="OGD.policy.accountability"><strong>Accountability</strong>: the

								    appropriate open datasets properly mashed up can provide several views on

								    information about the performance of the government to achieve its public

								    policy goals.</li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="OGD.benefits">What Are the Main Benefits of Publishing Open Government

								Data?</h4>


								<p>The great majority of <abbr title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> on

								the Web is still mainly found in two shapes:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><em>Proprietary formats</em>, requiring the potential consumer to have

								    proprietary software or tools to access it.</li>

								  <li>Open and standard <em>human readable formats</em>. While enabling access

								    to people, mixing of content, presentation and purpose limits its use by

								    machines.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Taking this last scenario into account when designing a data publication

								strategy, some potential benefits of publishing Open Government Data are

								described below.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.benefits.views">Multiple views, not just one</h5>


								<p>When government information is made available through portals, e.g. the so

								called one-stop shops, the government intends to build the consumer's view in

								order to provide the information in the most usable way. Even when the PSI is

								provided by means of an API, the methods to access it are often restricting the

								view that a given consumer can have or need of that information.</p>


								<p>Providing Open Government Data allows the consumer to use the information in

								the most appropriate way to achieve the intended goal. Some authors argue that

								<q cite="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083">it would

								be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than

								providing Web sites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.</q>

								[<a href="#GOV-INV">GOV-INV</a>].</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.benefits.reuse">Reuse</h5>


								<p>Open information boosts everyone’s ability to reuse the information,

								including: </p>

								<ul>

								  <li><em>Other public sector organizations</em>, which may use someone

								    else’s information to provide added value by mixing and combining their

								    own information with other sources using Web technologies, thus increasing

								    data usability, visibility and value. </li>

								  <li><em>Other non-public organizations</em> (<abbr

								    title="Non-governmental Organization">NGO</abbr>s, private companies,

								    social Web communities, etc.) that may create pure-Web, standards-based

								    applications that combine different datasets (mashups). For instance,

								    someone can create a layer on top of a Geospatial map showing data derived

								    from several sources of information.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>When the information is made available through the Web using the appropriate

								open standards it can be used again and again in new, unanticipated and

								imaginative ways that can greatly enhance the value of the data by its reuse

								and combination with increased automation and enhanced interoperability. As the

								<a href="http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/xtech_2007/#slide14">Many Minds

								Principle</a> [<a href="#MANY-MINDS">MANY-MINDS</a>] reads: <q

								cite="http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/xtech_2007/#slide14">the coolest thing to

								do with your data will be thought of by someone else.</q></p>


								<p>A few third sector organizations have already taken government information

								and provided views into joined data sources to meet public needs or other

								objectives which show the potential these mashups could have. Well known

								examples are <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> [<a

								href="#UK-FIXMYSTREET">UK-FIXMYSTREET</a>], where <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> residents can report problems in their

								neighborhood (like graffiti or potholes on the road), and the numerous mashups

								providing useful views and all sorts of data about the work of the

								representatives such as <a href="http://theyworkforyou.com/">TheyWorkForYou</a>

								[<a href="#UK-TWFY">UK-TWFY</a>] in the <abbr title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr>,

								its <a href="http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/">New Zealand counterpart</a> [<a

								href="#NZ-TWFY">NZ-TWFY</a>], <a

								href="http://www.opencongress.org/">OpenCongress</a> [<a

								href="#US-SUNCON">US-SUNCON</a>] and <a href="http://govtrack.us/">GovTrack</a>

								[<a href="#US-GOVTRACK">US-GOVTRACK</a>] in the <abbr

								title="United States of America">USA</abbr> and <a

								href="http://openaustralia.org/">OpenAustralia</a> [<a

								href="#AU-OPEN">AU-OPEN</a>].</p>


								<p>The government is also starting to consider reuse seriously, and is has

								already organized competitions to find out what are the most demanded

								applications, such as <a href="http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/">Show Us a

								Better Way</a> [<a href="#UK-SHOWUS">UK-SHOWUS</a>] in the <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr>, and the <a

								href="http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/">Apps for Democracy</a> [<a

								href="#US-APPDEM">US-APPDEM</a>] contest sponsored by the Office of the Chief

								Technology Officer of the District of Columbia (<abbr

								title="United States of America">USA</abbr>), or the <a

								href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/industry_development/digital_economy/future_directions_blog/topics/open_access">consultation

								on open access to public information</a> [<a href="#AU-OGD">AU-OGD</a>] by the

								Australian Government.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.benefits.search">Improved Web Search</h5>


								<p>Some systems are still preventing the consumer to find the needed

								information, even when it's already publicly available, e.g. is not being

								indexed by search engines. There is a need to improve Web search. The use of

								tools such as the <a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol">sitemap

								protocol</a> [<a href="#SITEMAP">SITEMAP</a>] (an <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> open format, too), show that

								governments are trying to improve the discoverability of information. The

								Library of Congress in 2006, partnered with Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google on the

								development, testing, and piloting of open sitemaps. The initiative focused on

								exposing and making discoverable hundreds of thousands of items in the <a

								href="http://memory.loc.gov/">American Memory</a> [<a

								href="#US-LOCMEM">US-LOCMEM</a>] repository resulting in successful indexing

								and exposure increasing Web traffic to the targeted materials by 25 percent.

								Making <abbr title="Public Sector Information">PSI</abbr> available in open

								formats can even greater help consumers to find the information they need.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.benefits.integration">Data Integration</h5>


								<p>Governments provide information using open standards that empower other

								agencies and third parties to further mix, enhance and share this information,

								bringing vast improvement of data integration between disparate systems and

								flourishing of new services.</p>


								<h4 id="OGD.how">How Can Open Government Data Be Achieved?</h4>


								<p>It has always been possible to publish data on the web, just as it's

								possible to publish any type of file. A database dump or zipped packages for

								bulk data download is one approach for publishing government data, albeit a

								crude method. The focus here is on Web centric methods for open government

								data.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.html">Publishing (X)<abbr

								title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr></h5>


								<p>Even when the data is found on the Web in hard-to-reuse formats, third

								parties are finding their way through it. One common practice is that of

								<em>screen scraping</em>, in which <a href="http://theinfo.org/">tools</a> [<a

								href="#TOOLS-SCRAP">TOOLS-SCRAP</a>] are used to separate and extract the data

								from the <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> code. This data is

								then transformed into a more automatic reusable format, usually <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> or <abbr

								title="Resource Description Framework">RDF</abbr>, and then mashed up with

								other sources. Coding and maintenance is costly, requires great work on the

								side of the consumer. Usefulness of the existing applications (<a

								href="http://www.programmableweb.com/featured/government-mashups-and-apis">some

								examples</a> [<a href="#GOV-MASH">GOV-MASH</a>]) is high. This shows the

								potential that providing easier access to the information in a reusable open

								format has.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.accessibility">Ensuring Accessibility</h5>


								<p>Adherence to Web standards allows an array of various devices, including

								assistive technologies, to effectively access Web content. eGovernment

								initiatives must not only be required to conform to the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/">Web Content Accessibility

								Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0</a> [<a href="#WCAG20">WCAG20</a>], from W3C's <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/">Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)</a> [<a

								href="#WAI">WAI</a>], but must validate conformance and maintain the standard

								over time. Only in that way can government maintained Web content and

								applications ensure access by all citizens. In addition, government bodies must

								be given the training and understanding to develop partnership and purchasing

								requirements that reflect the need for partners and vendors to conform as well.

								Harmonization with W3C's international standards for Web accessibility has

								emerged as an important issue, since fragmentation into divergent standards

								slows the development of supporting authoring and evaluation tools.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.api">Providing <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>s</h5>


								<p>There are already cases in which the government is providing access to

								information through <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>s. In most of the cases,

								this means that the consumer has access to the data only in the way the

								producer thinks it should be accessed, e.g. through certain methods, but the

								consumer does not have access to the raw data or a holistic view of it. <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>s are usually provided in

								Javascript or similar languages to integrate in Web pages and applications and

								in some cases provide access to an <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> view of some parts or the whole

								dataset.</p>


								<p>Some examples are the ones offered by the <abbr

								title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr> Government for the <a

								href="http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/">Show Us a Better Way</a> [<a

								href="#UK-SHOWUS">UK-SHOWUS</a>] competition, from health statistics and

								geospatial information to postal codes, but also those from the third sector,

								such as the <a href="http://services.sunlightlabs.com/api/">ones provided by

								the Sunlight Foundation</a> [<a href="#US-SUNAPI">US-SUNAPI</a>], that offer

								from congress records and events to census data.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.feeds"><abbr title="RDF Site Summary">RSS</abbr>/Atom

								information</h5>


								<p>Many pieces of information provided by governments are suitable for

								distribution as news feeds using <abbr title="RDF Site Summary"><a

								href="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS</a></abbr> [<a href="#RSS">RSS</a>] or <a

								href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287">Atom</a> [<a

								href="#ATOM-SYND">ATOM-SYND</a>] that are supported by a great number of tools

								including built-in support in most modern Web browsers. In this scenario,

								people subscribe to a set of channels and get the information about e.g.

								government news, job openings, grants or acquisitions.</p>


								<p>One of the core benefits for this approach is update notifications - when a

								piece of information is added or modified, subscribers can easily get to know

								this. Information consumers only need a news feeds reader, which they use to

								subscribe and read the information.</p>


								<p>The number of feeds provided by governments is constantly increasing and <a

								href="http://governmentrss.pbwiki.com/">thousands are already available</a> [<a

								href="#GOV-FEEDS">GOV-FEEDS</a>].</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.rest"><abbr title="REpresentational State Transfer">REST</abbr>

								interfaces</h5>


								<p><a

								href="http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm"><abbr

								title="REpresentational State Transfer">REST</abbr></a> [<a

								href="#REST">REST</a>] provides an architecture to create Web applications,

								using standards like <abbr title="HyperText Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr> and

								<abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>. Basically, a

								"<em>resource</em>" is associated to a <abbr

								title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> that can be used to access or

								modify its information following certain <a

								href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Representational_State_Transfer&amp;oldid=268990161#Principles">design

								principles</a> [<a href="#REST-PRI">REST-PRI</a>]. Under this paradigm, a Web

								site can publish a set of <abbr title="Uniform Resource Locators">URL</abbr>s

								that provide a real programmer's <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> that 3rd parties can use

								to build applications that extend the site's capabilities - perhaps by mixing

								several different sites. This model is highly suitable for the development of

								mashup applications and can also provide data in open raw formats as the

								following example shows.</p>


								<p>The Seniors Canada Online Web site currently provides such interfaces to

								perform searches on their databases - for instance, on <a

								href="http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLSearch?search=sports">leisure

								and sports information</a> [<a href="#CA-REST1">CA-REST1</a>] and also more

								sophisticated database-query-like services, such as <a

								href="http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLKeywords?lang=fr&amp;letter=l">all

								keywords starting with letter 'L' in french language</a> [<a

								href="#CA-REST2">CA-REST2</a>]. Other agencies could use this <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> to publish the information

								- perhaps mixing several sites and putting the data on a map on the Web. <a

								href="http://developer.worldbank.org/docs/overview">The World Bank API</a> [<a

								href="#TWB-API">TWB-API</a>], allows to tap into indicators from data sources

								like World Development and Governance Indicators.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.how.sw">Semantic Web Technologies</h5>


								<p>Semantic Web technologies can provide a huge development in the way the

								Internet is thought and used. Take for instance, the process of booking a

								flight with current technologies: </p>

								<ul>

								  <li>access a search engine to locate a couple of online travel agencies </li>

								  <li>access some of them using a Web browser, and using their <abbr

								    title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> Web interfaces, gain access

								    to the information </li>

								  <li>compare the results </li>

								  <li>book the flight </li>

								</ul>


								<p>If all the information could be stored in a single relational database, the

								task could be automated with a series of <abbr

								title="Structured Query Language">SQL</abbr> queries. However, given the

								distributed nature of the Internet, this kind of automatization is not directly

								possible with current technologies. Semantic Web technologies could provide a

								means of implementing such a solution in the Internet space.</p>


								<p>The Semantic Web <q cite="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/">provides a common

								framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application,

								enterprise, and community boundaries</q> [<a href="#SW-ACT">SW-ACT</a>] and

								there are <a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ">several technologies</a>

								[<a href="#SW-FAQ">SW-FAQ</a>] that allow to describe, model and query these

								data.</p>


								<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdfa-syntax-20081014">RDFa in

								XHTML</a> [<a href="#RDFA-SYNTAX">RDFA-SYNTAX</a>] is a first approach in

								bridging the Human and Data Webs. It allows to add some metadata described in

								<abbr title="Resource Description Framework">RDF</abbr> to <abbr

								title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</abbr> that is easier for

								machines to understand. From the <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/#id84428">RDFa

								Primer</a> [<a href="#RDFA-PRIMER">RDFA-PRIMER</a>]:</p>


								<blockquote cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/">


								  <div class="figure">

								  <p><img

								  src="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/diagrams/presentation-vs-semantics.png"

								  alt="presentation vs. semantics" /></p>


								  <p>On the left, what browsers see. On the right, what humans see. Can we

								  bridge the gap so browsers see more of what we see?</p>

								  </div>

								</blockquote>


								<p>An example is the <a href="http://www.london-gazette.gov.uk/">London

								Gazette</a> [<a href="#UK-LONGAZ1">UK-LONGAZ1</a>], the UK Government's

								Official Journal and Newspaper of Record where proposals and decisions of

								public bodies, e.g. to establish a new tax or to give permission to a company

								to build a factory, have been published since 1665. <a

								href="http://assets.expectnation.com/15/event/3/SemWebbing%20the%20London%20Gazette%20Paper%201.pdf">SemWebbing

								the London Gazette</a> [<a href="#UK-LONGAZ2">UK-LONGAZ2</a>] shows how

								increasing semantics is challenging but can lead to important benefits. </p>


								<p>The <a href="http://dbpedia.org/">DBPedia</a> project is an example of how a

								given Web site can be prepared for this kind of applications, using: </p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Internet standards and <abbr

								    title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> technologies. <abbr

								    title="HyperText Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr>, <abbr

								    title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s, <abbr

								    title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> Schemas, etc. </li>

								  <li>The Resource Description Framework (RDF) for representing extracted

								    information. Query results would be represented as <abbr

								    title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>. In the example, available

								    notices. </li>

								  <li>A set of Web sites that provide information (datasets). In the former

								    example, publishers of PSI would be datataset providers. </li>

								  <li>A query language. A <a

								    href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdf-sparql-query-20080115/">Semantic

								    Web query language</a> [<a href="#SPARQL">SPARQL</a>] would be used

								    (instead of <abbr title="Structured Query Language">SQL</abbr>). </li>

								</ul>


								<p>DBPedia is one of the largest datasets in the <a

								href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData"

								title="Linkin Open Data community effort home page at W3C">Linked Open Data</a>

								[<a href="#LOD">LOD</a>] community effort which shows how powerful mashups of

								datasets exposed using Semantic Web technologies can be.</p>


								<p>Governments would need to publish the required interfaces so third parties

								could query their information in distributed Web applications. This could

								provide huge benefits: </p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Publishing a static document on a portal provides a unique and

								    challenging effort for automation, where Semantic Web constructs would

								    indeed provide a high degree of automation easily.</li>

								  <li>While current technologies (Web Services, <abbr

								    title="REpresentational State Transfer">REST</abbr>, etc.) provide such

								    automation, public administrations need to create some set of queries and

								    offer them as an <abbr

								    title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>. This provides value,

								    but requires design - and the decision on which queries are supported (and

								    which not). It is impossible to foresee all the scenarios of data usage, so

								    usage is therefore limited. </li>

								</ul>


								<p>Using a Semantic Web approach, public organizations would publish datasets

								annotated with domain specific vocabularies and/or metadata (e.g. using a

								common and generic service model to annotate public services) - and offer a

								query interfaces for applications to access public information in a

								non-predefined way. This would greatly boost the ability of third parties to

								use and reuse the information provided by governments, in ways and applications

								perhaps unforeseen (and unforeseeable) by them.</p>


								<h4 id="OGD.issues">What Are the Main Issues with Publishing Open Government

								Data?</h4>


								<h5 id="OGD.issues.mission">Mission and Strategy</h5>


								<p>In general, government agencies have not seriously considered mashups on a

								coordinated level yet. The agencies are challenged with exposing data from

								applications or creating applications to display data. Resourcing of personnel

								and funding have not allowed for a focus on providing Open Government Data. The

								government agencies are also challenged in finding other agencies or

								organizations where regulations or government policy (in addition to the lack

								of resources) will allow the sharing/exchange of information which would lead

								to a useful mashup.</p>


								<p>For example, agencies have not rendered their mission, goal, and objective

								statements in readily shareable format. Thus, it is more difficult than

								necessary not only to create cross-agency mashups of the data contained in

								agency strategic plans themselves but also to identify related objectives that

								offer strategic opportunities for well-coordinated sharing of data supporting

								those objectives.</p>


								<p>A typical application mashup requires the use of <abbr

								title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>s with data available via

								<abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>, many agencies have not yet

								considered the consistent or holistic use of <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> across applications or data

								repositories, not to mention other open formats like <abbr

								title="Resource Description Framework">RDF</abbr>. The age of systems varies

								significantly and, at times, the proprietary nature of the systems and

								applications offers further challenges with providing access to the data needed

								for a mashup when it is often not within the mission of an agency to provide

								sets of information from other agencies or different sources.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.issues.trust">Provenance and Trust</h5>


								<p>Agencies are faced with having to ensure that the information and other data

								that they provide remains the authoritative source of the information.

								Providing access to data via <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> or similar open formats to others

								for display in mashups releases control and management of the data outside of

								the responsible agency, which is a concern; the agency can no longer be sure

								that the data has maintained its original nature and the final consumer cannot

								be sure about where the data is coming from and if it's trustable or not.</p>


								<p>Some issues may arise: on one hand the interpretations other could do of the

								provided information without the proper context, on the other how to ensure

								that the data carry its restrictions with it (e.g. original author, copyright,

								license, etc.). If agencies are to proceed in adopting mashups within their

								organizations and/or across the government and/or with third parties, best

								practices, policies, and procedures will be needed to ensure the information

								and data's authoritative nature is preserved when necessary.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.issues.tech">Limitations of the Technology</h5>


								<p>Although some of the technologies and standards have been in use for many

								years already, such as <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> from

								the day the Web was invented or <abbr

								title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> from 1998 here might be cases in

								which when using one of the existing standards some issues may arise or some

								ways in which the technology is intended to be used are not possible yet --

								i.e. some gaps in the standards are found or some new features are required.

								W3C has an open <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/">process</a> [<a

								href="#W3C-PROCESS">W3C-PROCESS</a>] that allows anybody to comment and

								participate on improving the standards; one of the eGov IG's goals is to act as

								a mediator between governments and W3C, communicating to other W3C Groups those

								needs in order to be taken into consideration and fulfilled as necessary, and

								communicating to governments how to better use the existing standards for the

								benefit of both governments and W3C and the Web community at large.</p>


								<h5 id="OGD.issues.capabilities">Capabilities</h5>


								<p>Governments have been using the Web even before it became a very popular

								channel to publish public information. The Web is an ecosystem in constant

								evolution and as such there are always new capabilities that need to be

								acquired in order to use it to its full potential. Adequate resourcing and

								training of those involved in the development of applications and services is

								needed.</p>


								<h3 id="interop">Interoperability</h3>


								<h4 id="interop.what">What is Interoperability?</h4>


								<p>Within the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3473">European

								Interoperability Framework</a> [<a href="#EC-EIFV1">EC-EIFV1</a>],

								Interoperability was defined as: <q

								cite="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=19529">the ability of

								information and communication technology (ICT) systems and of the business

								processes they support to exchange data and to enable the sharing of

								information and knowledge.</q> In the <a

								href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31597">draft document as basis

								for the EIF v2</a> [<a href="#EC-EIFV2DRAFT">EC-EIFV2DRAFT</a>] this definition

								has been reworked into a more comprehensive one <q

								cite="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31597">the ability of disparate

								and diverse organizations to interact towards mutually beneficial and agreed

								common objectives, involving the sharing of information and knowledge between

								the organizations via the business processes they support, by means of the

								exchange of data between their respective information and communication

								technology (ICT) systems.</q></p>


								<p>For the <a

								href="http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028607.pdf">United

								Nations e-Government Survey 2008 From e-Government to Connected Governance</a>

								[<a href="#UN-SURVEY">UN-SURVEY</a>] means <q

								cite="http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028607.pdf">the

								ability of government organizations to share and integrate information by using

								common standards.</q></p>


								<p>The delivery of eGovernment services typically involves the interaction

								between actors, citizens, business and administrations, in a scenario of large

								diversity, not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of how the

								relationships and the processes are organized and of how the necessary data and

								information are structured and handled. The following types of interaction

								cover most of eGovernment services:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Direct interaction between citizens or business with Public

								    Administrations.</li>

								  <li>Interaction and exchange of data among Public Administrations (Local,

								    Regional, Central, Supra-National or International) and other organizations

								    (other public entities, public universities, etc...). It is common in

								    governmental processes that two or more public organizations share data

								    while delivering a given service.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Interoperability is a relevant requirement which has been scaling steps in

								the political agenda in recent years. In the European Union for instance

								several policy documents and acts refer to interoperability, like the <a

								href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=24117">Communication to the

								Council and European Parliament (2006) 45 final</a> [<a

								href="#EC-COM45">EC-COM45</a>].</p>


								<p>The achievement of interoperability requires a global approach which should

								take into account issues like types of interactions, dimensions of

								interoperability (organizational, semantic, technical, in time), the

								interoperability chain, standards, common infrastructures and services and

								conditions for share, re-use and collaborate.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.what.dimensions">The Dimensions of Interoperability</h5>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Organizational Interoperability</strong> refers to the

								    collaboration between entities in the development, deployment and delivery

								    of eGovernment services, and to the interaction between services, and

								    supporting processes, including also agreements or similar formal

								    instruments about service levels, the use of common services, security or

								    other quality aspects.</li>

								  <li><strong>Semantic Interoperability</strong> enables organizations to

								    process information from external or secondary sources in a meaningful

								    manner. The achievement of semantic interoperability may require supporting

								    instruments that serve for collaboration, sharing and re-use of information

								    artifacts also called <em>semantic assets</em>, like <a

								    href="http://www.semic.eu/semic/">SEMIC.EU - The Semantic Interoperability

								    Centre Europe</a> [<a href="#EC-SEMIC">EC-SEMIC</a>].</li>

								  <li><strong>Technical Interoperability</strong> refers to the interaction of

								    technological systems.</li>

								  <li><strong>Interoperability in time</strong> refers to the interaction among

								    elements that correspond to various technological waves. It is particularly

								    relevant in relation to the preservation and access to information on

								    electronic media along the time.</li>

								</ul>


								<h5 id="interop.what.chain">The Interoperability Chain</h5>


								<p>Interoperability behaves like a chain when systems and services are deployed

								across boundaries of entities or governments; there is a succession of

								interconnected elements, in a rather dynamic way, through interfaces and with

								projection to the interoperability dimensions. Interoperability may break at

								the weakest point elements individually adequate are deficiently joined. The

								delivery of complex services requires interoperability between all the links of

								the chain, end to end, including back-office and front-office environments. The

								interoperability chain might include basic links like infrastructures and

								associated services; data models and data integration; systems and services

								integration; and secure integrated multi-channel access; together with some

								transversal aspects. An important aspect of interoperability is enabling

								citizens who are using <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users.html#at">assistive technologies</a>,

								mobile devices, and older software and hardware.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.what.standards">The Role of Standards </h5>


								<p>Standards are applicable in the dimensions of interoperability, they are

								used in common infrastructures and services, and they are used in certain links

								of the interoperability chain. The use of open standards allows that the actors

								providing and receiving eGovernment services may take part using their

								preferred technological choices. Governments are taking into account open

								standards in their policies and interoperability frameworks and in some cases

								like <a href="http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf">The

								Netherlands</a> [<a href="#NL-OSOSS">NL-OSOSS</a>] are developing coherent

								strategies towards openness. In the United States, <abbr

								title="Office of Management and Budget">OMB</abbr> Circular A-119 [<a

								href="#US-OMB119">US-OMB119</a>] directs agencies to <q

								cite="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars/a119/a119.html">use voluntary

								consensus standards in lieu of government-unique standards in their procurement

								and regulatory activities, except where inconsistent with law or otherwise

								impractical.</q></p>


								<h5 id="interop.what.common">Common Infrastructures and Services</h5>


								<p>Common infrastructures and services propagate interoperability producing

								economies of scale and using synergies that stem from cooperative work in

								similar areas of action and respecting the subsidiarity of the participating

								entities in the provision of complex services. They offer integrating solutions

								that ensure interoperability in the dominion of their implementation with the

								rest of information consumers, putting the focus on the corresponding

								interfaces. They facilitate the development of new services, as well as the

								interoperability of the existing ones.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.what.share">Share, Re-Use and Collaborate</h5>


								<p>The voice <em>sharing</em> is present in the interoperability definition

								mentioned above; together with re-use, both of them are important for

								interoperability. The terms <em>share</em> and <em>re-use</em> are connected,

								for instance, with the corresponding policy in the European Union shaped in the

								<a href="http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l24226j.htm">Action Plan on

								Electronic Administration i2010</a> [<a href="#EC-i2010">EC-i2010</a>]. The

								openness approach benefits interoperability and it is a condition that favors

								sharing and reusing. Putting in practice the sharing approach may require the

								support of platforms like <a href="http://www.osor.eu/">OSOR.eu - Open Source

								Observatory and Repository</a> [<a href="#EC-OSOR">EC-OSOR</a>] and the

								application by governments of adequate licensing conditions, as in the case of

								the <a href="http://www.osor.eu/eupl">EUPL</a> [<a href="#EUPL">EUPL</a>].</p>


								<p><strong>What Public Policy Outcomes are related to

								interoperability.</strong></p>


								<p>Interoperability policies developed by governments generally address the

								following goals:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Improve the cooperation of government services with the aim of delivering

								    better integrated services in a quicker and more flexible way.</li>

								  <li>Improve efficiency and effectiveness driving to the reduction of

								  costs.</li>

								  <li>Making life easier to the citizen by means of offering more choice and

								    reducing the administrative burden.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>These outcomes provide benefits which are described in the following

								paragraphs.</p>


								<h4 id="interop.benefits">What Are the Main Benefits of Interoperability?</h4>


								<p>Interoperability offers many important benefits to governments, to business

								and industry and to citizens. Within [<a

								href="#EC-EIFV2DRAFT">EC-EIFV2DRAFT</a>] there is a whole section on this

								question which is helpful to identify in summary the main benefits:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.org"><em>Organizational coherence and

								    integration.</em> Interoperability is a means towards more coherent and

								    integrated operation for the overall public administration domain. The

								    current stovepipe organization of public institutions prevents the

								    horizontal movement of information and allows only vertical flows according

								    to the bureaucratic paradigm (command-report). Cross-agency

								    interoperability makes the horizontal flow of information feasible and

								    allows better communication and coordination amongst separate agencies.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.coord"><em>Coordination and cooperation.</em> It

								    facilitates <em>better coordination and cooperation</em> of government

								    services enabling the development, aggregation, deployment and delivery of

								    complex services.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.tech"><em>Technological choices. It facilitates</em>

								    the creation of scenarios where actors participate in eGovernment services

								    using their preferred <em>technological choices</em>.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.admin">It contributes to the <em>reduction of

								    administrative burden</em>.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.costs">It contributes to the <em>reduction of ICT

								    costs</em> enabling a more efficient use of citizen's taxes because

								    interoperability facilitates the re-use of data, the speed-up of services

								    and supporting services development and deployment, the integration of

								    services and the flow of data.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.citizen"><em>It makes life easier for the

								    citizen</em> since interoperability is the key for the delivery of citizen

								    centric services delivered through a multi-channel approach: reduces the

								    burden on the citizen to request and present documents from different

								    administrative services, speeds up decisions by government services

								    resulting in higher quality and added value from the citizen's perspective

								    and helping those with disabilities or the elderly with transportation or

								    communication constraints.</li>

								  <li id="interop.benefits.multi-channel"><em>Increased <a

								    href="#multi-channel">multi-channel delivery</a></em>. It facilitates the

								    deployment of multi-channel delivery of government services.</li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="interop.how">How Can Interoperability Be Achieved?</h4>


								<p>Interoperability is by its own nature a joint effort. Sharing information

								requires sharing a set of common principles among all participants. The best

								way to achieve interoperability is through standardization.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.how.openstds">Open Standards</h5>


								<p>It is of paramount importance to use open standards where available as

								opposed to proprietary formats. <a

								href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/epolicy/roadmap.pdf">According to the

								Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School</a> [<a

								href="#OPEN-ICT">OPEN-ICT</a>], a standard is considered to be open if:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>cannot be controlled by any single person or entity with any vested

								    interests;</li>

								  <li>evolved and managed in a transparent process open to all interested

								    parties;</li>

								  <li>platform independent, vendor neutral and usable for multiple

								    implementations;</li>

								  <li>openly published (including availability of specifications and supporting

								    material);</li>

								  <li>available royalty free or at minimal cost, with other restrictions (such

								    as field of use and defensive suspension) offered on reasonable and

								    non-discriminatory terms; and</li>

								  <li>approved through due process by rough consensus among participants.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>The workload to select standards for eGovernment services may be

								considerable and in fact all the governments that maintain lists of standards

								for their interoperability frameworks are carrying out similar tasks. That's

								why the IDABC Programme of the European Union started on the proposal of

								Denmark the work to develop a <a

								href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7407/5644">Common Assessment Method

								of Standards and Specification</a> [<a href="#EC-CAMSS">EC-CAMSS</a>]. This

								method has been elaborated on the basis of commonalities of existing practices

								in some European countries in relation to the assessment of standards for

								interoperability frameworks with the aim to facilitate this task and share the

								results. CAMSS identifies several criteria such as the ad equation of the

								standard to the required function, its potential in terms of stability,

								scalability and others, the degree of openness and the market conditions.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.how.oss">Open Source</h5>


								<p>Open Source does not imply the use of Open Standards or vice versa. Open

								Source refers to licensing and development models. It is essential that

								governments consider open standards in relation to considering either Open

								Source or proprietary solutions.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.how.gif">Government Interoperability Frameworks</h5>


								<p>Though it is possible to start peer-to-peer data interchange programs,

								greater value usually lies in multi-lateral solutions. This principle sets the

								ground for the creation of a Government Interoperability Framework (GIF).</p>


								<p>A GIF is an instrument shared by different Governmental Organizations that

								provides a global approach to interoperability and which enables them to

								interact with each other, share information and business processes and

								cooperate for the delivery of eGovernment services. A GIF usually deals with

								the following:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Legal status, scope, policies, organization, concepts, vocabulary,

								    guidelines, practices, recommendations, compliance and governance

								  issues.</li>

								  <li>Interoperability dimensions and associated principles and relevant

								    elements such as standards, common infrastructures and services, conditions

								    for re-use and sharing and other possible aspects.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>There a wide number of initiatives in this area:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li id="interop.how.gif.nif"><em>National Interoperability Frameworks</em>.

								    Many countries worldwide are developing their Interoperability Frameworks

								    such as Australia [<a href="#AU-IF">AU-IF</a>], Belgium [<a

								    href="#BE-IF">BE-IF</a>], Denmark [<a href="#DK-IF">DK-IF</a>], Estonia [<a

								    href="#EE-IF">EE-IF</a>], Germany [<a href="#DE-IF">DE-IF</a>], The

								    Netherlands [<a href="#NL-IF">NL-IF</a>], New Zealand [<a

								    href="#NZ-IF">NZ-IF</a>], United Kingdom [<a href="#UK-IF">UK-IF</a>].</li>

								</ul>


								<p id="interop.how.gif.eif"><em>European Interoperability Framework.</em>

								Pursues the interoperability of services and systems between public

								administrations and the public (citizens, businesses) at a pan-European level

								[<a href="#EC-EIFV1">EC-EIFV1</a>], [<a

								href="#EC-EIFV2DRAFT">EC-EIFV2DRAFT</a>].</p>


								<h4 id="interop.issues">What Are the Main Issues to Achieve

								Interoperability?</h4>


								<p>Interoperability presents a series of issues that need to be taken into

								account.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.issues.standards">Standards</h5>


								<p>Standards is a rather complex issue which might require a longer discussion

								outside the scope of this document.</p>


								<p>There is a wide number of standardization bodies producing plenty of

								technical specifications and the way they can be normatively referenced and

								used by governments varies significantly. In Europe there is a distinction

								between <em>standards</em> and <em>technical specifications</em>, being the

								former the technical specifications approved by a recognized standardization

								body according to the <a

								href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/consleg/1998/L/01998L0034-20070101-en.pdf">Directive

								98/34/EC</a> [<a href="#EC-STDS">EC-STDS</a>]. [<a

								href="#EC-EIFV2DRAFT">EC-EIFV2DRAFT</a>] states that <q>openness of standards

								or technical specifications is important for public administrations because of

								its relationship with interoperability, freedom and choice</q>. In the United

								States, <abbr title="Office of Management and Budget">OMB</abbr> Circular A-119

								[<a href="#US-OMB119">US-OMB119</a>] directs agencies to use <em>voluntary

								consensus standards</em>.</p>


								<p>The selection of standards for eGovernment services and interoperability

								frameworks presents several issues as shown <a

								href="#interop.how.openstds">above</a> while explaining the [<a

								href="#EC-CAMSS">CAMSS</a>] method. How to structure standards for

								interoperability is also discussed in the <a

								href="http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/finalreport1.pdf">Final

								Report of the CEN/ISSS eGovernment Focus Group on the eGovernment Standards

								Roadmap</a> [<a href="#CEN-REPORT">CEN-REPORT</a>].</p>


								<p>Although there is no single definition of <a

								href="#interop.how.openstds">open standard</a> W3C technical specifications,

								formally known as recommendations, are broadly known as open Web standards. <q

								cite="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/">W3C primarily pursues its mission through

								the creation of Web standards and guidelines. In order for the Web to reach its

								full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with

								one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work

								together. W3C refers to this goal as <em>Web interoperability</em>. By

								publishing open (non-proprietary), royalty-free standards for Web languages and

								protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web

								fragmentation</q> [<a href="#W3C-OVERVIEW">W3C-OVERVIEW</a>].</p>


								<h5 id="interop.issues.privacy">Privacy</h5>


								<p>Legal frameworks usually establish privacy and data protection obligations

								for governments and institutions that are entrusted with the administration of

								public services and the exchange of information about citizen's and business.

								The exchange of this kind of information requires conformity with the

								applicable legal framework and security policies and requirements. Following

								[<a href="#EC-EIFV2DRAFT">EC-EIFV2DRAFT</a>] citizens and business require a

								sufficient level of guarantees regarding their privacy and that their

								fundamental rights are preserved. From the information consumers perspective,

								functions associated with security (identification, authentication,

								authorization, integrity, non -repudiation, confidentiality, etc.) should have

								a maximum level of transparency, involve a minimum of effort and provide the

								proper level of security.</p>


								<h5 id="Security">Security</h5>


								<p>Security, in close relation with privacy, is also a transversal question.

								Being a quite difficult issue, it is important that required levels of security

								are in place in the different areas: data access, communications, etc.

								providing equivalent safeguards to non-interoperable scenarios.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.issues.semantics">Semantics</h5>


								<p>Semantic agreement in advance facilitates all exchanging parties to have a

								common understanding of the meaning of the data exchanged. At the international

								level, this can be a complex topic since some legal concepts may differ from

								one country to the other. The final goal is to be able to interpret data

								consistently across the different organizations and platforms involved in the

								data exchange. Toward that end, it would be beneficial to publish on the Web in

								readily sharable, referenceable format the names and definitions of elements

								currently being used, regardless of the scope of agreement that has been

								achieved.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.issues.legal">Legal Aspects</h5>


								<p>Interoperability may require changes in current legislation, so this needs

								to be addressed as well.</p>


								<h5 id="interop.issues.cultural">Cultural/Political Aspects</h5>


								<p>In general and historically, public agencies have developed a culture that

								does not promote cross-agency sharing. In many cases, agencies are reluctant to

								change existing processes, open data and services to external parties, and

								re-negotiate their way of operation with external parties. Who owns and

								controls the data or sharing service is not visible in the new sharing

								environment until after the execution of an interoperability project linking

								together two or more agencies.</p>


								<h3 id="multi-channel">Multi-Channel Delivery</h3>


								<h4 id="multi-channel.what">What is Multi-Channel Delivery?</h4>


								<p>Channels are different means used by service providers to interact with and

								deliver services to their information consumers. Multi-channel service delivery

								is the provision of services through different networks, terminal devices or

								platforms and interfaces, in an integrated and coordinated way, with comparable

								levels of usability.</p>


								<p>Governments, like other sectors, also interact with citizens through

								different channels, from the traditional ones such as the counter or

								face-to-face and postal delivery to the electronic channels such as Internet

								Web sites, e-mail, <abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr>-messaging,

								fixed phone, mobile phone, interactive voice response systems, digital

								television, fax, self-service terminals (<abbr

								title="Autmatic Teller Machine">ATM</abbr>s), etc. <span>Governments also have

								challenges in relation to the elimination of barriers in the access to their

								services and in relation to the provision of choices about how to access their

								information and services.</span></p>


								<p>Mobile devices, digital <abbr title="Television">TV</abbr> and others are

								opening new ways of interaction between citizens and governments, so that

								electronic services are no longer limited to the <abbr

								title="Personal Computer">PC</abbr>. <span>This is possible thanks to the

								evolution of terminal devices with better features in terms of processing

								capacity, memory, power autonomy, screen size and quality, on one side and to

								the improvement of networks, protocols and markup languages on the other

								side.</span></p>


								<p>Industry and citizens are getting used to these new electronic channels

								taking advantage of their possibilities and of new services and there is an

								expectation that governments may be able to do the same.</p>


								<p>These new electronic channels require the adoption of new architectures and

								systems that are able to provide maximum functionalities.</p>


								<p>The Web is a main channel to access government services and it should be

								possible to offer citizens these services through any device incorporating

								Internet access. This would allow a significant increase in the usage of

								government services by means of any kind of widespread channels such as <abbr

								title="Personal Digital Assistant">PDA</abbr>, Smartphone, <abbr

								title="Wireless Application Protocol">WAP</abbr>, WebTV, or even Bluetooth and

								others; in this way the access to government services would really be anyhow,

								anywhere, anytime through mobile devices.</p>


								<p>Governments should take into account distribution, access options and

								accessibility aspects to avoid creating new barriers which could limit the

								amount of information or services provided. Consideration to <a

								href="http://www.epractice.eu/community/InclusiveeGovernment">socially

								disadvantaged users</a> [<a href="#EC-MCEGOV">EC-MCEGOV</a>], users without

								high bandwidth and high cost devices, as well as devices, platforms and Web

								sites with smaller audiences should be taken into account.</p>


								<h4 id="multi-channel.policy">What Public Policy Outcomes are Related to

								Multi-Channel Delivery?</h4>


								<p>Multi-channel policies developed by governments generally address the

								following goals:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Facilitating e-Inclusion, avoiding digital divide and reaching

								    the disadvantaged citizens</strong>. For instance, the <a

								    href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/docs/lisbon_2007/ministerial_declaration_180907.pdf">Lisbon

								    Ministerial Declaration</a> [<a href="#EU-LISBON">EU-LISBON</a>] refers to

								    multi-channel delivery in relation to inclusive eGovernment. Also, the <a

								    href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm">ICT

								    PSP work programme</a> 2009 [<a href="#EC-CIP"><span>EC-CIP</span></a>]

								    focus the multi-channel service delivery to the socially disadvantaged and

								    opens this entry explaining that one third of the European population is

								    currently considered socially disadvantaged, most of it suffering from

								    multiple difficulties leading to social exclusion (economic, physical,

								    cultural, geographical factors etc.).</li>

								  <li><strong>Making available eGovernment services and information to large

								    part of the population</strong>. This is especially interesting in

								    countries with low computer penetration as explained in the case of the <a

								    href="http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/csckep/">Multi-Channel Citizen

								    Service Centers in Greece</a> [<a href="#GR-PAPA">GR-PAPA</a>]. It has to

								    be taken into account the worldwide expansion of mobile networks and the

								    forecast that by the end of 2010 there may be four billion people in the

								    world with access to a mobile phone.</li>

								  <li><strong>Expanding citizen's choice, extending and providing citizen

								    centric and personalized services</strong>; also referred in [<a

								    href="#EC-CIP">EC-CIP</a>].</li>

								  <li><strong>A closer government to the citizens, providing transparency and

								    openness and expanding citizen participation</strong> in public policy

								    decision making. The Obama administration's <a

								    href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/">memo

								    on Transparency and Open Government</a> [<a

								    href="#US-OBMEMO">US-OBMEMO</a>] emphasizes these questions. Also it is an

								    issue in the Lisbon Ministerial Declaration.</li>

								  <li><strong>Re-use of governments' information:</strong> Governments produce,

								    collect and share vast amounts of information with high commercial

								    potential for re-use as the basis for new added value products and

								    services, such as e.g. car navigation systems, weather forecasts, insurance

								    and credit rating services and legal databases, as explained in the <a

								    href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm">European

								    PSI Initiative</a> [<a href="#EU-PSI">EU-PSI</a>]. Following the same

								    source, a survey made in 2006 showed that the overall market size for

								    public sector information only in the EU is estimated at € 27 billion.

								    The EU adopted the <a

								    href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/directive/psi_directive_en.pdf">PSI

								    Directive</a> in 2003 [<a href="#EU-PSID">EU-PSID</a>] to overcome barriers

								    that limit the re-use of government information; this Directive deals with

								    how public sector bodies should make their information available for

								    re-use, and with key issues like transparency of what is available and

								    under which conditions, fair competition and non-discrimination between all

								    potential re-users. The transposition of this Directive into national

								    legislations in the EU includes the promotion of the re-use through

								    multi-channel platforms as, for example, in the case of the national law of

								    Spain.</li>

								  <li>Multi-channel delivery of government services in support to the process

								    of <strong>combined service delivery across different

								    administrations</strong>, also referred in [<a

								  href="#EC-CIP">EC-CIP</a>].</li>

								  <li><strong>Re-using data and applications independently from the

								    channel</strong>, reducing the costs of providing services, included in

								    policies oriented to efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.</li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="multi-channel.benefits">What are the Main Benefits of Multi-Channel

								Delivery?</h4>


								<p>Main benefits of multi-channel delivery may be both for the information

								consumer and for the service provider:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>An increase of <strong>flexibility</strong> in terms of anytime,

								    anywhere, anyhow and access options for the user.</li>

								  <li>An increase of the <strong>choice</strong> according to the information

								    consumer's preferences; access to the same information and services through

								    different channels.</li>

								  <li><strong>Wider usage and impact</strong> of government services; a higher

								    population or user community reached by government services.</li>

								  <li><strong>Cost savings</strong> along the delivery chain for the service

								    provider.</li>

								  <li><strong>Quicker deployment of services through new or additional

								    channels</strong> which may provide easy, accurate and personalized content

								    delivery.</li>

								  <li><strong>Integration of government services</strong> in the

								  front-office.</li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="multi-channel.how">How Can Multi-Channel Delivery Be Achieved?</h4>


								<h5 id="Developing">Developing a Multi-Channel Strategy</h5>


								<p>As a starting point, governments can develop strategies regarding access to

								their Web sites to be available through a range of digital platforms offering

								more choice to citizens. More global approaches design strategies which combine

								face to face offices, call centers and Web sites, as in the case of the <a

								href="http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/red060">multi-channel initiative

								consisting in a Web site, a network of offices (more than 1.600 in March 2009),

								and a telephone number in Spain</a> [<a href="#ES-060">ES-060</a>] and the <a

								href="http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/csckep">Multi-Channel Citizen Service

								Centers in Greece</a> [<a href="#GR-PAPA">GR-PAPA</a>], with equivalent

								experiences to this one in other countries. <a

								href="http://www.transportdirect.info/">Transport Direct</a> [<a

								href="#UK-TRANSPORT">UK-TRANSPORT</a>] in the United Kingdom offers travel

								information beyond the PC platform including PDAs or mobile phones and digital

								TV which gets to a segment of the population who do not have ready access to

								the internet through a PC.</p>


								<p>The <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3119">study about

								"Multi-Channel Delivery of Government Services"</a> [<a

								href="#EC-MCD">EC-MCD</a>] developed by the Program IDA of the European

								Commission elaborates on how to develop a multi-channel strategy; this study

								includes a list of possible channels with their main features, proposes a

								channel selection framework and provides implementation guidelines of the

								multi-channel strategy. This implementation may require a number of steps such

								like the following:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Identify candidate services for multi-channel delivery.</li>

								  <li>Investigate whether the service can be divided into distinct steps. Given

								    one service, sometimes one specific channel can satisfy the full

								    transaction; in other cases the full transaction could take several steps

								    which might involve different channels. For instance, in order to renew the

								    citizen´s ID card in Spain an appointment can be made through a Web site,

								    the citizen may receive a confirmation with an SMS message through the

								    mobile and then the last step is made face to face in an office of the

								    administration.</li>

								  <li>Carry out research and segmentation of the target information consumer

								    community.</li>

								  <li>Analyze organizational changes including business processes, back end and

								    front end applications, staffing.</li>

								  <li>Analyze technical solutions.</li>

								  <li>Determine the channels to be implemented.</li>

								  <li>Quantification and evaluation. Statistics of access through the different

								    channels enabled.</li>

								  <li>Using standards, principles and best practices:

								    <ul>

								      <li><em>W3C technical specifications</em>: URI, URL, XHTML, CSS, XML

								        technologies, and others.</li>

								      <li><em>Web Accessibility</em>. Using the <a

								        href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech">guidelines developed by the Web

								        Accessibility Initiative (WAI)</a> [<a

								        href="#WAI-GUIDES">WAI-GUIDES</a>] and considering the <a

								        href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/">relationship between Web Content

								        Accessibility and Mobile Web</a> [<a href="#WAI-MWI">WAI-MWI</a>].</li>

								      <li><em>Mobile Web</em>: using Device Description Repository Simple API,

								        Device Description Repository Core Vocabulary; and the Mobile Web Best

								        Practices 1.0 [<a href="#MWI">MWI</a>].</li>

								      <li>Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web relationship: Web sites can

								        more efficiently meet both goals when developers understand the

								        significant overlap between making a Web site accessible for a mobile

								        device and for people with disabilities.</li>

								      <li><em><a

								        href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/NOTE-di-princ-20030901/">Device

								        Independence principles</a></em> [<a href="#DEVIND">DEVIND</a>] set out

								        some principles that can be used when evaluating current solutions or

								        proposing new solutions, and can form the basis of more detailed

								        requirements and recommendations.</li>

								    </ul>

								  </li>

								</ul>


								<h4 id="multi-channel.issues">What are the Main Issues with Multi-Channel

								Delivery?</h4>


								<h5 id="multi-channel.issues.requirements">General Requirements of the

								Information Consumer and of the Provider</h5>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>General requirements of the information consumer</strong>, as

								    pointed out in <a

								    href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3119">[EC-MCD]</a>:

								    flexibility, access options, accessibility, usability (easy to use),

								    quality, security.<br />

								    Some of them are especially relevant like security providing trust, and

								    simplicity so that the content may have a similar appearance from any

								    device, providing transparency from the point of view of the information

								    consumer.<br />

								    Many people uses the mobile phone only for phone calls and are not aware of

								    the rest of possibilities of the device, because its operation may result

								    difficult for them. This inhibiting factor decreases the usage of the

								    offered services. For instance, trying to write an URL in a mobile may be a

								    difficult task because certain characters ("@", "/", "?", " &amp;", ":",

								    …) are hard to find and the writing task is generally troublesome. The

								    information consumer usually has to remember a crowd of short numbers, key

								    words, URLs, while using impulsively a mobile device with low help

								    capabilities and requiring a quick answer to solve an specific problem.<br

								    />

								  </li>

								  <li><strong>General requirements of the service provider</strong>, as pointed

								    out in <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3119">[EC-MCD]</a>:

								    efficiency, effectiveness, security.</li>

								</ul>


								<h5 id="multi-channel.issues.limitations">Limitation of Mobile Devices and

								Adaptation of Information and Services Provided</h5>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Limitations of mobile devices</strong><span>, as listed in</span>

								    [<a href="#MW-LIM"><span>MW-LIM</span></a>]: <span>Small screen size, Lack

								    of windows, Navigation, Lack of Javascript and cookies, Types of pages

								    accessible, Speed, Broken pages, Compressed pages, Size of messages, Cost -

								    the access and bandwidth charges, Location of mobile user, Situation in

								    which ad reaches user.</span></li>

								  <li><strong>Adaptation to the access to the Web through mobile

								    devices</strong><span>, which may</span> <span>require, between others, the

								    reduction of download traffic and the processing consume, because of the

								    need to keep the battery, reduce the cost by traffic and the time response

								    perceived by the information consumer when used intensively or when

								    downloading contents.<br />

								    </span>The ideal scenario is that introduction of new electronic channels

								    would be as non-intrusive as possible; for instance without having to

								    modify content managers used for the production of information for the

								    Web.<br />

								    This may require the deployment of intermediate elements which adapt or

								    format the content taken out from the Web appropriately according to the

								    kind of device involved in the transaction.</li>

								  <li><strong>Management of contents that cannot be showed in a mobile

								    device</strong><span>, have a large size very costly to download and memory

								    consuming</span><span>.</span></li>

								</ul>


								<h5 id="multi-channel.issues.integration">Coordination and Integration of

								Different Channels</h5>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Coordination and integration of different channels</strong> is

								    necessary to provide a focus on the user, a consistent approach to data and

								    databases available or shared by all channels and consistent look and

								  feel.</li>

								  <li><strong>Interoperability</strong>, discussed <a href="#interop">above in

								    this <em>Note</em></a>.</li>

								</ul>


								<h5 id="multi-channel.issues.access">Access to eGovernment Services and

								Information</h5>


								<p>In considering multi-channel access to eGovernment services and information,

								providers must take into account:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Web for everyone</strong>: so that it may be available to all

								    people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native

								    language, culture, geographical location, or disability. It has to be

								    considered that services should be satisfactory according to the context

								    where they are used.</li>

								  <li><strong>Accessibility</strong>: so that people with disabilities, as well

								    as <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/soc.html#of">older people with

								    accessibility needs due to ageing</a> [<a href="#WAI-OLDER">WAI-OLDER</a>],

								    can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that

								    they can contribute to the Web. </li>

								</ul>


								<p>To effectively deploy multi-channel service delivery, providers must have

								knowledge of the availability of different devices and bandwidth. Providers

								must also understand the social preferences of target populations, their habits

								of information consumption and accessibility requirements, including for people

								with disabilities.</p>


								<p>Interesting information may be about the proportion between mobile phones to

								PCs or preferences of channel in relation to specific services. Depending on

								how simple or complex is the service, the information consumer may prefer

								making a phone call, browsing with the mobile, receiving or exchanging

								information by e-mail or using a Web site with a computer.</p>


								<p>Governments use different strategies to get this kind of information; for

								instance, studying information consumer profiles, information consumer groups

								and heuristics of navigation.</p>


								<p>For instance, <a href="http://www.direct.gov.uk/">Directgov</a> [<a

								href="#UK-DIRECTGOV">UK-DIRECTGOV</a>] in the United Kingdom is available

								through its Web site, through any Internet enabled phone and through digital

								TV; they have found that users of the Directgov TV service are more likely to

								be older (63% over 35, 40% over 45, 17% over 55 respectively), the majority not

								working (67%) and half (48%) rarely or never use the internet.</p>


								<p>Other strategies include facilitating free Internet enabled computers at

								libraries and kiosks or ATMs, widely available to citizens for free at public

								locations; targeting the lower cost devices and the lower cost access;

								providing some information in text form for mobile access; <span>announcing

								multi-media information and making it searchable through text based services so

								that users who have limited access to multimedia enabled workstations can find

								out about resources they need and go to a kiosk or library with access

								available.</span></p>


								<p>The MC-eGov <a

								href="http://www.mcegov.eu/media/156/mcegov%20project_study%20report_good%20practice%20examples_edited.pdf">Study

								on Multi-channel Delivery Strategies and Sustainable Business Models for Public

								Services addressing Socially Disadvantaged Groups</a> [<a

								href="#MC-GOV">MC-GOV</a>] includes a good number of good practice examples.</p>


								<h5 id="multi-channel.issues.reuse">Conditions about the Reuse of Government

								Information</h5>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Conditions about the reuse of government information by the

								    public</strong>, as explained in [<a

								  href="#US-GSATRAN">US-GSATRAN</a>].</li>

								  <li><strong>Multi-Channel Distribution Standards</strong><br />

								    Standards, principles and best practices are needed to facilitate the

								    provision of multi-channel services and to satisfy requirements such as

								    efficiency, effectiveness, integration, quick response to policies,

								    priorities and social needs and the delivery of services that offer a

								    sustainable value to society.</li>

								  <li><strong>Fair distribution<br />

								    </strong>Fair distribution refers to the issue if government distributed

								    content through selected Web sites, platforms or devices creates an unfair

								    advantage for a particular device, platform, distribution network, or Web

								    site. This question has close connection with the re-use of government

								    information discussed above in this document.<br />

								    It may be also interesting for governments and for the information

								    consumers of their services and information to consider, for instance

								    widely used instruments such as Web 2.0 services, as an additional channel

								    for distribution of multimedia information. Also they could consider the

								    use of social networks as a mean to increase interaction and citizen's

								    participation taking due care of privacy, reliability and accessibility

								    barriers they may present.<br />

								    In relation to these questions, governments are considering and putting in

								    practice the idea of being present in main Web 2.0 services and similar

								    instruments and thus reaching large communities, instead of just remaining

								    outside and waiting for information consumers to come to their traditional

								    Web sites.</li>

								  <li><strong>Multi-media central feed<br />

								    </strong>Strategies in relation to the distribution of multi-media

								    government content may include approaches to facilitate the access to

								    content provided through social media channels, in a searchable way, in

								    freely accessible, playable and downloadable formats, allowing tagging or

								    preserving hyperlinks.</li>

								  <li><strong>Digital divide</strong>: <a

								    href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&amp;page=Digital_divide&amp;id=285586733">as

								    explained by Wikipedia</a> <a href="#DIG-DIV">[DIG-DIV]</a>, it <q

								    cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&amp;page=Digital_divide&amp;id=285586733">refers

								    to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information

								    technology and those with very limited or no access at all...It is the

								    unequal access by some members of society to information and communications

								    technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills.</q> This gap or

								    unequal access includes the imbalances in physical access to technology and

								    disability, as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to

								    effectively participate as a digital citizen. The digital divide may be

								    classified based on gender, income, disability and race groups, and by

								    locations.</li>

								</ul>


								<h3 id="idauth">Identification and Authentication</h3>


								<h4 id="idauth.what">What is Identification and Authentication Technology?</h4>


								<p>Identification and authentication is the piece of any transaction that

								allows the parties to have confidence with which they are dealing with and the

								reliability in the preservation of the material and wording of the transaction.

								Identifying the parties of any transaction is necessary to ensure that the

								transaction is valid in the future. Usually legal liability is attached to

								people and organizations that are identified in a transaction. And having a

								method of authenticating the documentation of the transaction is also necessary

								for any future verification of the details of the transaction, especially for

								legal proceedings where authentication is required. Unlike other discussions of

								technology, identification and authentication technology issues relate directly

								to the legal arena.</p>


								<h5 id="idauth.what.transition">The Transition of Identity from the Physical to

								the Virtual.</h5>


								<p>Governments and citizens communicate using online methods increasingly and

								for many purposes. And in the numerous types of these communications between

								government and citizens there are varying needs or requirements for both

								parties to identify themselves or authenticate the transaction which include:

								privacy of the identity of the citizen, the transaction and the information

								contained in the communication, the assurance to the citizen of the identity of

								the government agent or body, the legal requirements that may bind a citizen

								and government agency to the accuracy or agreement contained in a transaction,

								and the reliance on outside parties the tools and implementation of identity

								and authentication.</p>


								<p>A major difficulty that must be overcome to advance online identification

								and authentication is the lack of coherent analogies to the forms and protocols

								that have endured for centuries in which face to face or physical

								representations were the main methods of assuring identity and authentication.

								Another Complicating the transition is the fear by both the government and the

								citizen of losing control of identity which can have more profound and wide

								ranging effects than were previously possible. On the other hand, the

								advantages, adoption and efficiencies of electronic communication are pushing

								societies to rapidly adapt to this new world.</p>


								<p>The issue of how governments provide assurance of their own identity to the

								citizen is also very different from the physical world. Where postal addresses

								of government buildings are easily verifiable and how civil servants are

								clearly identified by badges, the location of their office and other accepted

								methods, on the Internet those identities are harder to prove and not easily

								transformed from the physical manifestations. And in the age of Internet

								subterfuge and phishing, governments struggle to recreate and synthesize an

								Internet identity.</p>


								<h5 id="idauth.what.myth">The Myth versus Reality of Physical Forms of Identity

								and Authentication</h5>


								<p>In creating online analogies to how identity and authentication worked, it

								helps to better understand the actual practices of authentication rather than

								the many myths and assumptions. For example, signatures were not always

								analogous to biometric forms of authentication and identity was more assumed

								than verified with certain exceptions. On the other hand, the physicality of

								identity and authentication made mass forgeries and identity theft less

								prevalent and less impactful on the persons whose identity was being stolen.

								And in the relative short time of the World Wide Web and mobile phones the

								nature and social forms of identity are being created anew in ways that are far

								beyond the understanding and capabilities of the world prior to 1991. And the

								ability to both verify and falsify the nature of reality creates complications

								in how to identify and authenticate in this new age. Imagine that a person

								standing on a street in view of public Web cams using a pre-paid cell phone

								with GPS, logging in remotely to a computer half way around the world to

								communicate with a government agency housed three blocks away.</p>


								<h4 id="idauth.policy">What Public Policy Outcomes are Related to Electronic

								Identification and Authentication Technologies?</h4>

								<ul>

								  <li><strong>Efficiency: </strong>By moving from paper to electronic

								    transactions, both time and resources can be saved.</li>

								  <li><strong>Availability</strong>: By allowing government services that

								    depend on identification and authentication, citizens will be able to

								    search online for those services.</li>

								  <li><strong>Security of transactions:</strong> Technology offers many new

								    methods of making transactions more secure, although there are many counter

								    issues.</li>

								  <li><strong>Legal and Financial Liability:</strong> Depending on how laws

								    related to identification and authentication are written and acted upon,

								    there will be some shifts in the nature of liability. Also, some

								    implementations of identity management will bring in mixed liability due to

								    third party involvement of software, vouching organizations and network

								    actors.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>There are many types of online communication between citizen and government

								that used to depend on a signature placed on a piece of paper in the presence

								or not of witnesses. There were many less formal communications in which

								identity was hidden or not important, because the citizen was only one of many

								people expressing a viewpoint. And in others the physical presence of the

								citizen was required even if the transaction was anonymous, as in many forms of

								electoral procedures. In transforming those communications from physical to

								virtual, the purposes behind the need for identity and authentication should be

								of the highest consideration and the actual physical methods should not, except

								where social practices outweigh any of the advantages of technology.</p>


								<p>And, except in a small percentage of transactions that might have dangerous

								or catastrophic implications at the point of the transaction, authentication

								and identity on the public side of a transaction should be enhanced by:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>providing privacy protection,</li>

								  <li>avoiding burdensome requirements or costs,</li>

								  <li>avoiding unnecessary levels of pre-authentication (where the transaction

								    if the first of a series of communications and/or where other off-line

								    forms of communications are used for authenticating),</li>

								  <li>avoiding forcing identity to be divulged when unnecessary or counter to

								    the purpose,</li>

								  <li>and avoiding the reliance on outside parties to supply authenticating

								    credentials as the sole means of authentication.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Personal identity verification is not the only aspect of identity in online

								transactions: other characteristics and types of status will be wanted

								including identification of jurisdiction (either in terms of the location of

								the transaction or the residence), the status of residence or citizenship,

								certifications (e.g. medical license), employment status, etc. Also the

								relationship with certain organization may be conveyed, such as the chief

								financial officer of a corporation would be the sole identified individual to

								be allowed to sign certain documents.</p>


								<h4 id="idauth.benefits">What are the Main Benefits and Potential Drawbacks of

								Citizens and Governments Use of Identification and Authentication

								Technology?</h4>


								<p>Benefits include:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Substantial improvement in government service delivery based on more

								    efficient transactions and availability. With instantaneous transactions

								    that can take place from any location at any time, citizens have more

								    opportunities and flexibility in transacting business with their

								  government.</li>

								  <li>Saved resources as the cost of transactions can be much less for both the

								    citizen and governments.</li>

								  <li>Enhanced security for transactions when properly implemented.</li>

								  <li>Enhanced privacy for citizens when properly implemented.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Potential Drawbacks:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Cheaper and more likely for bad actors to try and interfere with

								    transactions. Phishing attempts flourish as the value of transactions

								    increase.</li>

								  <li>Decreased privacy if poorly implemented.</li>

								  <li>Increased liability for citizens depending on how laws are written

								    concerning online transactions, especially as there are third parties

								    involved in software or identity/authentication management that are made

								    necessary for transactions.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Identity and authentication allow for many types of online activities and

								transactions. Identity is often used for gating and/or authorization, as in

								only certain identified persons can have access to specific information or

								software. Identity is also used as a social control method, for example to

								avoid anonymity where the anonymity might lead to inappropriate dialogue.

								Authentication is a primary means to ascertain the validity of a transaction

								and the identity of the parties to the transaction, as in a legal document that

								must be authenticated in case of a court case. And significantly, tracking the

								identity of the sender or recipient of electronic disbursement of money for

								auditing purposes.</p>


								<p>The question of the role of third parties in the establishment of identity

								for governments and citizens is a potential hazard. Governments now use third

								parties to prove identity and authentication (the <abbr

								title="Government Printing Office">GPO</abbr> of the US Government uses at the

								time of writing a commercial firm to both provide identity and authentication

								for some of its posted documents). Also, if individuals are pushed to use

								software and identity provided by non-governmental entities, without guaranteed

								protection for the individual against failure of the software or identity,

								systems may lose the trust of the citizens.</p>


								<h4 id="idauth.how">How Can the Use of Identification and Authentication

								Technology be Achieved?</h4>


								<h5 id="idauth.how.legal">Legal Dependencies</h5>


								<p>Governments may need to pass legislation that allows or provides the legal

								permission for authentication. In the United States, the Government Paperwork

								Elimination Act was enacted to provide the positive law to allow transactions

								that previously only been allowed with paper and pen, especially when

								identification and authentication were necessary for the transaction. Other

								government entities have created laws to allow for electronic

								authentication.</p>


								<h5 id="idauth.how.tech">Technological Methods for Identification and

								Authentication</h5>


								<p>Depending on the laws in a jurisdiction, either government or private

								entities must create the technology that would adhere to the law. In some

								cases, restrictive laws might necessitate using third parties to provide

								assurance of identity and authenticity. Additionally, legal requirements might

								shape what technology software or hardware is allowed.</p>


								<h5 id="idauth.how.citizens">Providing Citizens Tools to Identify

								Themselves</h5>


								<p>Quite often citizens will have to obtain electronic identities before being

								able to complete electronic transactions. Government would need to help create

								an identity regime that would enable such transactions.</p>


								<h4 id="idauth.issues">What are the Main Issues for Implementing Identity and

								Authentication Technology?</h4>


								<h5 id="idauth.issues.citizen">Identification of the Citizen</h5>


								<p>Authentication technologies rely on the combination of several methods of

								identification and authentication including:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>assertion,</li>

								  <li>assumption,</li>

								  <li>what you know,</li>

								  <li>what you are,</li>

								  <li>what you have,</li>

								  <li>where you are,</li>

								  <li>what time it is,</li>

								  <li>who knows you,</li>

								  <li>quality and/or quantity of attempts,</li>

								  <li>and off-line response or vouching.</li>

								</ul>


								<p>Often online identity is paired with membership or contractual relationships

								in addition to be tied to certain technologies.</p>


								<p id="idauth.issues.citizen.safetoplay">Based on the work of the "<a

								title="Safe to Play"

								href="http://www.iispartners.com/downloads/2008-02Safe-to-play-white-paper-V9POST-NOBELFINALVERSIONFeb08.pdf"

								id="nd.x">Safe to Play</a>" [<a href="#SAFETOPLAY">SAFETOPLAY</a>]:</p>

								<ul>

								  <li>Fair Risk Allocation (essentially proved consumer protection so that

								    citizens or government takes on an undue burden).</li>

								  <li>Control. Don't assume that the government will own the methods of

								    control. Likewise it is important for the government to play a role in

								    identity based on a legal framework.</li>

								  <li>Accountability, which involves depending on auditors and the legal teams

								    to assign liability. Also involved is transparency of actors and

								    transactions.</li>

								</ul>


								<h5 id="idauth.issues.group">W3C eGov IG's Interest in Identity and

								Authentication</h5>


								<p>The group aspires to provide use cases where Web technology is used for

								online identification and authentication by government and the public. There

								are several standards already developed and in development by the W3C that are

								and will be important in the use by government agencies. Governments may want

								to use unique identifiers to include and use for storing and managing identity,

								and the use of <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a> [<a

								href="#XML">XML</a>] compliant strings such as <a

								href="http://www.w3.org/Addressing/">URI/URLs</a> [<a

								href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/Group/docs/note#ADDRESSING">ADDRESSING</a>].

								As an example, this group has used <a href="http://openid.net/">OpenID</a> [<a

								href="#OPENID">OpenID</a>] URL's as a unique identifier for identity for access

								to <a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/">the group's wiki</a> [<a

								href="#EGOVIG-WIKI">EGOVIG-WIKI</a>].</p>


								<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema">XML Schemas</a> [<a

								href="#XSD">XSD</a>] allow for validating information that accompanies and

								helps to verify identity or jurisdiction such as postal addresses. The W3C has

								also established a <a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/">standard for

								forms</a> [<a href="#FORMS">FORMS</a>]; forms are the most common means by

								which citizens can send information to government agencies. And the W3C is

								working on methods to ensure the non-repudiation and authenticity of documents

								through its work in the <a href="http://www.w3.org/2008/xmlsec/">XML Security

								Working Group</a> [<a href="#XML-SEC">XML-SEC</a>]. This group will endeavor to

								welcome participation in acknowledging various technologies, while seeking to

								help in finding methods to evaluate the quality and success.</p>


								<h2 id="next">5. Next Steps</h2>


								<p>The group aspires to keep this work going over the upcoming years. As is

								demonstrated throughout this work, there are significant and challenging

								questions and issues to address, technically and otherwise, along with

								representative answers and solutions that would aid governments in achieving

								the promise of eGovernment.</p>


								<p>The world is changing rapidly as the Web continues to proliferate every

								aspect and activity in society and its members. This rapid rate of change and

								dynamism is further making the promise of electronic government more and more

								challenging for governments to achieve. Today's Web is pushing interaction and

								access boundaries, which have existed for a decade. Many governments were just

								beginning to address the promises of eGovernment and now must adjust course to

								address the new movement to openness, transparency, and interaction that is now

								permeating every level and activity of government.</p>


								<p>The desire for an open and transparent government is more than open

								interaction and participation, appropriate data as products of the government

								must be shared, discoverable, accessible, and able to be manipulated by those

								desiring the data. The data as well must be linked via subject, relevance,

								semantics, context, and more. <a

								href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData">Linked

								Data</a> [<a href="#LOD">LOD</a>] offers the information consumer ways and

								means to find relevant and pertinent information through search, queries,

								interfaces, or tools available today and for tomorrow. All appropriate data

								must be searchable, accessible, and discoverable, the size of the Web grows

								larger by the minute, hour, and day and it will grow more and more challenging

								to locate and mine relevant information unless plans are laid in place which

								follow appropriate standards and practices.</p>


								<p>The needs of the Web and information consumers are being addressed today,

								but how do we content with the future generations and how they will mine

								historical and other government data? Governments must focus on long term data

								management (repositories, archives, <abbr

								title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s and many other subjects

								comprising the realm to ensure all needs of the information consumer are met,

								not just those of today.</p>


								<p>While data and archives grow increasingly important as the backbone of the

								information Web, accessibility and availability must remain at the top of the

								priority list. Without accessible interfaces and tools, what is saved,

								discoverable, archived and managed wont be available for those that seek it.</p>


								<p>In a Web environment, there is little or no connection to the original

								source of data and information. Often the same data and information can be

								discovered on a search but the results list a variety of sources. Not all

								sources provide the same data with the most current updates. Some data

								management functions are enabled by technology and standards, but technology

								and standards do not guarantee validity, accuracy, completeness, assurance, and

								authoritativeness of data. These characteristics of data and information

								quality build trust with information consumers but current information quality

								practices in many organizations are fragmented and assigned as auxiliary

								duties. Part of the data quality problem is in the constant re-architecting of

								data. Discovery and access to the original source of data may help alleviate

								this challenge. Finally, while technology and standards have evolved to

								facilitate search and discovery, search is not enough. The current search

								results do not provide context. Metadata standards can facilitate the

								understanding of the context of data and information discovered on a search to

								determine relevancy for information consumers. One additional point to note

								pertains to the preservation of data and records. Agencies across government do

								not have a uniform repeatable process or language for consistency. Part of

								authenticating data and sources is to understand how long data is retained, how

								often it is refreshed, and how robust are the security constraints. Standard

								metadata to identify date, steward, steward contact information, uniform

								markings and controls such as laws, regulations, and policies may help address

								this challenge.</p>


								<p>Noting the dynamism and myriad challenges and issues noted, the eGov IG, in

								up will try to continue to build and mature those subjects and resources found

								throughout this issues paper with the aim and goal of ensuring governments have

								the most recent information, tested and validated use cases, and continued

								identification, examples, and solutions to the many non-technical challenges

								confronting governments in achieving their electronic government goals.</p>


								<p>As well the group will seek opportunities and venues to communicate and

								share the findings and results of this document. Throughout the efforts, the

								group will continue to identify partnerships and synergies, which will enable

								the group to leverage well what is already available, in process, or identified

								allowing the group to build on the work of the group and others ensuring the

								products, advisories, and documents are useful and appropriate for the intended

								audiences.</p>


								<p>The group also aspires to keep participation open and transparent for all

								who are interested in learning and contributing to the goals and efforts of the

								group.</p>


								<h2 id="ack">6. Acknowledgements</h2>


								<p>The editors would like to thank the <a href="#authors">authors</a> and the

								significant contributions made by Hugh Barnes, Joe Carmel, Malcolm Crompton,

								Ken Fischer, Jonathan Gray, Tanya Gupta, Martin Mollema, Rick Murphy, Brand

								Niemann, Benjamin Nguyen,Vassilios Peristeras, Luigi Selmi, Christopher Testa

								and Trond A. Undheim.</p>


								<p>The editors would additionaly like to thank the other group members on the

								first year of the group's existence: Jeremiah Albrant, Laila Benhlima, Robin

								Berjon, Roberto Castaldo, Dalila Chiadmi, Kendall Clark, Vagner Diniz, Maria

								Jesus Fernandez Ruiz, Aldo Gangemi, Katie Haritos-Shea, Rinke Hoekstra, Ilker

								Karakas, Peter Krantz, Bede McCall, Tim McMahon, Faisal Monai, Jacob Mumm,

								David Osimo, Amit Parashar, Pasquale Popolizio, Juan Carlos Rodríguez, Pietro

								Russo, Ari Schwartz, Rowan Smith, George Thomas, Tom van Engers, Anne

								Washington, John Wonderlich.</p>


								<p>The editors also wish to thank the W3C/WAI Education and Outreach Working

								Group (EOWG) and Judy Brewer for their helpful comments.</p>


								<p>The eGov IG would also like to acknowledge the many people outside of the

								Group who help with the process of developing this document and have supported

								its work. These people are many to list individually, but are greatly

								appreciated. This is truly a cooperative effort between the eGov IG, the rest

								of the W3C, and the public, and benefits greatly from the pioneering work on

								eGovernment in many countries and from public feedback.</p>


								<h2 id="refs">7. References</h2>

								<dl>

								  <dt id="ADDRESSING">[ADDRESSING]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/Addressing/"><cite>Web Naming and Addressing

								      Overview</cite></a>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/Addressing/.</dd>

								  <dt id="ATOM-SYND">[ATOM-SYND]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287">Atom Syndication

								      Protocol</a></cite>, M. Nottingham, R. Sayre, Editors, <abbr

								      title="Internet Engineering Task Force">IETF</abbr>, December 2005,

								      http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287.</dd>

								  <dt id="AU-IF">[AU-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/australian-government-technical-interoperability-framework/">Australian

								      Government Technical Interoperability Framework</a></cite>,

								      http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/australian-government-technical-interoperability-framework/.</dd>

								  <dt id="AU-OGD">[AU-OGD]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/industry_development/digital_economy/future_directions_blog/topics/open_access">Open

								      access to public sector information</a></cite>, Australian Government, 11

								      December 2008,

								      http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/industry_development/digital_economy/future_directions_blog/topics/open_access.</dd>

								  <dt id="AU-OPEN">[AU-OPEN]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://openaustralia.org/">OpenAustralia</a></cite>,

								      http://openaustralia.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="BE-IF">[BE-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.belgif.be/">Belgian Government

								      Interoperability Framework</a></cite>, http://www.belgif.be/.</dd>

								  <dt id="BLOG">[BLOG]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blog&amp;oldid=272910644"><cite>Blog</cite></a>,

								      Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

								      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blog&amp;oldid=272910644. </dd>

								  <dt id="CA-REST1">[CA-REST1]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLSearch?search=sports">Leisure

								      and Sports Information at Seniors Canada Online in (<abbr

								      title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>)</a></cite>, Government of

								      Canada, http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLSearch?search=sports.

								    </dd>

								  <dt id="CA-REST2">[CA-REST2]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLKeywords?lang=fr&amp;letter=l">Keywords

								      available at Seniors Canada Online that start with 'L' in French language

								      (in <abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>)</a></cite>,

								      Government of Canada,

								      http://www.seniors.gc.ca/servlet/SeniorsXMLKeywords?lang=fr&amp;letter=l.</dd>

								  <dt id="CEN-REPORT">[CEN-REPORT]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/finalreport1.pdf">Final

								      Report of the CEN/ISSS eGovernment </a></cite><cite><a

								      href="http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/finalreport1.pdf">Focus

								      Group on the eGovernment Standards </a></cite><cite><a

								      href="http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/finalreport1.pdf">Roadmap</a></cite>,

								      http://www.egovpt.org/fg/Report.</dd>

								  <dt id="CLUETRAIN">[CLUETRAIN]</dt>

								    <dd>The Cluetrain Manifesto. The End of Business as Usual, R. Levine et.

								      al., Christopher et.al. Reading: Perseus Books, 2001. </dd>

								  <dt id="DEVIND">[DEVIND]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/NOTE-di-princ-20030901/">Device

								      Independence Principles</a></cite>, R. Gimson Editor, W3C Group Note, 1

								      September 2003. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/di-princ/">Latest

								      version</a> available at: http://www.w3.org/TR/di-princ/.</dd>

								  <dt id="DK-IF">[DK-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://en.itst.dk/architecture-and-standards">OIO

								      Architecture Framework</a></cite>,

								      http://en.itst.dk/architecture-and-standards.</dd>

								  <dt id="DIG-DIV">[DIG-DIV]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_divide&amp;oldid=285586733">Digital

								      Divide</a></cite>, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

								      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_divide&amp;oldid=285586733.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-CAMSS">[EC-CAMSS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7407/5644">Common

								      Assessment Method of Standards and Specifications</a></cite>,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7407/5644.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-CIP">[EC-CIP]</dt>

								    <dd><span><cite><a

								      href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm">Competitiveness

								      and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) ICT Policy Support Programme

								      (ICT PSP)</a></cite>,</span> European Commission,

								      <span>http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm.</span></dd>

								  <dt>[<span id="EC-COM45">EC-COM45</span>]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=24117">Interoperability

								      for Pan-European eGovernment Services</a></cite>, Communication to the

								      Council and European Parliament, European Commission,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=24117.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-EIFV1">[EC-EIFV1]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/2319"><cite>European

								      Interoperability Framework version 1.0</cite></a>, IDABC, European

								      Commission, November 2004,

								    http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/2319.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-EIFV2DRAFT">[EC-EIFV2DRAFT]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31597">Draft

								      Document as basis for EIF v2</a></cite>,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31597.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-i2010">[EC-i2010]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l24226j.htm">Action

								      plan on electronic administration i2010</a></cite>,

								      http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l24226j.htm.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-MCD">[EC-MCD]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3119"><cite>Program

								      IDA</cite></a>, Multi-channel delivery of government services, European

								      Commission, June 2004, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3119.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-MCEGOV">[EC-MCEGOV]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.epractice.eu/community/InclusiveeGovernment"><cite>MC-eGov:

								      Study on Multi-channel Delivery Strategies and Sustainable Business

								      Models for Public Services Addressing Socially Disadvantaged

								      Groups</cite></a>, European Commission,

								      http://www.epractice.eu/community/InclusiveeGovernment.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-OSOR">[EC-OSOR]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.osor.eu/">OSOR.eu - Open Source Observatory

								      and Repository</a></cite>, http://www.osor.eu/.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-SEMIC">[EC-SEMIC]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.semic.eu/">SEMIC.EU - The Semantic

								      Interoperability Centre Europe</a></cite>, http://www.semic.eu/.</dd>

								  <dt id="EC-STDS">[EC-STDS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/consleg/1998/L/01998L0034-20070101-en.pdf">Directive

								      98/34/EC</a></cite>, European Commission,

								      http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/consleg/1998/L/01998L0034-20070101-en.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="EE-IF">[EE-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.riso.ee/en/information-policy/interoperability">Estonian

								      IT Interoperability Framework</a></cite>,

								      http://www.riso.ee/en/information-policy/interoperability.</dd>

								  <dt id="EU-LISBON">[EU-LISBON]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/docs/lisbon_2007/ministerial_declaration_180907.pdf">EU

								      Lisbon Ministerial Declaration</a></cite>, 19 September 2007,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/docs/lisbon_2007/ministerial_declaration_180907.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="EU-PSI">[EU-PSI]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm">Europe´s

								      Information Society, Public Sector Information - PSI</a></cite>,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm</dd>

								  <dt id="EU-PSID">[EU-PSID]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/directive/psi_directive_en.pdf">Directive

								      2003/98/EC on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information, European

								      Parliament and Council</a></cite>, 17 November 2003,

								      http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/directive/psi_directive_en.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="EU-PSIDIR">[EU-PSIDIR]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.epsiplus.net/products">European Directory of

								      PSI Re-use Products and Services</a></cite>,

								      http://www.epsiplus.net/products.</dd>

								  <dt id="EU-PSIN">[EU-PSIN]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.psinavigator.de/">PSI Navigator</a></cite>,

								      Directory and Search Engine for the Public Sector Information in Europe,

								      http://www.psinavigator.de/.</dd>

								  <dt id="EUPL">[EUPL]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.osor.eu/eupl">The European Union Public

								      Licence (EUPL)</a></cite>, http://www.osor.eu/eupl.</dd>

								  <dt id="EGOVIG">[EGOVIG]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/2008/02/eGov/ig-charter"><cite>W3C

								      eGovernment Interest Group Charter</cite></a>, J. Alonso, Editor, W3C, 3

								      Jun 2008, http://www.w3.org/2008/02/eGov/ig-charter. </dd>

								  <dt id="EGOVIG-WIKI">[EGOVIG-WIKI]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/"><cite>W3C eGovernment

								      Interest Group Wiki</cite></a>, W3C eGovernment Interest Group Members,

								      http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/.</dd>

								  <dt id="ES-060">[ES-060]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/red060">Red 060

								      (Network 060)</a></cite>, http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/red060.</dd>

								  <dt id="DE-IF">[DE-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.kbst.bund.de/saga">Standards and

								      Architectures for eGovernment Applications (SAGA)</a></cite>,

								      http://www.kbst.bund.de/saga.</dd>

								  <dt id="FB-TOS">[FB-TOS]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130"><cite>Update on

								      Terms</cite></a>, M. Zuckerberg, 18 February 2009,

								      http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130.</dd>

								  <dt id="FIFTH-ESTATE">[FIFTH-ESTATE]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/2008/11/01/the-fifth-estate-association-of-internet-researchers/"><cite>The

								      Fifth Estate: Association of Internet Researchers</cite></a>, William H.

								      Dutton, 1 November 2008,

								      http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/2008/11/01/the-fifth-estate-association-of-internet-researchers/.</dd>

								  <dt id="FORMS">[FORMS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/">The Forms Working

								      Group</a></cite>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/.</dd>

								  <dt id="FOAF">[FOAF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.foaf-project.org/">Friend of a Friend

								      (FOAF)</a></cite>, http://www.foaf-project.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="GLOSSARY">[GLOSSARY]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/Glossary">W3C

								      eGovernment Glossary</a></cite>,

								      http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/wiki/Glossary.</dd>

								  <dt id="GOV-FEEDS">[GOV-FEEDS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://governmentrss.pbwiki.com/">Government

								      RSS</a></cite>, S. Vine, http://governmentrss.pbwiki.com/.</dd>

								  <dt id="GOV-INV">[GOV-INV]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083">Government Data and

								      the Invisible Hand</a></cite>, Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller,

								      William P and Felten, Edward W, Yale Journal of Law &amp; Technology,

								      Vol. 11, 2008. Available online at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083.</dd>

								  <dt id="GOV-MASH">[GOV-MASH]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.programmableweb.com/featured/government-mashups-and-apis">Government

								      <abbr title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> and Mashup

								      Summary</a></cite>, K. Farnham,

								      http://www.programmableweb.com/featured/government-mashups-and-apis.</dd>

								  <dt id="GR-PAPA">[GR-PAPA]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/csckep">Multi-channel

								      Citizen Service Centers in Greece</a></cite>, E. Papanikolaou,

								      http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/csckep</dd>

								  <dt id="HTML">[HTML]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/"><cite>HTML

								      4.01</cite></a>, D. Raggett, A. Le Hors, I. Jacobs, Editors, W3C

								      Recommendation, 24 December 1999,

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401">Latest version</a> available at

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/html401.</dd>

								  <dt id="I18N">[I18N]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/International/"><cite>Internationalization

								      Activity (i18n)</cite></a>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/International/.</dd>

								  <dt id="JEN-OGD">[JEN-OGD]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/100"><cite>Your Website

								      is Your API: Quick Wins for Government Data</cite></a>; J. Tennison, 1

								      February 2009, http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/100.</dd>

								  <dt id="LOD">[LOD]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData">Linking

								      Open Data</a></cite>,

								      http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData.</dd>

								  <dt id="MANY-MINDS">[MANY-MINDS]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/xtech_2007/#slide14"><cite>The

								      Many Minds Principle</cite></a>, J. Walsh, R. Pollock, 17 May 2007, Open

								      Data and Componentization, XTech 2007,

								      http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/xtech_2007/#slide14.</dd>

								  <dt id="MBLOG">[MBLOG]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Micro-blogging&amp;oldid=273886247"><cite>Micro-blogging</cite></a>,

								      Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

								      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Micro-blogging&amp;oldid=273886247.

								    </dd>

								  <dt id="MC-GOV">[MC-GOV]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.mcegov.eu/media/156/mcegov%20project_study%20report_good%20practice%20examples_edited.pdf">Study

								      on Multi-channel Delivery Strategies and Sustainable Business Models for

								      Public Services addressing Socially Disadvantaged Groups</a></cite>,

								      ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd, April 2008,

								      http://www.mcegov.eu/media/156/mcegov%20project_study%20report_good%20practice%20examples_edited.pdf</dd>

								  <dt id="MWI">[MWI]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/Mobile/"><cite>Mobile Web

								      Initiative</cite></a>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/Mobile/.</dd>

								  <dt id="MW-LIM">[MW-LIM]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Web&amp;oldid=285015300#Limitations">Mobile

								      Web Limitations</a></cite>, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

								      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mobile_Web&amp;oldid=285015300#Limitations</dd>

								  <dt id="NL-IF">[NL-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR552">Towards a Dutch

								      Interoperability Framework - Recommendations to the Forum

								      Standaardisatie</a></cite>,

								      http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR552.</dd>

								  <dt id="NL-OSOSS">[NL-OSOSS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf">The

								      Netherlands in Open Connection - An action plan for the use of Open

								      Standards and Open Source Software</a></cite>,

								      http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="NZ-IF">[NZ-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/e-gif">NZ eGovernment

								      Interoperability Framework</a></cite>,

								      http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/e-gif.</dd>

								  <dt id="NZ-TWFY">[NZ-TWFY]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/">TheyWorkForYou

								      NZ</a></cite>, R. McKinnon et al., http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/.</dd>

								  <dt id="OGD-DEFS">[OGD-DEFS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://razor.occams.info/pubdocs/2009-02-28_TCamp_Data_Standards.pdf">Open

								      Government Data Standards and Setting Expectations</a></cite>, J.

								      Tauberer, 28 February 2009,

								      http://razor.occams.info/pubdocs/2009-02-28_TCamp_Data_Standards.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="OGD-PRINCIPLES">[OGD-PRINCIPLES]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://resource.org/8_principles.html">Open Government

								      Data Principles</a></cite>, C. Malamud et. al, 8 December 2007,

								      http://resource.org/8_principles.html . More information at the <a

								      href="http://www.opengovdata.org/">The Open Government Group</a> site,

								      http://www.opengovdata.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="OPEN-ICT">[OPEN-ICT]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/epolicy/roadmap.pdf">Roadmap of Open

								      ICT ecosystems</a></cite>,

								      http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/epolicy/roadmap.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="OPENID">[OPENID]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://openid.net/"><cite>OpenID</cite></a>,

								      http://openid.net/.</dd>

								  <dt id="RDFA-PRIMER">[RDFA-PRIMER]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/">RDFa

								      Primer</a></cite>, M. Birbeck, B. Adida, Editors, W3C Working Group Note,

								      14 October 2008,

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xhtml-rdfa-primer-20081014/. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/"

								      title="Latest version of RDFa Primer">Latest version</a> available at

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/.</dd>

								  <dt id="RDFA-SYNTAX">[RDFA-SYNTAX]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdfa-syntax-20081014">RDFa

								      in XHTML: Syntax and Processing</a></cite>, S. Pemberton, M. Birbeck, B.

								      Adida, S. McCarron, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 14 October 2008,

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdfa-syntax-20081014. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax"

								      title="Latest version of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing">Latest

								      version</a> available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax.</dd>

								  <dt id="REST">[REST]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm">Representational

								      State Transfer (REST)</a></cite>, R.T. Fielding, Capter 5 of the doctoral

								      dissertation "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based

								      Software Architectures", University of California, Irvine, 2000.

								      http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm.</dd>

								  <dt id="REST-PRI">[REST-PRI]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Representational_State_Transfer&amp;oldid=268990161#Principles">Representational

								      State Transfer Principles</a></cite>, Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia,

								      The Free Encyclopedia,

								      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Representational_State_Transfer&amp;oldid=268990161#Principles.

								    </dd>

								  <dt id="RSS">[RSS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/">RDF Site Summary

								      (RSS)</a></cite>, RSS-DEV Working Group, http://purl.org/rss/1.0/.</dd>

								  <dt id="SAFETOPLAY">[SAFETOPLAY]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.iispartners.com/downloads/2008-02Safe-to-play-white-paper-V9POST-NOBELFINALVERSIONFeb08.pdf">Safe

								      to Play, A Trust Framework for the Connected Republic</a></cite>, Global

								      Public Sector Practice, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco Systems,

								      February 2008,

								      http://www.iispartners.com/downloads/2008-02Safe-to-play-white-paper-V9POST-NOBELFINALVERSIONFeb08.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="SIOC">[SIOC]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://sioc-project.org/"><cite>Semantically-Interlinked

								      Online Communities (SIOC)</cite></a>, http://sioc-project.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="SITEMAP">[SITEMAP]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol">Sitemap

								      protocol</a></cite>, Google, Inc., Yahoo, Inc., and Microsoft

								      Corporation, http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.</dd>

								  <dt id="SPARQL">[SPARQL]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdf-sparql-query-20080115/">SPARQL

								      Query Language for RDF</a></cite>, A. Seaborne, E. Prud'hommeaux,

								      Editors, W3C Recommendation, 15 January 2008,

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdf-sparql-query-20080115/. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/"

								      title="Latest version of SPARQL Query Language for RDF">Latest

								      version</a> available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/.</dd>

								  <dt id="SW-ACT">[SW-ACT]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/">W3C Semantic Web

								      Activity</a></cite>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/.</dd>

								  <dt id="SW-FAQ">[SW-FAQ]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ">W3C Semantic Web

								      Frequently Asked Questions</a></cite>, W3C,

								      http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ.</dd>

								  <dt id="TOOLS-SCRAP">[TOOLS-SCRAP]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://theinfo.org/">theinfo.org, for people with large

								      datasets</a></cite>, A. Swartz et al., http://theinfo.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="TWB-API">[TWB-API]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://developer.worldbank.org/docs/overview">The World

								      Bank API</a></cite>, http://developer.worldbank.org/docs/overview.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-ARGOTC">[UK-ARGOTC]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://code.google.com/p/argot-hub/wiki/ArgotConsultation"><cite>ArgotConsultation</cite></a>,

								      M. Birbeck,

								    http://code.google.com/p/argot-hub/wiki/ArgotConsultation.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-FIXMYSTREET">[UK-FIXMYSTREET]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a></cite>,

								      mySociety, http://www.fixmystreet.com/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-IF">[UK-IF]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/egif.asp">eGIF

								      e-Government Interoperability Framework</a></cite>,

								      http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/egif.asp.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-LONGAZ1">[UK-LONGAZ1]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.london-gazette.gov.uk/">The London

								      Gazette</a></cite>, The Stationery Office (TSO),

								      http://www.london-gazette.gov.uk/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-LONGAZ2">[UK-LONGAZ2]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://assets.expectnation.com/15/event/3/SemWebbing%20the%20London%20Gazette%20Paper%201.pdf">SemWebbing

								      the London Gazette</a></cite>, J. Tennison, J. Sheridan, May 2007,

								      http://assets.expectnation.com/15/event/3/SemWebbing%20the%20London%20Gazette%20Paper%201.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-MYSOCIETY">[UK-MYSOCIETY]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://mysociety.org/"><cite>My Society</cite></a>,

								      http://mysociety.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-NETMUMS">[UK-NETMUMS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.netmums.com/">Netmums</a></cite>,

								      http://www.netmums.com/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-NHSC">[UK-NHSC]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.nhs.uk/"><cite>NHS Choices</cite></a>, National

								      Health Service, http://www.nhs.uk/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-PATIENTO">[UK-PATIENTO]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/"><cite>Patient

								      Opinion</cite></a>, http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-POIT">[UK-POIT]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit"><cite>Power of

								      Information Task Force "Beta Report"</cite></a>,

								      http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-SHOWUS">[UK-SHOWUS]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://showusabetterway.co.uk/"><cite>Show Us a Better

								      Way</cite></a>, UK Cabinet Office, http://showusabetterway.co.uk/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-TRANSPORT">[UK-TRANSPORT]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.transportdirect.info/">Transport

								      Direct</a></cite>, http://www.transportdirect.info/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-TWFY">[UK-TWFY]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.theyworkforyou.com/">TheyWorkForYou</a></cite>,

								      mySociety, http://theyworkforyou.com/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UN-ACC">[UN-ACC]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?navid=12&amp;pid=150">Convention

								      on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities</a></cite>, United Nations,

								      http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?navid=12&amp;pid=150.</dd>

								  <dt id="UN-SURVEY">[UN-SURVEY]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028607.pdf">e-Government

								      Survey 2008 From e-Government to Connected Governance</a></cite>, United

								      Nations,

								      http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028607.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-APPDEM">[US-APPDEM]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/">Apps for

								      Democracy</a></cite>, Washington, DC (USA) City Council, iStrategyLabs,

								      http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-FEDATA">[US-FEDATA]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/TopTenReport.pdf">Show Us the

								      Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents</a></cite>, Center for Democracy

								      &amp; Technology &amp; OpenTheGovernment.org, March 2009,

								      http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/TopTenReport.pdf.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-GSATRAN">[US-GSATRAN]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.usaservices.gov/events_news/documents/Transparency.pdf">Intergovernmental

								      Solutions Newsletter. Transparency in Government</a></cite>, L. Nelson

								      Editor, GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications, Spring 2009,

								      http://www.usaservices.gov/events_news/documents/Transparency.pdf</dd>

								  <dt id="US-GOVTRACK">[US-GOVTRACK]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://govtrack.us/">GovTrack</a></cite>, J. Tauberer,

								      http://govtrack.us/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-LOCMEM">[US-LOCMEM]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://memory.loc.gov/"><cite>American Memory</cite></a>, The

								      Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-OBACCO">[US-OBACCO]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/ObamaDamu/gGxZDG">Holding

								      Obama-Biden Administration Accountable</a></cite>, ObamaDamu, Community

								      Blog Post,

								    http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/ObamaDamu/gGxZDG.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-OBMEMO">[US-OBMEMO]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/"><cite>Memorandum

								      for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on Transparency and

								      Open Government</cite></a>, B. Obama,

								      http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-OMB119">[US-OMB119]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a

								      href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars/a119/a119.html">Federal

								      Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards

								      and in Conformity Assessment Activities</a></cite>, Circular A-119,

								      Office of Management and Budget (OMB),

								      http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars/a119/a119.html.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-SOCMED">[US-SOCMED]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/SocialMediaFed%20Govt_BarriersPotentialSolutions.pdf"><cite>Social

								      Media and the Federal Government:Perceived and Real Barriers and

								      Potential Solutions</cite></a>, U.S. Federal Web Managers Council, 23

								      December 2008,

								      http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/SocialMediaFed%20Govt_BarriersPotentialSolutions.pdf.

								    </dd>

								  <dt id="US-SUN">[US-SUN]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/">Sunlight

								      Foundation</a></cite>, http://sunlightfoundation.com/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-SUNAPI">[US-SUNAPI]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://services.sunlightlabs.com/api/">Sunlight Labs

								      API</a></cite>, Sunlight Foundation,

								      http://services.sunlightlabs.com/api/.</dd>

								  <dt id="US-SUNCON">[US-SUNCON]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.opencongress.org/">OpenCongress</a></cite>,

								      Sunlight Foundation, http://www.opencongress.org/.</dd>

								  <dt id="W3C-OVERVIEW">[W3C-OVERVIEW]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/">About W3C</a></cite>, I.

								      Jacobs, Editor, W3C, http://www.w3.org/Consortium/.</dd>

								  <dt id="WAI">[WAI]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/">Web Accessibility Initiative

								      (WAI)</a></cite>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/WAI/.</dd>

								  <dt id="WAI-GUIDES">[WAI-GUIDES]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech">WAI Guidelines and

								      Techniques</a></cite>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech.</dd>

								  <dt id="WAI-MWI">[WAI-MWI]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/">Web Content Accessibility

								      and Mobile Web</a></cite>, J.Thorp and S. Henry, Editors, W3C,

								      http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/.</dd>

								  <dt id="WAI-OLDER">[WAI-OLDER]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/soc.html#of">Social Factors

								      in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization.

								      Access for Older People</a></cite> , S. Henry Editor, WAI,

								      W3C,http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/soc.html#of.</dd>

								  <dt id="WCAG20">[WCAG20]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/">Web

								      Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0</a></cite>, B. Caldwell, M.

								      Cooper, L. Guarino Reid, G. Vanderheiden, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 11

								      December 2008. Latest version available at

								    http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/.</dd>

								  <dt id="WEBARCH">[WEBARCH]</dt>

								    <dd><a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/"><cite>Architecture

								      of the World Wide Web, Volume One</cite></a>, I. Jacobs, N. Walsh,

								      Editors, W3C Recommendation, 15 December 2005,

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/">Latest version</a> available at

								      http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/.</dd>

								  <dt id="W3C-PROCESS">[PROCESS]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/">World Wide

								      Web Consortium Process Document</a></cite>, I. Jacobs, Editor, W3C, 14

								      October 2005, http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/. <a

								      href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/">Latest version</a> available

								      at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/.</dd>

								  <dt id="UK-DIRECTGOV">[UK-DIRECTGOV]</dt>

								    <dd><span><a

								      href="http://www.direct.gov.uk/"><cite>Directgov</cite></a>,</span>

								      http://www.direct.gov.uk/.</dd>

								  <dt id="XML">[XML]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/"><cite>XML Activity</cite></a>, W3C,

								      http://www.w3.org/XML/.</dd>

								  <dt id="XML-SEC">[XML-SEC]</dt>

								    <dd><cite><a href="http://www.w3.org/2008/xmlsec/">XML Security Working

								      Group</a></cite>, W3C, http://www.w3.org/2008/xmlsec/.</dd>

								  <dt id="XSD">[XSD]</dt>

								    <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema"><cite>XML Schema</cite></a>,

								      W3C, http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema</dd>

								</dl>

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