The USA and UK govern­ments have made signif­icant progress with linked, open data in recent months. Several funda­mental datasets from the Australian Government are on the cusp of being exposed as mean­ingful, reusable, machine-​​readable assets, further driving the adoption of linked data within and around government. Making better use of online data offerings using a combi­nation of top-​​down policy and guidance, together with bottom-​​up devel­opment efforts from agency web teams, would seem to describe a sustainable, organic growth in linked government data. Learn about the path to the first release of data​.gov​.au; a draft roadmap to future releases; the barriers to linked data and open public sector infor­mation (PSI); and the real-​​world ques­tions this tech­nology aims to solve.

1. Gordon Grace
More than Raw:
Government Data Online
[Australian Government Information Managment
Office]

2. Department of Finance and
Deregulation
Australian Government
Information Management
Office
Agency Services Division
Department of
Treasury
Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet

3. Disclaimer

4. Overview
1. The road to data.gov.au
2. Foundations of linked open govt. data
3. Future of govt. data online

5. Part 1 / 3
Getting Government Data
Online:
The road to data.gov.au

6. Hypothetical #1:
An electricity company:
Where does the power
need to go now that more
houses are insulated?

7. May 2009
data.gov launched
Sep 2009
data.gov.uk (beta) launched
Oct 2009
data.australia.gov.au (beta) launched
Dec 2009
Government 2.0 Taskforce Report
Delivered
May 2010
data.gov.uk (proper) launched
May 2010
data.gov re-launched

8. May 2010
Government Response to Taskforce Report1
Nov 2010
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
established
Late 2010
data.gov.au (proper) launched?
1. http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/govresponse20report/index.html

9. W3C and Government 2.0
Technology, not culture.
I've got less than one
hour.

10. ATOM CSS
FOAF RDF[a]
SKOS TTML
SVG WAI-ARIA
WCAG
[X]HTML[5]

11. ATOM CSS
FOAF RDF[a]
SKOS TTML
SVG WAI-ARIA
WCAG
[X]HTML[5]

12. AGLS AGIFT
Dublin Core
DCAT
hCard vCard
X500

13. Can we put this
on the cloud?
Where's the data
quality statement?Who do I contact
about dataset X?
I need more
documentation.
Why are you
using proprietary
formats?
How do I provide
my agency's
dataset?
Is this the latest
version of the
data?

14. Can I federate
this catalogue
with my own?
I want to rate this
data 3 out of 5
stars.
Can you make the
data more
interactive?
More PDFs,
please.
I really wish you'd
used RDF
Why aren't you
providing more
APIs?
Does this
catalogue meet
international
standards?

15. Aust. Govt. Open PSI: A Working Definition
1.Not subject to privacy, security or
privelege limitation.
• Collected at source, with high
granularity.
• Structured to allow automated
processing.
• Available to all, without registration.
Adapted from 8 Principles of Open Government Data (http://resource.org8_principles.html)

16. Aust. Govt. Open PSI: An Anti-Definition
1.Provided in human-readable form
only.
• Preference for proprietary formats.
• Not digitised.
• High level of aggregation.
• Re-use prohibited.
• Requires registration.
Adapted from Conversations with Australian Government Agencies (Not yet available online)

18. data.gov.au's "Mission"
Make published
government data
discoverable and
usable.

19. Data Provision: The Pragmatic Approach
Baby steps. Let's just
get the data and a
working minimum of
metadata.

20. Data Provision: The "Horses for Courses" Approach
Feeds, downloads, web
services and APIs
should be considered
as options for each set.

21. Data Provision: The "Grass is Greener" Approach
Our
[repository/XML/met
adata] is better than
your
[repository/XML/met
adata].

22. Data Provision: The Likely Reality.
Federate - use subsets
if necessary. Expect
wild variations in
format, size, range and
quality of data.

23. Data Provision: The Likely Reality.
Use existing standards
wherever possible.
Establish benchmark
licences1.
1.
http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Copyright_CommonwealthCopyrightAdministration_StatementofIPPrinciplesforAustr
alianGovernmentAgencies

24. Data Provision: The "Linked or Bust" Approach
URIs for every entity
and concept, for every
point in time.
No exception.

26. Data Provision: The Likely (Short-Term) Reality.
• Agency responsiveness
• Data documentation
• Quality statements
• RDF 'Shadow' site(s)1
• FOI-driven inclusions2
1. http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/govcat/
2. http://oaic.gov.au/foi/

27. DCAT+Dublin Core+AGLS = Enough?
• DCAT=Data Catalog[u]e
• accessURL
• dataQuality
• dataDictionary
• granularity
• themeTaxonomy
• AGLSTERMS.jurisdiction
http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/Data_Catalog_Vocabulary

28. Someone has
requested some
information via
FOI.
Is it a dataset?
Make it machine-
readable. Licence it
liberally. Add pointers
to existing data.
Agency site,
data.gov.au or
existing repository.
Yes. How do we
publish it?
Where do we
publish it?

29. Part 2 / 3
Foundations of Linked
Open Government Data

30. TED - Tim Berners-Lee
(February 2009)

31. Linked
Open
Data[For the Australian Government]

32. Linked
Open
Data[For the Australian Government]

33. Exhibit A
Administrative
Arrangements Orders
(AAO)1
[Dept. Prime Minister & Cabinet]
1. http://www.dpmc.gov.au/parliamentary/index.cfm

35. Part 8: The Department of Finance and
Deregulation1
Matters dealt with by the Department
• Budget policy advice and process, and review of governmental
programs
• Government financial accountability, governance and financial
management frameworks, including grants and procurement policy
and services
• Shareholder advice on Government Business Enterprises and
commercial entities treated as GBEs
• ...
Legislation administered by the Minister
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2005, Part 4B
• Aerospace Technologies of Australia Limited Sale Act 1994
• AIDC Sale Act 1997
• Airports (Transitional) Act 1996
• Albury-Wodonga Development Act 1973
• Annual Appropriation Acts
1.http://www.dpmc.gov.au/parliamentary/docs/aao_20100914.pdf

36. Linked
Open
Data

37. Exhibit B
2009-2010 Budget
Papers1
[Dept. Treasury, Dept. Finance & Deregulation]
1. http://www.budget.gov.au

39. Linked
Open
Data

40. Exhibit D
Government Online
Directory (GOLD)1
[Dept. Finance & Deregulation]
1. http://www.directory.gov.au

42. Exhibit D
Commonwealth of
Australia Law
(ComLaw)1
[Attorney General's Department]
1. http://www.comlaw.gov.au

43. http://www.comlaw.gov.au/comlaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/framelodgmentattachments/6F1671D92E20BF0ECA25772F000A14
9F

44. directory.gov.au
(GOLD)
ComLawAGIFT
AAO
AGLS
Hansard
Open
Australia
AustLii
agd.com.au

45. Eating your own dogfood
directory.gov.au as a
linked data node?
[Since we're not printing it any more, shouldn't we treat it as a
digital asset?]

46. Foundation #1: Who?
Who are you again?
How do I contact
you?

47. Answer:
Check the GOLD (or
just Google the
agency's or
individual's name).

48. Foundation #2: What?
What is everyone
supposed to be
doing?

49. Answer:
Check the
Administrative
Arrangements
Orders (AAO)

50. Answer:
We have a functions
thesaurus (AGIFT)1,
too.
1. http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/create-capture-describe/describe/agift/agift-zip.aspx

51. Foundation #3: Why?
Why should you be
doing that?

52. Answer:
It's the law.

53. Foundation #4: How did that happen?
Your elected
representatives
deemed that it
should be so.

54. Contentious point #1:
Friend-of-a-friend
(FOAF) might not be
the answer.

55. Exhibit E
Google support for
"Organization" RDFa1
[Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool]
1. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

56. "Each organization can have a
number of different properties,
such as its name, address, URL,
and phone number. You can
use microdata, microformats or
RDFa markup to label these
properties."1
[Google webmaster central]
1. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146861

57. Warning: Markup Ahead.

58. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
...
<div>
<h1>
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
</h1>
<dl>
<dt>Address</dt>
<dd>
<address>
<span>123 Sydney A</span>,
<span>Forrest</span>,
<span>ACT</span>.
</address>
</dd>
<dt>Phone:</dt>
<dd>123-456-789</dd>
<dt>Website:</dt>
<dd><a href="http://www.dfat.gov.au">
http://www.dfat.gov.au</a></dd>
</dl>
</div>
...

59. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML+RDFa 1.0//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/DTD/xhtml-rdfa-1.dtd">
<html dir="ltr" xml:lang="en-au"
...
xmlns:dv="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#"
>
...
<div typeof="dv:Organization">
<h1 property="dv:name">Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade</h1>
<dl>
<dt>Address</dt>
<dd><address rel="dv:address">
<div typeof="dv:Address">
<span property="dv:street-address">123 Sydney Av</span>,
<span property="dv:locality">Forrest</span>,
<span property="dv:region">ACT</span>.
</div>
</address></dd>
<dt>Phone:</dt>
<dd>
<a href="tel:123456789" property="dv:tel">123-456-789</a>
</dd>
<dt>Website:</dt>
<dd><a href="http://www.dfat.gov.au" rel="dv:url">
http://www.dfat.gov.au</a></dd>
</dl>
</div>

60. "Google does not
currently display
organization information
in rich snippets."
[Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool]
1. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

61. "Error: Filetype not
supported."
[Apple iPhone Error Message when attempting to
save a vCard via Safari]

62. Linked Data Provision: The Likely (Mid-Term) Reality.
Linked data candidates:
1.Agency contact details
• Legislation
• Agency functions
• Public Service Gazette
• Gazetted locations
• Statistical 'regions'

63. Uncontentious point #1:
SKOS should be
useful for describing
AGIFT.

64. directory.gov.au
(GOLD)
ComLawAGIFT
AAO
AGLS
Hansard
Open
Australia
AustLii
agd.com.au
Geoscience
Australia

65. Contentious point #2:
RDF without CURIEs
may be reasonable
(achievable, at least).

66. Directory.gov.au URIs (OLD):
http://directory.gov.au/osearch.php?
ou=Broadcasting%20%26%20Digital%20Switchover
&ou=Department%20of%20Broadband
%2C%20Communications%20and%20the%20Digital%20Economy
&o=Broadband%2C%20Communications%20and%20the%20Digital
%20Economy
&o=Portfolios
&o=Commonwealth%20of%20Australia
&c=AU

67. Directory.gov.au URIs (NEW):
http://directory.gov.au/directory?
ea0_lfz99_120.
&organizationalUnit
&549b1126-3379-4b38-916e-f743317ff616

68. [gold:549b1126-3379-4b38-916e-f743317ff616]
Not cool. But those
URIs should have
RDF representations.

69. Part 3 / 3
government + vendors +
public + W3C standards
= WIN!

70. Source: flickr:uwdigitalcollections

71. Government's role in data.gov.au:
Do Web 1.0 right.
It's roughly equivalent
to Web 3.0, anyway.

72. Source: flickr:johnmcnab

73. Vendors' role in data.gov.au:
Prepare to build
bridges to the back
office. Handle linked
data intelligently.

74. Public's role in data.gov.au:
Know what to
expect. Ask for it if
you don't get it.

75. W3C Standards' role in data.gov.au:
Don't you go
changing, now.

76. Source: flickr:uwdigitalcollections