--- a/bp/index.html Thu Jan 26 15:48:14 2012 +0000
+++ b/bp/index.html Fri Jan 27 12:59:32 2012 -0500
@@ -26,13 +26,14 @@
</section>
-
<section class="introductory">
<h2>Scope</h2>
<p>
-This document is aimed at assisting government agencies and their contractors, vendors as well as researchers, to publish high quality, consistent data sets using W3C standards to increase interoperability.
+This document is aimed at assisting government IT managers, procurement officers, Web developers, vendors, and researchers who are interested in publishing open government data using W3C standards. The benefits of using international standards for data exchange is to significantly increase interoperability of data.
</p>
+<p>
+Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with delivery of content via the Web, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, but are not required to have a background in semantic technologies or previous experience with Linked Data. Data stewards, curators, database administrators and other personnel involved in Open Government initiatives are encouraged to read this Linked Open Data Best Practices document.
</section>
<!-- INTRODUCTION -->
@@ -40,16 +41,37 @@
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<section>
-<h3>Overview - Michael</h3>
+<h3>Overview - Bernadette</h3>
<p>
-<a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html" title="Linked Data - Design Issues">Linked Data</a> addresses key requirements of open government by providing a family of international standards for the publication, dissemination and reuse of structured data. Further, Linked Data, unlike previous data formatting and publication approaches, provides a simple mechanism for combining data from multiple sources across the Web.
+Many governments have mandated publication of open government data to the public via the Web. The intention of these mandates are to facilitate the maintenance of open societies and support governmental accountability and transparency initiatives. However, publication of unstructured data on the World Wide Web is in itself insufficient; in order to realize the goals of efficiency, transparency and accountability, re-use of published data means members of the public must be able to absorb data in ways that can be readily found via search, visualized and absorbed programmatically.
</p>
+
<p>
-In an era of reduced local, state and federal budgets, there is strong economic motivation to reduce waste and duplication in data management and integration. Linked Open Data is a viable approach to publishing governmental data to the public, but only if it adheres to some basic principles.
+This compilation of best practices for Linked Open Data produced by the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group is intended to help data curators and publishers better understand how to best use their time and resources to achieve the goals of Open Government. Linked Data principles address many of the data description and data format requirements for realizing the goals of Open Government. Linked Data uses a family of international standards and best practices for the publication, dissemination and reuse of structured data. Linked Data, unlike previous data formatting and publication approaches, provides a simple mechanism for combining data from multiple sources across the Web.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html" title="Linked Data - Design Issues">Linked Data</a> addresses key requirements of open government by providing a family of international standards for the publication, dissemination and reuse of structured data.
+</p>
+
+
+<h3>Scope - Bernadette</h3>
+
+<p>
+The approach in writing this document has been to collate and present the most relevant engineering practices prevalent in the Linked Data development community today and identify those that:
+<ul>
+<li> Facilitate the exploitation of Linked Data to enable better search, access and re-use of open government information;</li>
+<li> Are considered harmful and can have non-obvious detrimental effects on the overall quality of data publishing on the Web.</li>
+</ul>
+The goal of this best practices document is not endorse specific technologies, rather, this document focuses on key considerations and guidance to be successful. However, there are a number of cases where explicitly omitting a Best Practice that references an emerging technology on the grounds that it was too recent to have received wide adoption would have unnecessarily excluded a valuable recommendation. As such, some Best Practices have been included on the grounds that the Working Group believes that they will soon become fully qualified Best Practices (e.g. in prevalent use within the development community).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, in publishing Linked Open Data, it is not necessary to implement everything decribed herein. Instead, each Best Practice should be considered as a possible measure that may be implemented towards the goal of providing as rich and dynamic an experience as possible via a Web browser and Linked Data client.
</p>
<h3>Motivation</h3>
-Th best practices provided here are provide a methodical approach for the creation, publication and dissemination of government Linked Data, including:
+The best practices provided here are provide a methodical approach for the creation, publication and dissemination of government Linked Data, including:
<ul>
<li>Description of the full life cycle of a Government Linked Data project, starting with identification of suitable data sets, procurement, modeling, vocabulary selection, through publication and ongoing maintenance.</li>
<li>Definition of known, proven steps to create and maintain government data sets using Linked Data principles.</li>
@@ -59,17 +81,17 @@
<p class='issue'>Does it make sense to base the GLD life cycle on one of the general LD life cycles? See <a href="https://www.w3.org/2011/gld/track/issues/15">ISSUE-15</a></p>
</section>
+<h3>Brief History of Open Government Linked Data - Bernadette</h3>
<!-- PROCUREMENT -->
<section>
-<h3>Procurement - Boris</h3>
+<h3>Procurement - Bernadette</h3>
<p class='responsible'>George Thomas (Health & Human Services, US), Mike Pendleton (Environmental Protection Agency, US), John Sheridan (OPSI, UK)</p>
<p>
Specific products and services involved in governments publishing linked data will be defined, suitable for use during government procurement. Just as the <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag" title="WCAG Overview">Web Content Accessibility Guidelines</a> allow governments to easily specify what they mean when they contract for an accessible Website, these definitions will simplify contracting for data sites and applications.
</p>
-
<p>
Linked Open Data (LOD) offers novel approaches for publishing and consuming data on the Web. This procurement overview and companion glossary is intended to help contract officers and their technical representatives understand LOD activities, and their associated products and services. It is hoped that this will aid government officials in procuring LOD related products and services.
</p>
@@ -252,8 +274,6 @@
-
-
<!-- <b>Ghislain</b>
<p>One of the most challenging task when publishing data set is to have metadata describing the model used to capture it. The model or the ontology gives the semantic of each term used within the data set or in the LOD cloud when published. The importance of selecting the appropriate vocabulary is threefold:</p>
<ul>
@@ -308,7 +328,7 @@
<!-- URI CONSTRUCTION -->
<section>
<h3>URI Construction - Michael</h3>
-<p class='responsible'>Ghislain Atemezing (INSTITUT TELECOM), Michael Hausenblas (DERI), Boris Villazon-Terrazas (UPM), Daniel Vila (UPM), John Erickson (RPI), Martin Alvarez (CTIC), Cory Casanove (OMG)</p>
+<p class='responsible'>Ghislain Atemezing (INSTITUT TELECOM), Michael Hausenblas (DERI), Boris Villazon-Terrazas (UPM), Daniel Vila (UPM), John Erickson (RPI), Martin Alvarez (CTIC)</p>
<p>
This section specifies how to create good URIs for use in government linked data. Inputs include <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/" title="Cool URIs for the Semantic Web">Cool URIs for the Semantic Web</a>, <a href="http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/308995/public_sector_uri.pdf">Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector</a> (PDF), and <a href="http://data.gov.uk/resources/uris" title="Creating URIs | data.gov.uk">Creating URIs</a> (data.gov.uk). Guidance will be produced not only for minting URIs for governmental entities, such as schools or agencies, but also for vocabularies, concepts, and datasets.
</p>
@@ -320,7 +340,7 @@
<!-- VERSIONING -->
<section>
<h3>Versioning - Boris</h3>
-<p class='responsible'>John Erickson (RPI), Ghislain Atemezing (INSTITUT TELECOM), Cory Casanave (OMG), Hadley Beeman (LinkedGov)</p>
+<p class='responsible'>John Erickson (RPI), Ghislain Atemezing (INSTITUT TELECOM), Hadley Beeman (LinkedGov)</p>
<p>
This section specifies how to publish data which has multiple versions, including variations such as:
<ul>
@@ -363,20 +383,54 @@
<!-- COOKBOOK -->
<section>
-<h3>Cookbook</h3>
-<p class='responsible'>Bernadette Hyland (3 Round Stones), Sarven Capadisli (DERI)</p>
+<h3>Cookbook - Bernadette</h3>
+<p class='responsible'>Bernadette Hyland (3 Round Stones)</p>
<p>
See <a href="http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/Linked_Data_Cookbook">Cookbook for Open Government Linked Data</a>.
</p>
</section>
-<!-- Pragmatic Provenance -->
+<!-- Pragmatic Provenance -->
+<!-- Note to Editors: This section is not officially part of our charter and probably needs to be folded into another section yet to be determined. -->
+
<section>
<h3>Pragmatic Provenance - Boris</h3>
<p class='responsible'>John Erickson (RPI)</p>
<p class="todo">Integrate Wiki <a href="http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/228_Best_Practices_Pragmatic_Provenance">content</a>.
</section>
+
+<!-- Epilogue: The Social Contract of a Linked Open Data Publisher -->
+<!-- Note to Editors: This section is not officially part of our charter and probably needs to be folded into another section yet to be determined. -->
+
+<section>
+<h3>The Social Contract of a Linked Open Data Publisher - Bernadette</h3>
+<p class='responsible'>Bernadette Hyland (3 Round Stones)</p>
+<p class="todo">Integrate from Linked Data Cookbook <a href="http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/Linked_Data_Cookbook#Your_Social_Responsibility_as_a_Data_Publisher">content</a>.
+</section>
+
+<p>
+Publishers of Linked Data implicitly enter into an implicit social contract with users of their data. A problem on the Web is that it can be difficult to determine how much your information may matter to users. Publishers should feel a responsibility to maintain their data, to keep it fresh and up to date, to ensure its accuracy to the greatest degree possible and to repair reported problems. Publishers should assign a contact person or people to respond to enquires via some common mechanisms such as electronic mail or even telephone. If reuse is a priority, then following best practices such as modeling your data as high quality Linked Data, carefully consid- ering your URI strategy and publishing VoID descriptions will form the foundation of your Open Government initiatives. Ensuring that your Linked Open Data set re- mains available where you say it will be is critical.
+</p>
+<p>
+If you move or remove data that is published to the Web, you may break third party applications or mashups without knowing. This is considered rude for obvious reasons and is the basis for the social contract. A good way to prevent causing http 404's is for your organization to implement a persistence strategy.
+</p>
+
+@@ TODO: More on persistence strategy (BOH)
+<p>
+It is beyond the charter of this working group to describe and recommend appropriate licenses for Open Government content published as Linked Data. However, it is best practice to explicitly attach a license statement to each data set. Governments typically define ownership of works produced by government employees or contractors in legislation.
+</p>
+<p>
+For example, the US Government designates information produced by civil servants as a U.S. Government Work, whereas contractors may produce works under a variety of licenses and copyright assignments. U.S. Government Works are not subject to copyright restrictions in the United States. It is critical for US government officials to know their rights and responsibilities under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (especially FAR Subpart 27.4, the Contract Clauses in 52.227-14, -17 and -20 and any agency-specific FAR Supplements) and copyright assignments if data is produced by a government contractor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Similarly, the UK and many former Commonwealth countries maintain the concept of the Crown Copyright. It is important to know who owns your data and to say so. Additional work around the recording of legal implications and licensing may be undertaken by the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group in coming years. It is recommended that governmental agencies publishing Linked Data review the Recommendations produced by the W3C.
+</p>
+
+@@ TODO: Expand for other countries by example, e.g., Brazil, others
+
+
<!-- ACK -->
<section class="appendix">
<h2>Acknowledgments</h2>